The True Difference?

I’ve been mulling this post over and over for awhile. For some reason tonight is the night.

I have been keeping up with the ‘saga’ of Viktor Yushchenko. Horrified is probably the first emotion that comes to mind when I saw pictures and heard the story. A morbid fascination perhaps is what it has become, I read about it and have been doing internet research on Dioxin. It is an incredibly awful thing committed by those who will stop at nothing to win... those whose souls are fueled not by the need to do the right of the people, but the selfish need to win at all costs for their own egos… souls fueled by evil.

So I ask myself, “How many Americans are watching this story unfold and thinking to themselves, ‘Oh! Thank God I live in America! This would NEVER happen here!!!’?"

Well folks, if you are one, please step down off that Ivory Tower for that fall is a great and nasty one.

In 1988, my best girlfriend from college married a Marine Corps pilot, a wonderful man. I was a bridesmaid in her wedding and I knew, that if I needed anything, he would go to great lengths to help me for when he married her, he got me as a package deal.

In 1991, January to be exact, he was shot down while on a bombing run in Iraq, during the first Gulf War. He was held as a POW, captured, tortured, beaten, starved. I remember when the Iraqis released the videos of the captives (his video was not one, we were led to believe he was dead until the Red Cross received him after the war), and I saw the faces of our soldiers and pilots, faces of beaten men, I remember thinking, “Those savages! We are Americans! We would NEVER do something like that to our prisoners! NEVER! What evil people reside over there.” Yes, I truly thought we were better than they. We are a civilized people of course and evidently, they.were.not.

But then the scandal at Abu Gharib occurred and I realized, there is evil everywhere, just because we are American, does not mean we are exempt. The beautiful thing about living in America is that those who committed the atrocities WILL be punished. Those who committed the crimes against my friend, will never be. I do take solace in the fact that those fueled by evil at Abu Gharib will get what is coming to them.

That said, do not think what happened to Viktor Yushchenko in the Ukraine could not happen here. I no longer believe that. Not for a minute. Bad people are everywhere. America is not exempt. It is how we deal with the aftermath, which is what hopefully makes us a cut above.

I look forward to see how this election plays out for Mr. Yushchenko; I do hope the people finally get what they want. And I fervently hope that the evil people who did this to him, will be found and punished. I pray for him and his family most though as the potential long reaching effects of Dioxin is terrifying. It did not kill him at the time of poisoning, but it very well may in the end.