“When you have an all-volunteer army …”

– Dick Cheney

The story was in the newspaper a short time ago. A young single mother in Ohio was having a tough time making a go of it. Even though she worked six days a week at Starbucks, she had a difficult time making it with the combination of rent, food, household expenses, and the cost of day care for her little girl. So she arranged for an evening baby sitter and joined the National Guard, which paid a little money for its once-a-week evening meetings.

It was her understanding that the National Guard was just that: a body of minimally trained young men and women who were meant to guard the nation internally in the event of civil unrest, riots, that sort of thing. But as with buying a car, she apparently had not read the fine print in the contract that indicated she could be sent to a foreign land to fight a war. When her unit was called up and told they would be going to Iraq, she panicked. Who would take care of Jennifer, her 3-year-old? She had no husband, and she had been abandoned by her family after she got pregnant out of wedlock.

Since this was not what she had expected when she joined the National Guard, she appealed to the commander of her unit but was told nothing could be done; they had been called up; they would be going to Iraq.

Insisting that the “National Guard” was supposed to be just that, she tried to engage the services of a lawyer, but it was too late. Either she could go to Iraq with her unit – or she could go to jail. She bit the bullet – so to speak – asked a distant relative if they would look after Jennifer for an indefinite time – and shipped off to Iraq.

She was killed in the first week by a roadside bomb.

Now Jennifer has neither mother nor father.

What “all-volunteer” army? The Emancipation Proclamation was signed nearly 150 years ago. “Involuntary servitude” was supposed to have gone out with that. How many members of the National Guard signed up with the understanding that they would be sent to fight and perhaps be killed in a foreign land? Killed in a war over “weapons of mass destruction” that did not exist? In a war where many of the president’s family and friends have become obscenely wealthy?

How many members of the Army Reserve signed up with the understanding that they would be sent with minimal training to fight in a foreign land? That they could forget whatever was in the contract, since Secretary of Defense William Gates suggested recently that the contract is no longer valid when it comes to “length of service”; like some wonderful washday product, soldiers can be “recycled” indefinitely.

So let’s forget that outrage for the moment and remember the end of World War II and the 20 years that followed. This was a “golden age” when America stood for something good and was admired around the world as the bastion of freedom, human rights, and respect for human dignity.

Lost. All lost. We are now viewed around the world as a country known for the brutal treatment of people who are in our power – and for our apparent contempt for humanity, law and justice.

More than 400 people have been imprisoned by the federal government, not only in Guantanamo but also in “friendly” gulag prisons around the world. Most of those political prisoners have never been charged, have never been allowed to see a lawyer, and have never been brought to trial.

That figure comes from Amnesty International, which admits that it is kept deliberately low. The real figure, according to a spokesperson, may be four or five times that high, but the difficulty is in obtaining records from countries which are traditionally uncooperative. Even when the Red Cross is allowed in, the condition may be that they issue no report afterward.

Congress has convinced us with its “nonbinding resolution” that it can do nothing about the Bush-Cheney troop “surge” in Iraq. But Congress certainly has the power to demand why the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights are being violated on a daily basis in this gulag of prisons.

What has Congress done?

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Lost. Lost. Lost.

Apparently, gold – like brass – can tarnish as well.

Stephen Allen is a retired journalist in Belfast and until recently was a federal employee with AmeriCorps VISTA.