I knew this story would be told sooner or later, and as I expected, it would be very hard to stomach...
http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/roadtoguantanamo/trailer/
Credit to Alex for pointing me to it.
Three Muslims in Pakistan go to Afghanistan to "help" while the US is fighting the Taliban?
This film is 100% their point of view.
These guys have an agenda and to simply accept this film at face value is the height of naivete. Korans in the toilet? Seems I heard that one before...
"We're quite familiar with the American point of view. We see it every day. So what's the problem?"
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You say: "I knew this story would be told sooner or later, and as I expected, it would be very hard to stomach..."
Why would this be "hard to stomach" unless you accepted the film's viewpoint as legitimate?
If Don Rumsfeld and a couple Pentagon buddies made a docmentary about Guantanamo, would you accept it as uncritically?
You shouldn't. In either case.
The fact that you feel you've been burned by some "people in power" does not mean you turn around and give people who aren't in power a free pass.
You need to bring a critical viewpoint to bear on *any* project with this much controversy attached to it, particularly when the originators are so clearly not neutral observers.
You cannot right moral wrongs by suspending reasonable skepticism.
Just because a film is controversial doesn't mean it doesn't have some truth in it, either.
And until our government stops lying and covering up, stops monitoring everything from our phone calls to internet usage, and stops falsely accusing people of terrorism (anyone remember the retired ladies in FLA who had their bank account frozen??), then I'll be much more skeptical of our government than I am of private citizens.
Cynical? Of course. But I was cynical about our government long before Iraq and the Gulf War.
They've had 52 years to destroy my trust.
But Linda, Saddam had WMD's, right?
If you want to talk about being skeptical, let's talk about not trusting any administration that thinks it's perfectly acceptable to engage in domestic spying without a warrant. I'm all for getting the bad guys, but no one is above the law.
"domestic spying without a warrant"
To call it "domestic" is only half the story, because the other half of the phone call must be abroad, and the call must involve someone actually suspected of terrorism ties. And it's debatable whether this is "above the law." Mind you, I'm not claiming it's legal, I'm just saying that there is legitimate disagreement on this point. But that doesn't stop people from making flat claims one way or the other. I'm not one of those people.
"anyone remember the retired ladies in FLA who had their bank account frozen?"
I live in Manhattan, and on 9/11 I saw thousands of people die -- not on TV, but close-up, in person. Then the fumes gave me headaches for two months afterward. I was wiping ashes off my windowsills.
The example of a couple of Florida retirees who had to call their bank -- offered in this context -- is to me a prime example of the self-regarding infantilism of so much of this debate. Sometimes I almost fear that the US deserves to lose...
The fact that you saw the tragedy up close doesn't justify every day Americans having their rights trampled in the interest of safety.
Now the feds want to monitor Internet traffic. It's not an issue of me worried about getting caught doing something illegal. But if I want to look at porn, send my friends dirty jokes or bank online, that's not the government's business.
If monitoring a phone call of one of the 9/11 guys taking flight training could have prevented the 9/11 attacks, and saved thousands of innocent lives, could that justify doing something differently?
If it prevented a "dirty bomb" or bio weapon attack?
Is it possible that we should ever make even the smallest adjustment related to security, or was the security/privacy equation on 9/10 somehow perfect by definition?