From Adele Welty, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows
This email– received on November 5, 2008- is from a young man whom I met, along with his mother, in Guantanamo, Cuba, in January of last year. His brother had been a detainee in Guantanamo for six years and was released in the spring of this year. He is now home in Great Britain with his family, never was charged with a crime or a connection with terrorists. He had been picked up in Afghanistan by the Northern Alliance and sold to the U.S. Military for $5000. He had gone to Afghanistan to marry a girl he met in England at his friend’s wedding. He is now permanently disabled because of being tortured. The brother I met, and with whom I have kept in contact, wrote the following:
Dear Adele –
America Is still Great.
Yes! Despite the wars, despite the human rights abuses in Guantanamo, the secret prisons around the globe, and the disastrous failure of its financial institutions.
The fact that a black man who has a Muslim father and an Indonesian step father can be elected or even stand for elections, now a days*, makes America one of the greatest countries in the world.
Today we rejoice and celebrate this moment of hope. Big change will take years. Am not even sure if it will ever happen. But a different approach, a firm but gentle touch is all we need.
Congratulations America.
I am so thrilled and hopeful for America and the world today.
God bless America.
Taher
*now days/ means the culture of fear today…………etc.
