Lost in the Editorials section of the New York Times yesterday was a story about an American "every-man."
What began amidst the swirling ash and rubble of the Twin Towers has avalanched to this point. Through tear clouded eyes we watched the Bush Administration take from us our right to free speech, our right to privacy, our right to habeas corpus, even our right to freedom from torture. With each new demand we assented, promised that this would keep us safer, this would protect our families, our children, our very lives from those that seek to destroy our way of life.Donald Vance, a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago, was a whistle-blower who prompted the raid by tipping off the F.B.I. to suspicious activity at the company where he worked, including possible weapons trafficking. He was arrested and held for 97 days — shackled and blindfolded, prevented from sleeping by blaring music and round-the-clock lights. In other words, he was subjected to the same mistreatment that thousands of non-Americans have been subjected to since the 2003 invasion.
Yet for Donald Vance it was not a terrorist with a box-cutter or a bomb-belt that destroyed his way of life, it was the government he trusted, served, and believed in.
In another time and amidst another security crisis, a pastor named Martin Niemöller wrote a poem lamenting the same lack of outcry and the same sense of complacency that has seeped into America from the depths of those two empty pits in the island of Manhattan. It was reprinted in Time Magazine in 1989, five years after his death, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the start of World War II:
We might well replace "Communists" with "Terrorists," "Jews" with "Muslims." The heart-felt shame and regret intoned in Niemöller's verse would be unchanged - merely applied to another apathetic population in another apathetic era.First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left
to speak up for me.
Donald Vance was an American Everyman. He was a veteran, a security contractor, and a patriot - vanished into a featureless cell on a fickle whim. Without recourse, representation, or hope of release he was detained, tortured, and tried - a victim of the American Security State.
Donald Vance was a security contractor, and patriot; if it can happen to him, it can happen to anyone - all of us. Even you.
killfile editorial on newsvine
