On the same day that the Supreme Court refused to listen to a case of wrongful abduction and torture by our government, the president of the UUA, Bill Sinkford, delivered over 13,000 signatures to Congress from UUs from all 50 states (and DC) calling on them to end the unjust war in Iraq.
Rev Sinkford joined Rev John Thomas, president of the UCC, our much larger cousins who delivered over 60,000 signatures for a combined total of more than 73,000 signatures. (The competitive part of me must point out that we got a higher percentage of signatures from UUs given our size.)
The response was incredible. We got positive emails from UUs all over the country stating how good it felt to be finally making our voice heard. People printed out the forms and took them to their congregations and faxed in signatures. We were swamped by success. The truth is that if we had somehow gotten our goal of 25,000 we would not be able to handle it. All day long for the last week faxes have been pouring in. Our sad little fax machine broke, a casualty of the war. And we had to hire temps to enter all the data in electronically. And Adam worked like a maniac, but he got the job done and our signatures were delivered by Sinkford to Congress, in a neatly bound 398 pages, organized by state, city, last name, and zip code, and "covered with an awesome cover letter."
I am told that they were impressed that it was a liberal religious voice calling for peace.
Meanwhile, just a sort distance away, by refusing to hear the case, the Supreme Court let stand an appeals court ruling that the "state secrets privilege" made it ok for our government to kidnap, hold, and torture innocent people all in the name of "fighting terrorism." Khaled el-Masri is a German citizen of Lebanese descent who was mistaken for a terrorist because of a mix-up in names. He was detained while vacationing in Macedonia in late 2003, shipped to a secret U.S. run prison in Afghanistan, and tortured for five months before they finally realized they had the wrong guy.
Mr. el-Masri is not alone. There have been numerous cases where our govt in its zeal has imprisoned and tortured the wrong person. There is debate over whether it's justifiable to use torture to extract information that might keep civilians safe (despite the fact that it's never been proven effective). But surely we can all agree that it is wrong to torture innocent people! Surely, if we are a just and civilized society, as we claim we are, then we can recognize this, instead of arguing that it's ok to harm innocents in the pursuit of our own protection.
As proud as I am of UUs today that's how ashamed I am of the U.S. government.
