We should pay close attention to David Hicks

The Australian David Hicks has been released from jail. He was kept for five years at Guantanamo without charges, a fact which should make us all afraid. He was fortunate enough to have the Australian government, tardily and unenthusiastically, pressure the U.S. to do something, which resulted in his pleading guilty to some vague charges of supporting terrorism, followed by a modest term of imprisonment.

However, the evidence is clear that the US sees nothing wrong with establishing a Gulag into which throws people and keeps them for years without charges. Hicks was evidently small potatoes, a confused young man who made a fool of himself. But note that he was not engaged in action against the US government in any meaningful way. He was captured by the Northern Alliance, not US troops. Besides, the US has never declared war on Afghanistan.

Are the others in Guantanamo like Hicks? Is this a camp full of people who are mostly guilty of deeply disliking the US, as well as Christians and Jews perhaps, in a country where this was fairly normal? I'm afraid we rounded up a lot of people on fairly flimsy evidence and now we don't want to admit that. So we're going to keep them there forever, because the "war" on terrorism is scheduled to last until doomsday.

A government that will do that to them today is one that will do it to us in the future.