Which oppressive regime am I?

What would you say if it was revealed that there was an organization in the world that killed innocent people? What if this organization kidnapped random civilians, no matter what their nationalities, and spirited them away to be tortured in secret? How would you take the news that those who trusted their safety to this power because they have no other choice were spied on and suspected, without any cause? And suppose this organization committed its heinous acts in the name of "justice." What would you think? If you're anything like me, you'd be appalled. You'd wonder why nobody has stopped these people. You'd wonder how to make it stop.

But you'd also want to know what kind of a human being would do such things in the first place. Many people promptly think of radical groups such as Al-Quaida, Hamas, and Hezbollah. While it is true that these organizations do engage in despicable activities, the paragraph above is meant to describe the American administration. Collateral damage from Iraq and Afghanistan aren't even mentioned in the news anymore because the numbers of civilian dead are so huge. At the very least, there have been Britons, Afghans, Iraqis, Americans, and Canadians interrogated and in some cases tortured simply because they have Middle Eastern blood. How many Americans are under surveillance in the name of security, when the vast majority of us have done nothing worse than despising the administration and its actions? And then the right-wing wackos try to pass it off as "security," or try to push some Biblical quote in our faces. The parallels to certain other religious fanatics scare me.