FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH

E.M. Forster, the early twentieth century English novelist, wrote a lovely book called Two Cheers for Democracy.  Two cheers, because it wasn't worth three.

As I grow older, I get more depressed by what is called "democracy" in the United States.  Not because we aren't a democracy, but because we are such a stupid democracy, a violent, murderous, lawless democracy.   I am not sure I could manage even one cheer for US democracy.

I have lived in Germany these last five years.  I get my US news via Google.  Every day I see the headlines about the day's seven or eight mass murders.  I know the murder statistics for Detroit and Chicago--and for New Orleans, where I used to live.  And I read about Obama's unmanned drones, guided missiles used to attack supposed military targets, in one of Obama's five undeclared wars.

Of course, the drones--we must believe--kill Talaban operatives.  The drones are so sophisticated (as is American "intelligence, which programs them) that everybody they kill is a member of the Taliban.  In case you who live in the United States don't know--or haven't guessed--the rest of the world knows that Obama's drones kill people, indiscriminately.  The American aggressor-logic is simple:  if we kill somebody, he must have been the enemy.

Pfc. Bradley Manning is suspected of making public thousands of files which incriminate--make criminals of--US warriors, from individual solders to their commanders to the commander-in-chief.

According to both US military law--the Uniform Code of Military Justice--and US civil law, to conceal information about a felony is a crime:  "accesory after the fact" in civil law, "misprision of a felony" in military law.   Had Bradley Manning not made public the evidence he had, he would himself have been guilty of a felony offense.

Obama has already convicted Bradley Manning:  "He broke the law," said Obama.  (Obama is a lawyer, and a former law professor.)

It is now more than 800 days--more than 26 months, more than two years--since Bradley Manning was put in prison.  Never mind, for the moment, that he was tortured--kept in solitary conmfinement, deprived of sleep,  sexually humiliated--at Quantico for more than a year.  US military law says that if a prisoner is not brought to trial within 120 days of his confinement, he is free.

Bradley Mannisg should be free.

I have not done anything wrong, let alone anything heroic.  But I am afraid to come back to the United States.  I admire Bradley Manning, but I am not capable of his kind of heroism.

And given what US democracy is doing, these days--five illegal wars of aggression, CIA drones murdering people, the imprisonment of Bradley Manning (but no charges against the soldiers exposed by Manning, executing civilians)--I am frightened of returning to what, for 76 years, has been my homeland.

Cheers for democracy?  I have none for ours.  Not two, not one.  None.