Ye Olde Staging Point

The controversy over Guantanamo Bay, prisoner abuse, and the torture of captured terrorist suspects makes me angry.

It makes me angry when some conservative writers and websites not only defend the torture of prisoners, but make light of it, as if this is some sort of hilarious joke that we should wink at and laugh about.

It makes me angry when certain people who since 2000 have been regularly referring to evangelical Christians as bigots, idiots, mindless sheep, and Taliban-like zealots wonder disdainfully why evangelicals aren't standing at their side to criticize our president's missteps.

It makes me angry that when the question of torture first came up, President Bush could not (and stunningly, unbelievably, still cannot) make a clear, unambiguous, plain-language, strongly-enforced condemnation of any type of torture.

It makes me angry that if President Bush had made that clear, unambiguous statement, that his critics would not praise him for it, but would drop the torture issue and immediately begin the search for another scandal/political vulnerability with which to take down the President they hate so much.

It makes me angry that in our polarized political world, I have to choose between supporting Bush's general policies and tacitly condoning torture, or refusing to compromise on the torture issue and risking the political collapse of a foreign policy that is, after decades of appeasement and looking the other way, bringing the hope of democracy to a tyrant-infested corner of the world.

It makes me angry that some major conservative bloggers, many of whom I respect greatly, spend post after post focusing on inane political tidbits but manage to somehow never post about the constantly-in-the-news issue of torture.

It makes me angry that some of the people shouting loudest against torture also fought tooth and nail to keep the U.S. from taking down a dictator who liked to feed his enemies through an industrial shredder.

It makes me angry that some people in the military and intelligence agencies--far, far too many people--made the decision to treat prisoners without humanity, then shrugged and hid behind the shield of "vague policies from on high," as if unclear memos prevented them from recognizing that torture is wrong.

It makes me angry that many people who would tell me I'm a hypocrite for being a Christian and not speaking out loudly against torture, would also tell me that I'm a crazed idiot for wanting to stop what I see as the butchering of thousands and thousands of unwanted, unborn babies each year in this country.

It makes me angry that the government stalls, obstructs, and ignores attempts to expose misbehavior, instead of throwing open the doors and welcoming the public to see exactly what is going on.

It makes me angry that certain Christian spokemen react immediately and forcefully to even the faintest hint of "pro-homosexual" legislation, but look at the current world situation and, impossibly, see nothing in our treatment of prisoners and the torture controversy that contradicts God's law.

It makes me angry that some torture critics cannot and will never acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, addressing the scandal of prisoner torture is not as critical as ensuring that democracy survives and grows in Iraq.

It makes me angry that the honor and integrity of my country has been stained because of the actions of a few reprehensible individuals and a bureaucracy that can't seem to fashion basic, binding moral guidelines on important issues like this.

Most of all, it makes me angry that after years of this, I still don't know what to think, and I don't know what I, a Christian citizen of the U.S., should be doing about it.