American

It's probably not something you'll want to hear. It's not something I really want to say. But it happens to be true: Sometimes my country makes me sick.

Sometimes the injustice of it—the obvious abandonment of right for wrong—is literally overwhelming. I have to stop. I have to breathe. I have to mute the goddamn television.

I have to remember.

We are a country, if we're worth anything at all, that is about truth and freedom. Are these just platitudes on which we raise our children? Are these lies we tell ourselves? Are these ideals instead delusions?

I cannot understand why people get offended by these kinds of questions but what's worse, I'm wondering why I'm beginning to fear expressing them. Will you tune out and turn on—the latest device, the newest camera, the hottest gaming system? Are we nothing but iPods and Bluetooth? I think in many ways yes; we've forgotten what defines us. We're confused—you and I.

Tonight 60 Minutes took my breath away with a story about how we—America, home of the brave and land of the free—are tossing away the very Iraqis who at the onset of our (illegal) invasion of their country sided with us, and helped save American lives by providing our military forces with critical intelligence and translation. Now these Iraqis are on their own, and are hunted by the insurgents which have flooded their country since Mission Accomplished. Their families are under threat and their nationality lies in tatters. The countries to which they have fled are hunting them as well, for deportation.

And though America's wisdom led it to accommodate 130,000 Vietnamese refugees in eight months following the fall of Saigon, today we aren't willing to allow these Iraqis asylum. Iraqis who have saved many, many American soldiers' lives.

Something is terribly wrong here and I shouldn't even have to say it. 60 Minutes should never have been able to run this story because it never should have developed. But it has. It has.

And the injustice of it makes me sick. It should make you sick too. It should make all of us, American, sick.

Where there is injustice we must stop it. Where there is acquiescence we must fight it. Where the spirit of freedom, debate, and humanitarianism cowers we must empower it. We must raise ourselves up to what we once were or we must demand apologies from those who indoctrinated us into a system of lies. If we do any less we don't deserve to call ourselves American.

Or America doesn't deserve to persist.

There. I said it.