I can't Gitmo, satisfaction . . .

A couple of years ago I learned a secret of Homeland Security. Terrorists don't use credit cards. Having reached the limit on my credit card, I paid cash at the airline ticket counter. After leaving the ticket counter I walked around with a Green C (for cash, not credit) marked upon my chest (not literally, just an allusion to the Scarlet Letter). I was pulled aside at every security checkpoint, detained for a few minutes, and given a much more thorough search, while those obviously safe and sane credit card users hurried through. I did not figure out this secret until the second trip in two weeks during which I was detained, pulled aside, ostracized, wanded, and delayed.

These were business trips for which the schedule was extremely tight. I was frustrated and aggravated. This is the treatment I get for paying with U. S. Currency instead of a credit card that you have to call India to get straightened out?

Four Uyghurians were detained eight years ago for being Uyghurians migrating from Afghanistan to Pakistan as the Americans began their action in Afghanistan in 2001. They have been detained at the American prison at Gitmo for eight years. No charges. No trials. No evidence. No guilt as far as anyone knows. They have been cleared for release twice. First by the Bush Administration, then by the Obama administration.

We Americans get indignant if the State Trooper makes us sit for a few minutes while he is writing a speeding ticket. We are impatient, as I was, when detained for a few moments at airport security.

So you would think we Americans , in solidarity, would take up our much cherished arms against the government who is detaining living, breathing human beings without charge or evidence. Or at least complain. Detaining not for a few minutes, but for eight years. Eight years. Knowing there is no basis for detention. This is the stuff the American Revolution was made of.

But instead Americans are questioning why these innocent people are being released. We are afraid of them. Apparently American fear, whether it has rational basis, trumps human rights and the rule of law.

Or maybe we have come to believe that human rights are only for Americans. And if the truth really be told, only for some Americans.

Those who use credit cards.

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