Torturing Your Way To Freedom

Of course, if this view gains any traction, the neocons and defenders of George W. Bush's Presidential legacy will let us know this was all part of their double-secret plan to bring real democracy and human rights to the Middle East.

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One Man

I'll write more about the international stuff once we see what happens. History is being written right now, maybe in a way we haven't seen since 1989. While it unfolds, and you watch the passions of people yearning to be free struggle against the yoke of those who would curtail their liberty, ask yourself what effect can one man have on the world?

For this is what the blood of patriots and of tyrants looks like in real time. Why must the cost always be so high?

Will this just be another false dawn, forcing the United States again into the realm of realpolitik to protect our interests? Or we be able to come down on the side of true freedom as our moral compass demands? It is time we start looking very deeply at our own motivations, and perhaps even our own complicity in keeping things the way that they are.

For we will not decide the outcome here. Perhaps that is for the best.

And, yes, I choose my words carefully. The very fabric of my being as an American and a Southerner knows the meaning when I see images of a people on a bridge, praying in the face water cannons, tear gas and police batons.

I don't need to think too long to realize where I've seen that before.

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