What Our Friends Are Saying

Unlike some of the other Latin American countries (Venezuela, for example), Columbia has for the most part behaved pretty well towards the current administration. That's why I found this editorial in Columbia's El Tiempo a little surprising.

The material plague of war that the United States initiated six years ago in Afghanistan and two years later in Iraq, are disasters that have been calculated to have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and injuries, billions of dollars in damage, and the exacerbation of religious wars …

But the unanticipated consequences of these conflicts may even be worse: we refer to the terrible impact they have had on civilized values in Washington, which has become increasingly divorced from its own democratic tradition and has moved ever closer to the values of the most sinister dictatorships. ..

Concentration camps at Guantanamo, the violation of procedural norms and human rights, the recruitment of mercenaries, the authorization of torture, concealing information … With these scandals, the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan are inflicting their most lamentable damage: to the prestige of the United States as a civilized, democratic nation under law.

That's pretty strong language from a friend. Unfortunately, it is also altogether truthful.

And that is cause for great shame.