why politics matter

Take the time to read this article. It explains in excruciating detail why the closing of Guantanamo Bay matters; why policy decisions taken on the highest level need to be considered for its minutest consequences; and why we thought we were voting for Barack Obama -- so that callous dismissals of stories like this as inevitable collateral damage ("stuff happens") was an inexcusable disregard for the sanctity of universal human rights.

Eight years ago, an [REDACTED] Afghan kid—some say he was [REDACTED] years old, others say he was 12—was grabbed in a Kabul marketplace after a grenade attack on two American soldiers. He was interrogated, [REDACTED], and then taken to Guantánamo. He spent his teenage years there, seven in all, confined in a [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] with the supposed "worst of the worst." But then, thanks ot the superhuman efforts of his defense team and one intense [REDACTED] military lawyer, the government's case against him disintegrated. Now he's back in Afghanistan, free as a badly damaged bird, in a [REDACTED] country he barely recognizes, wondering where you go when you grew up nowhere

[GQ]