(HOST) This spring, commentator Willem Lange is contemplating the paradise in which we live – and pondering the possibility of someday losing it.
(LANGE) The hillside outside our kitchen window turns to gold when the afternoon sun hits it. I have no idea what lies on the other side of death; but if there is awareness, these quiet woods, of all the places I’ve seen in this world, I’ll miss the most.
The sun sinks at last behind the trees. The dog, and I sit by a window. The deer are coming. They browse little whips of beech, or nibble at low-hanging hemlock branches. Soon they’re gone.
I click on the evening news. A reporter is interviewing an attorney for a prisoner at the United States military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The prisoner’s crime is he was wearing a camouflage-pattern shirt when he was turned in for bounty. He’s been held incommunicado for years; hasn’t been allowed to see any evidence against him; and he’s been tortured: bright lights, beatings, marathon interrogations, sleep deprivation. His vital signs have fluttered occasionally. When he’s recovered, he’s been tortured again.
I’ve followed the debates among Washington lawyers as to what constitutes torture, and when it may be justified. Each of us might define it differently if pressed. But shouldn’t it simply be what you or I or Alberto Gonzales would call torture if it were to happen to us? No matter how we split hairs or try to justify it in the interests of national security, the image of husky, healthy Americans in the uniform of our country sadistically beating bound, defenseless, hopeless prisoners is repugnant to me beyond expression.
Guantanamo Bay is beautiful. Every nation that has beheld it has desired it. But its guard towers, fences, and interrogation rooms will someday inspire the same disgust as the slave gates of West Africa or the torture chambers in the Tower of London. People will wonder, “What were they thinking of?”
Here in the woods, Mother and I have supper, and afterward, with a fire in the stove to push back the chill of the evening, play Scrabble in the pool of light around the floor lamp. Very peaceful. Worth fighting for, too, but only by rules agreed upon in less turbulent times. The thought of what these quiet woods would be like if law and order were to disintegrate or become oppressive is pretty awful to contemplate.
Human beings have a history of screwing up paradise, all the way back to the very first of us. We could screw up even this beautiful republic. Our rhetoric and laws will avail us nothing unless we apply them equally to everyone everywhere. Outrages perpetrated in the name of freedom will continue unless we overcome our pusillanimity and speak out against them. It may be true that the meek shall inherit the earth. But at the moment I really doubt it.
This is Willem Lange up in Orford, New Hampshire, and I gotta get back to work.