My Compassion is the Enemy

Today the headline Guantánamo Detainee Kills Himself sits rather small on the NY Times website. Bigger things have happened, perhaps. Over 200 people went to a watery grave in the Atlantic, a tragedy of immense proportions that may have been caused simply because pilots are losing the right to control their own planes. An immense tragedy yes.

But this story about the Gitmo detainee is a tragedy of extraordinary proportions in its own way. The loss of life should always make us pause, and if it actually did, maybe there would be less of it. And a scenario where someone is willing to take their own life should give us even greater pause. For it is not the barbarism of murder or the tragedy of accident: it is the loss of all hope. A quitting. The giving up of life. And what if we all did that? There would be nothing left.

So, perhaps this man who killed himself was a murderer. Perhaps he was the worst kind of human who deserved to spend decades in jail. But perhaps not. Perhaps he was just a Yemeni who got swept up in the wrong search at the wrong time. Or had the wrong name. I don’t know the details of his detention. I do know that the Founding Fathers, despite the bullshit of their racism and their sexism, in their wisdom, designed a justice system that allowed a defendant to present his case. To have hope for freedom if he deserved it. Indefinite detention is the opposite of hope. It is the end of it. And it is antithetical to the ideas that America supposedly stands on and for.

From the NY Times article:

After three detainees committed suicide at the same time in June 2006, the commander at the time, Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., drew international attention by challenging the suggestion that the suicides had been acts of desperation. ” This was not an act of desperation,” he asserted, “but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.”

If I understand Harris correctly, if I take his words to heart, then I must learn to make an enemy of my compassion. Because that is what I feel. If this man killed women and children of any color or nationality, then I am happy to see him in prison. And I would be even happier to see him seeking redemption. But that is impossible if he does not have the possibility of hope. If he does not have his life.

Does it make me anti-American to feel compassion for people who lose hope? I hope not. I hope it makes me pro-American. I hope it makes me pro-Yemeni. Pro-Israeli. Pro-Human. If it makes me anti-anything, let it be anti-war. Anti-hate. I can live with those “negative” labels.

Don’t let Rear Adm Harris convince you that hate is a way of survival. It is the end of survival.

My hope is that this suicide melts the hardened hearts of Americans. I hope it wears down the hatred that so many of them have breathed in. I hope that this man’s death reminds everyone that the so-called enemy is a human, just like your next door neighbor.

This hope is small. But I am allowed to have it. And my suspicion is that all our lives depend on this kind of hope. So let’s cultivate it in ourselves and in each other. A little compassion goes a long way.
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By the way, The Disordered Cosmologist experiment over at IGT is over. Expect more regular updates here at Disordered Cosmos from here on out.