Guantanamo - Isn't that a song by Trini Lopez?

In the last week, several people remarked to me that they enjoyed receiving my
e-mails; I warned them that that would only encourage me to continue to write
these pieces.....

So today, I'm sitting here looking out the window and it's 11F and snowing and I'm thinking about summer. I thought about naming the attached picture "The Summer of 2009" but decided instead to do another Happy Days title.

In my class this morning, we discussed contemporary issues including the order signed by President Obama closing the Guantanamo Bay prison where we hold - and this is part of the interesting part of all this - POW's? or Criminals? Unlawful Enemy Combatants?- many of whom are indeed sworn enemies of the United States. But many of whom were swept up in the "shoot first, ask questions later" methodology of the prior administration in the post 9-11 military actions ordered by George W. Bush.

This was a promise by President Obama that I wish he hadn't made during his campaign. Stop torture, yes. Stop spying on American citizens w/o court orders, yes. And yes to most of the Executive orders he has signed in recent days overturning the many GWB constitutional end-runs.

However, Guantanamo does have its advantages -- it's not in our neighborhoods, our cities, our states. Putting militant Islamic jihadists in our prisons seems like a bad idea to me. Our prisons have enough to deal with already with gangs, and racism, and violence, and drugs, and all the rest.

Stop the abuses that occurred at Guantanamo; follow the International Laws regarding treatment of those captives, open it up for the Red Cross and Amnesty International, etc. And by all means, sort out the ones unrighteously held captive and send them home with an apology at the very least and a change of clothes, a weekend at a Hyatt Regency somewhere, and tickets to Disneyland maybe. Figuring out what we owe people wrongly imprisoned for years borders on the impossible it seems to me.

But I, for one, don't mind the rest of those POW's spending their days at Guantanamo, the real POW's, until the war against the United States is declared over by the radical Islamic jihadists who have declared war against us in the first place.

So that's my two cents on one of the many very complicated issues the President has embarked upon unraveling which were left on his doorstep by you know who.

So with that, I'd better grade a few papers and get ready for tonight's class and am attaching a new picture.

"Happy Days are Here Again, Again!"


Bud
www.artbycassiday.com


"When all else fails, I always say, paint a flower!" - Cassiday

"I'm not going down in history, I'm going down now!" - Cassiday

'Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow
spot into the sun.' Picasso

'Use enough dynamite there, Butch?' - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

'Three out of four people make up 75% of the world's population.' Jeremy

'An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one. ' - Albert Camus

'In Theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice, they're not.' -
Yogi Berra

'Always live in the ugliest house on the street - then you don't have to look at
it.' David Hockney

“Hey, hey, hey — don't be mean. No need to be mean. 'Cause, remember: no matter
where you go... there you are.’”-The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the
8th Dimension!

"If given lemons, try to make lemonade!" - anon.