One of my great disappointments with President Obama regards the prisoners at Guantanamo. I don’t care that he hasn’t closed Guantanamo. Republicans have blocked him from doing that, killing all alternatives to housing those prisoners. The prison is necessary for now.

But of the 166 persons still imprisoned there, half have been cleared for release. Some have been kept there for 13 years, with no charges brought against them and no prosecution planned. Obama COULD take action to release them–he’s not totally powerless. Yet he does nothing.

It’s a case of American injustice. And injustice always bothers me deeply, especially since the Bible speaks so frequently against injustice.

Over the years, I’ve read many stories of injustice. For some reason they capture my attention, stabbing my soul.

• The Holocaust–no greater example of injustice, and no end to the stories. I’ve read many books about the Holocaust.
• The treatment of American Indians in the Old West.
• The plight of white farmers under the tyranny of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.
• The cruelty of apartheid in South Africa.
• The three-strikes laws which send persons to life in prison for simple thefts.
• The internment of Japanese Americans during World War 2.
• The treatment of blacks in the South between the Civil War and the 1960s.
• McCarthyism.
• Media persons with an influential platform who engage in character assassination with little regard for truthfulness or telling the full story–Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and others.
• A legal system which favors persons with money, and tends to screw over people people on society’s lower rungs.
• The persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union during the Cold War years. I read a bunch of books about that during the 1970s.

I don’t know why injustice captures my attention so strongly. I can’t claim to have been a victim of injustice, nor have I actually done anything to combat injustice (beyond raising my voice against it and increasing people’s awareness of it). I guess God gives different people different burdens. There are other causes which deserve outrage, but which don’t outrage me…at least not like injustice does.

But back to Guantanamo.

I’ve read numerous stories and reports regarding America’s imprisonment and torture of Muslims. I was heartened recently, in reading one particular story about a Mauritanian who has been imprisoned since 2003, has undergone torture at the hands of Americans (at the personal direction of Don Rumsfield), and has never been charged. He’s been cleared for release, no charges ever brought against him. Yet for 10 years, he has languished in this terrible prison. (His story was published, at length, in Slate.)

What heartened me is, at one point the military assigned an evangelical Christian to prosecute the guy, but upon learning about how this Mauritanian had been tortured, he refused to take the case. He cited biblical objections. I’ve read other stories of Americans in the military, CIA, and FBI who, either for religious or simply moral reasons, have done what they could to oppose the use of torture and false imprisonment–sometimes putting their own career at risk.

I work in a denomination dominated by Republicans and fans of FoxNews. But only once or twice have I heard another United Brethren object to the use of torture, rendition, or false imprisonment. I hear fellow Christians dismiss objections about Guantanamo simply because the prisoners are Muslims, and they hate Muslims or think all Muslims are terrorists. One fellow Christian even told me that, if asked by his country, he would readily take part in torturing prisoners. This complacency about injustice bothers me deeply. And it’s one reason I continue raising my voice in writing.