January 11th, 2010
Eight years ago today, as many of us were still memorializing and putting to rest our family members lost on 9/11, our government was adding another wound to our nation and our constitution.
The establishment of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay neither helped America heal, nor enhanced our security. Instead, it stained the legacy of our family members and took a piece of our collective souls. In the names of our family members, the United States government established this facility and others, employing acts and policies counter to our constitution and traditions, and abandoning long-established principles of American and international law. It replaced them with indefinite detention, secret prisons, and torture. It took the image of America — the fair, the just, the ethical — and replaced it with America the vengeful.
It capitalized on and exacerbated our fears in order to sell this to the American people. The facility established at Guantanamo Bay as well as the concepts deployed were wrong in January of 2002 and they are wrong today.
We, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, look forward to the closure of this facility and, too, to the end of the hate and fear mongering that this facility engendered.
We look forward with hope that America and her principles will be soon restored. And we look forward to our reliance on the rule of law and a justice system that has functioned well for 200 years.
We deeply miss our family members. We miss, too, our America. The latter is recuperable.
