US Condemns Taliban Public Execution, Forgets Own Guantanamo Legacy
ABC News breathlessly reports on the Taliban’s public execution in a sports stadium, rightfully condemning the barbarity. Yet, the same outlets often gloss over the US government’s own enduring legacies of cruelty, like the indefinite detention and torture at Guantanamo Bay—a site where, according to Human Rights Watch, detainees were subject to 'enhanced interrogation techniques' as recently as
2006. The difference? One is 'justice' in a sports stadium, the other is 'national security' in an offshore black site. We are consistently told to recoil at foreign atrocities, as if our own state apparatus, and the 'rules-based order' it champions, hasn’t engaged in its own theater of pain, just with better PR. The hand-wringing is always loudest when the actors aren't wearing red, white, and
blue. One might wonder if the outrage is about the act itself, or merely who is performing it. After all, how many governments have executed individuals deemed enemies of the state, just without the stadium lights?