I recently wrote a post about forgiving George W. Bush for all the damage that he has done in our world today. I honestly believe that President Bush did the best he could based on what he knew and the way he perceived the world. Still, I found a lot of issues under his presidency troubling. Perhaps the most troubling aspect to me of Mr. Bush’s presidency was that he allowed human beings - any human beings - to be tortured when he had the ability to stop it.

As a child, I was so proud to be an American, and one reason for this was that I knew that we were one of the few countries that did not torture its prisoners. I found the actual torture of human beings repulsive, and I was so relieved to be born in a country that did not engage in that kind of barbaric behavior. I vaguely remember a few years ago when I found out that some of our own American troops had tortured prisoners at Abu Graib in Iraq and all the shame I felt. I felt that our military had betrayed the American people and that our professional soldiers did not understand what America really stood for. I even wondered if these “professional” soldiers felt like they were overseas playing G.I. Joe games like children do when they’re 12.

Everyone seemed to have an opinion about these soldiers torturing prisoners, but I was even more upset when I found out that the American government sponsored the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and secret military prisons throughout the world. Yes, I realized that other countries were just as bad or worse to torture their prisoners, but the United States was the only country I could think of that purported to stand up for human rights while engaging in human torture behind the scenes. I think we were all embarrassed.

The thoughts of prisoners, no matter what they had done, being tortured by Americans bewildered me, left me in a state of confusion. I think I had a mild identity crisis at the thought of American torture because these two terrible words were such an oxymoron to me. In other words, the American government failed its people. We were all blind to the atrocities that our own leaders knew about.

Eventually, I remembered the Serenity Prayer I had learned from a psychiatrist of my childhood. It included a section to have “serenity to accept the things I cannot change and the courage to change the things I can.” Eventually I learned that this was a mantra for Alcoholics Anonymous, and I found the prayer beautiful.

And eventually I realized how applicable it was to my anger over this American torture. I realized that there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing.

No, I’m not trying to be a nay-sayer, and I certainly believe that all things are possible to the persistent and those that are faithful to themselves and have faith in the Great Creator. But I realized that no matter what I did, prisoners were going to be tortured unless I devoted my whole life to changing that. And I realized that even if I did devote my whole life to changing this terrible practice, it would be years before I would see the end of torture, if ever.

Ghandi once made a famous quote: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Yes, that was it. That was the answer. While we cannot stop our government from torturing human beings, we can work on ourselves. We can decide what the definition of morality is (as morality was a major platform for Bush’s first election). We can decide that the Great Creator does not determine an act to be just or unjust based on antiquated and irrelevant rules in the Christian Old Testament, but that we can determine what acts are truly just by using our own experience of how we wish to be treated and treat others in the same way.

We can forgive others who do things to us that we don’t approve of. We can have faith in the good of humanity even in the face of evil. We can display true courage!

Incidentally, while everyone in our country says that our troops display courage, that is not true. When those troops abused prisoners at Abu Graib, they displayed cowardice and a lack of control over themselves. Just because some 19-year-old signs up for the reserves and then unexpectedly gets a letter telling him he has to go to Iraq does not mean that he has courage. It does not even mean that he believes in the American way. It actually might mean that he wanted some extra money, enjoyed the physical workout and the military camaraderie, and never expected to be called to active duty. That is not courage. That is lack of foresight.

You may be angry that I say that if you like, but truth is truth. I will tell you what courage is, and I will tell you that it is necessary to display courage to “change the things you can.”

Courage is making a mistake while driving and having an angry driver honk his horn at you as you decide that you will allow that driver to feel anger but you will not feel anger yourself. Courage is going into a field that is not celebrated by the military and does not have the pay or the benefits of the military but doing thankless work - an example of such professions would be nursing assistants that clean the shit off the elderly and receive next to nothing in pay and expect no thanks in return. Such people are truly amazing, and we never hear about them.

We can speak to others when we see them. We can befriend people that are lonely and maybe those that others do not like. We can do unpopular things to change the world. We can refuse to engage in hurtful gossip with our coworkers. We can encourage good work from ourselves and our comrades.

Maybe we cannot change the fact that prisoners are tortured overseas at the cognizance of our own government. But we can change ourselves, and at the same time, we will change a part of the world for the greater good of humanity. Let us have the courage to do at least that.