An American Lesson From The Captured British

[JohnRM]

But don't you see, that's exactly the problem. If people blindly trust their governments, then those governments feel no sense of accountability. As soon as the Congress was won by the Democrats, we suddenly started seeing a lot more oversight than we have in the first 6 years of the Bush administration.

If people aren't skeptical of their governments and make no effort to keep track of what their government is doing, how it is spending their money and what possible abuses they're committing, then the government is pretty much given the green light.

For instance, right now we're seeing another scandal regarding the Attorney General (Alberto Gonzales). If the vast majority of Americans were to voice their opposition to him and his policies, the president would have no choice but to ask him for his resignation.

The problem is, Americans are among the most politically apathetic people in the world and have one of the lowest voter turnouts of any democracy, let alone among developed nations. The people in the USA seem to care a lot more about their day to day lives, and don't see how elections or politics affect them. Perhaps this problem (at least partly) stems from the two-party system that the US has, which is rather unique among democratic countries.

If you look at the poll above, there is a huge difference between Americans and Non-Americans regarding their support of current US policies. This is another thing that is putting a wedge between US-World relations. I expected to see some support for the current policy, but nowhere near the amount that has been expressed so far. Of course this is no scientific poll, but still, it's enough to make one worry.

Remember that in a country where a person can be arbitrarily detained for "reasons of national security" there is little preventing the government from picking you up and holding you indefinitely. There have been clear abuses of the sweeping new powers given to the US intelligence organizations since the Patriot Act was put in place, including the most recent scandal regarding the FBI.

I would have said that the current situation would trouble me greatly if I was American, but it's even more troubling than that. As the case of Maher Arar and Kevin's Iranian family have shown, Canadians aren't very safe in the US either.

Oh, I didn't say that I wasn't for more oversight, but in lieu of it and without having spoken to those who do participate, what can you expect me to say of what is going on out there? What can you expect anyone to say about it?

 

[Stacmon]

Oh, I didn't say that I wasn't for more oversight, but in lieu of it and without having spoken to those who do participate, what can you expect me to say of what is going on out there? What can you expect anyone to say about it?

Well, if you check out this post you're faced with a fair amount of information that can rather easily be verified.

Just because a person can't know every possible detail regarding a given situation does not mean they shouldn't act on the information they do know. What is your opinion of what has happened to David Hicks, or Maher Arar?

Now now, if you are going to bring this one up at least acknowledge your government provided the information indicating he was an evil terrorist.

Redwolf and I completely agree on this. Our government may have given trumped up charges to the Americans regarding Maher Arar but they have since formally apologized and compensated the man for it. Furthermore, they weren't the ones that carried out his detainment, rendition or torture, but they admitted that they were an involved party and that the whole situation likely wouldn't have occurred if that false information wasn't passed on to US authorities.

Nevertheless, that gives the US no right to treat a person the way they treated him, and it's unimaginable that after all the US and Syrians put him through, that the Canadian government is the only participating party to try to address the error.

I'm unhappy that the situation came to pass in the first place, but I'm very proud that my country was fair, just and humble enough to admit its mistakes, hold a formal inquiry and compensate an innocent victim.