"A-" Rating by Robert W. Hammerle

This year's Oscar winning documentary, "Taxi to the Dark Side," should be seen simply as a civic lesson. Simply put, our country's willingness to embrace torture as a legitimate interrogation tool has cost us our national honor. This moving documentary reminds us why a country cannot sacrifice its principles in order to survive.

There are some things that Americans don't do because we are Americans, and one of them is to torture anyone that we capture. However, not only have we used despicable tactics more reminiscent of the Inquisition and the Gestapo in Nazi Germany, but it has resulted in the deaths of numerous prisoners.

Specifically, this film centers on an innocent cab driver in Afghanistan who, shortly after our invasion, happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Swept up and dumped into a military prison in Afghanistan, he was beaten so severely by American interrogators that he was found dead five days later in his cell.

Even in the post-9/11 hysteria, how can we justify this type of conduct under any circumstances? How could Bush and Cheney throw away our national honor that is the hallmark or our free society?

This film takes the case of this poor cab driver and follows the shameless path taken by military and CIA interrogators from Afghanistan to Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay. Clearly, we have met the enemy, and it is us.

It is as immoral as it is condemnable that we have locked up numerous young men and intentionally humiliated and brutalized them while charging them with nothing and providing them with no access to a court of law. "Taxi" forces us to watch that which our government has so effectively swept under the rug.

What is even more frightening is the fact that Bush and Cheney have effectively led a public relations campaign which has encouraged Americans to accept torture and other interrogation tactics banned by the Geneva Convention as an acceptable form of American policy. It is disgusting beyond words that our leaders have effectively devised a Foreign policy based on the inhumane and unjustifiable principle that we have to adopt the tactics of our enemies if we want to prevail.

What is now apparent to any reasonable American is that this way of thinking has cost us our standing as a decent and caring nation. Every country in the world stood with us after 9/11, but Bush and Cheney have effectively turned everyone against us. What an unspeakable act of total bumbling and incompetence. Equally important, how long will it take our country to regain its rightful standing with our friends and neighbors around the world?

Some of you may be familiar with the story told about an exchange between one of our diplomats who was held captive by the Iranians after our embassy was seized back in the 1980's. Brutalized and tortured, one of the guards approached this American captive and apologetically said words to the effect, "If we meet later in life, you will be entitled to torture me as I have you." To which the American captive memorably replied, "We Americans don't do that."

"Taxi to the Dark Side," tells us in unsparing terms what happens when Americans act like some third world dictatorship. Americans "don't do that." Indeed, Americans can't do that.