Today’s Required Reading

Gitmo’ Better Blues – The folly of the new Guantanamo trials. By Neal Katyal (Slate.com).

This is my fear, one that seems all too likely to happen: at some point in the future, probably the near future, it will come out that the military detentions at Guantanamo Bay, the ones controlled by the President and apparently outside any other rule of law, are going to be exposed as the massive human rights offenses that I suspect them to be. Think Aushwitz but without the systematic killing. As Americans we will share the blame while saying, “We had no idea” because everything was so secretive and opaque.

I believe America is letting these human rights abuses happen because we cannot believe that our country is capable of it; we look back at the Holocaust (or detention of Japanese-Americans in World War II) and think, “We’ve learned the lessons of the past… that could never happen again.”

And yet, watch it happen. That’s my fear.

Published by Jeff Carlson

Author, photographer, and late-nighter Jeff Carlson writes for outlets such as Popular Photography, DPReview, Creative Pro, and others, and is a contributing editor for TidBITS. He is the author of Take Control of Your Digital Photos; The Photographer's Guide to Luminar AI, Take Control of Apple Watch, and Take Control of Your Digital Storage, among many other titles. View all posts by Jeff Carlson