Institutionalized kidnapping

This article in the Washington Post details a startling bit of American history that I had been unaware of: during WW2, the U.S. government kidnapped Latin Americans of Japanese, German, and Italian descent and held them in detention centers, in some cases as late as 1949.

A cautionary tale for our times. I have no trouble imagining the current lot doing the same thing.

5 thoughts on “Institutionalized kidnapping”

  1. They already are doing just that. An awful lot of people have been held captive for the past year or so, with no charges yet brought against them, at Guantanamo Bay.

  2. This is true. The situation is a little different, though, since (AFAIK) the guys being held at Guantanamo were captured in a battlefield situation. It’s not like the government went to Peru looking for guys in turbans and grabbed them off the street.

  3. I wouldn’t put it past the current admin. to do something like this. For all we know, they already ARE doing something like this. It’s obviously in their best interests to keep it a secret. But I suspect that had it happened already, we’d have heard something from the families of the “disappeared.”

    I don’t think Yasser Hamdi quite fits the bill, since he was a combatant. Also, I think it will take another serious attack on U.S. soil before the Feds revive what the Post is describing.

    Then again, the Feds seem hell-bent on deporting anyone of Middle Eastern decent. Did you catch this one? http://www.austin360.com/statesman/editions/monday/news_4.html

  4. I did not catch that article. Seems about par for course.

    I hate to say it, but I’d put almost nothing past the current administration. I had this horrific vision a couple days ago of the 2004 elections being “indefinitely postponed.”

    Conspiracy theories, and that kind of thinking, gives me a rash, but these guys practically invite them/it.

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