NOTE: I appreciate the fact that the Volante published my guest editorial, but I believe the issue is so important that the document needs to be read in its entirety. The following is what i submitted verbatim:

On any given day of any given year, I am proud to be an American. This was especially true when I was in Europe on 11 September 2001.

As my train rolled past the American Cemetery outside of Gulpen, the Netherlands, two days after the attacks on the US, my eyes swelled with tears as the Dutch people were placing wreaths on the gate. Mine were tears of sorrow for the sacrifice each of the graves represented, but also tears of pride for a cause so noble and just as was that of the US during World War II.

Among the many things that distinguished us then from the Nazis, Fascists, and Militarists was our effort to treat prisoners of war humanely. There was nothing in the United States to compare with the way the Nazis and Japanese treated their POWs. There was no Bataan-like Death March of Axis prisoners in the USA, nor was there mass execution or starvation of enemy combatants as in territories the Nazis occupied; instead, Americans could claim that not only did they aspire to a higher moral and legal standard, but that they generally achieved it.

Today, six years after the tragedy of 9/11 and six decades after WWII, our treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has tempered that claim. When I reflect on the universal human rights expressed in the Declaration of Independence, and of the specific protections against governmental tyranny articulated in the Bill of Rights, I cannot help but wonder if our leaders, or we as a people, still take them seriously.

Clive Stafford Smith, the director of a charity that provides legal representation to prisoners around the world, wrote about how the US treats its prisoners in a 5 October 2007 editorial in The Los Angeles Times entitled "Gitmo: America's black hole." It is not a portrait that inspires pride.

Like nearly all of the prisoners there, Sami Haj, a journalist who was arrested late in 2001, has been held without trial ever since! In other words, he has never been convicted of any crime, which makes him innocent under the presumption so integral to our legal system. Despite that inconvenient fact, Smith observes that the Gitmo prisoners languish in isolation 23 hours a day, have only "six hours of direct sunlight a month,' and never get visits from loved ones. "The immoral," he concludes, "has become so mundane."

As a people, we accept that even the best intentioned of governments may abuse power if a system of checks and balances is not in place to protect us against the misapplication of the awesome power of the state. That is why we value the right to be brought in front of our accuser, to be made aware of the exact nature of the charges against us, and to defend ourselves against them in a court of law. Habeas corpus is basic to our legal code.

After five years of detention without that right, Sami, desperate for justice, went on a hunger strike. That hunger strike has continued for 271 days. How does a hunger striker survive that long? The US military force-feeds him. That requires the insertion of a 43-inch feeding tube through a nostril into the gastrointestinal tract.

Typically, such a tube is left in place, save for occasional cleaning, but Smith notes that in an effort to deter hunger strikes, the Department of Defense has adopted a policy of inserting and removing the tube twice a day." Sami has endured that procedure over 400 times.

Providing basic legal rights, let alone humane treatment, to our prisoners at "Gitmo" may serve our own interests. Thucydides wrote that in war, "men take it upon themselves to begin the process of repealing those general laws of humanity which are there to give a hope of salvation to all who are in distress, instead of leaving those laws in existence, remembering that there may come a time when they, too, will be in danger and will need their protection." That is a powerful argument.

Just as powerful is an argument based on the ideals of the American people. If, indeed, we still "lift our lamp beside the golden door" of liberty, our government must live up to the promises our founding principles hold for the "tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free" in order to win the hearts and minds of other peoples.

As Eugene V. Debs said so eloquently, "While there is a soul in prison, I am not free." I believe that ours is the higher standard, that ours is the promise to be "as a City upon a hill," and that ours is the responsibility to end the debasement that is taking place at Guantanamo of both the standard and the promise. In doing so, we can remain proud to be Americans.