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Commentary - Nov 18, 2005 - Printable Version
- Inalienable Human Rights....
by Mark Faulk
Two years ago, we began preaching on this website something we had already been repeating in private for years, that our current administration is destroying our way of life, dismantling our Constitution brick by brick, taking away the freedoms that our forefathers fought and died for hundreds of years ago. We believed that if we could just wake up a few sleeping souls, that maybe we could stop the madness. In other words, we thought that by exposing it to the masses, that the public outcry would bring a swift and noble justice to those who were out to destroy our country. Shine a light on the cesspool of corruption, and it would surely wither up and die in the face of the absolute truth.
In May of 2004, I wrote what would become one of my most widely circulated commentaries, an opinion piece on the Abu Ghraib torture scandal entitled "We Have Seen the Enemy...." It was reposted across the internet from America to Europe, and on websites from London to Israel, and who knows where else. In that article, I was writing from the heart, and riding the wave of righteous indignation. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!
Here are a few excerpts from that article:
In a war that was essentially built on catchy Hollywood-style slogans, harsh reality has set in. "Shock and Awe" has turned into pure shock, and "Operation Iraqi Freedom" has become nothing more than an empty catchphrase. This is one of America's darkest hours, a week in which an image that has taken decades, even centuries, to cultivate, has been destroyed by a few clicks of a camera. We have seen the enemy, and it is us.
When the pictures of American soldiers humiliating and torturing Iraqi prisoners first surfaced last week, the immediate knee-jerk statement from the White House was that it was just the actions of a very few rogue soldiers. My knee-jerk reaction to the White House response: "bullshit". In no particular order, random thoughts floated through my mind. Like every American, I was repulsed and horrified, but sadly, I wasn't that surprised. We live in a country where morality has been on a steady decline for years, where Catholic priests routinely sexually abuse children (remember the Catholic Church's initial response that it was just a few isolated incidents? Sound familiar?), where high school and college students have humiliated younger students in sadistic acts of hazing for years, where Air Force Academy cadets have used the internet to organize deviant sexual encounters involving dozens of men and one woman, and on and on.
With all that in mind, why should we be surprised by recent events in Iraq, and why should we believe the White House when they say it is just the acts of a few depraved individuals? This is an administration that has deceived the American people from the very beginning, lied to Congress and withheld vital information on a regular basis, and ignored evidence from the International Red Cross that they received nearly a year ago. This is an administration that routinely hides the facts until they become headlines, denies involvement even after they are implicated, and when caught, blames their failures on a few lowly scapegoats. This is an administration that manipulates the facts to fit their agenda (weapons of mass destruction anyone?), follows international law only when it's convenient, and has lawyers looking for loopholes so that they can violate Geneva Convention rules. This is an administration that, when it's military leader withholds shocking information from his president that has international repercussions, tells him that he is "doing a superb job".
This scandal will in the end shake the very foundation of the Bush Administration, it is not an aberration, it is symptomatic of an administration out of control. The Iraqi War isn't Bush's Vietnam (not yet, anyway), but in many ways, it is far worse. Vietnam was a slow, painful grind, Iraq is a rapidly declining abyss spinning wildly out of control. Our reputation has been permanently, perhaps irreparably, damaged. The Iraqi War has made our nation more vulnerable to terrorism, not safer. We have gone to a country halfway around the world, and made every Arab nation despise us by claiming the moral high ground, and then lowering ourselves to the level of the extremists. We have stirred up a hornet's nest of terrorism, and now we will be forced to face the consequences.
In my opinion, this is just the tip of the iceberg, and before it is over, Watergate will look like a walk in the park by comparison. This scandal will ultimately extend far beyond the rank and file soldiers in the field to the highest levels of the administration, and beyond Iraq to Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay.
That was almost two years ago. I was appalled then, and outraged, but still confident that by pointing out the injustice, that I would somehow help to put a stop to it. Instead, those words just come back to haunt me now.
This scandal will in the end shake the very foundation of the Bush Administration, it is not an aberration, it is symptomatic of an administration out of control.
That statement seemed a bit over the top at the time, but now, it sounds understated and conservative, like many of the "radical" thoughts that our writers have put forth over the past couple of years. "Symptomatic of an administration out of control." Whew. I wish I was wrong about that one. I really do.
In my opinion, this is just the tip of the iceberg, and before it is over, Watergate will look like a walk in the park by comparison. This scandal will ultimately extend far beyond the rank and file soldiers in the field to the highest levels of the administration, and beyond Iraq to Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay.
And now? Secret CIA torture houses tucked away in Eastern Europe, in Thailand, Afghanistan, and....lo and behold, in Guantánamo Bay. Places that only a handful of officials in the United States even knew existed, and even fewer knew what kinds of torture methods are carried out there. We do know that a prisoner was allowed to freeze to death while chained to a concrete floor in a CIA prison in Kabul known as "The Salt Pit," and that the CIA has a list of approved "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" that include something called "waterboarding," where the prisoner is made to belive that he or she is drowning. We also know that these prisons were set up specifically to avoid having to follow the laws of the United States regarding the detention and treatment of prisoners of war. These are the "lawyers looking for loopholes so that they can violate Geneva Convention rules" that I spoke of way back in May of 2004. Again.....I really wish that I was wrong about that one.
So here we go again. It's worse than I even imagined, and we're still on the slippery downward slope of this scandal, it's picking up steam and threatening to swallow everything in its path, including our Constitution.
As if that's not enough, Vice President Cheney was making the rounds in Congress last week, in support of torture. That's right, he wanted to exempt the CIA from legislation that banned "cruel, inhuman or degrading" punishment of prisoners of war, and this was only because Administration efforts to kill the anti-torture bill altogether failed. He wanted America to put its seal of approval on torturing other human beings.
Contrast this to President Bush's speech on United Nations International Day just five months ago. In a press release from the U.S. State Department, entitled, ironically enough, "Bush Calls Freedom from Torture 'Inalienable Human Right,'" he had this to say about torturing prisoners:
On United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the United States reaffirms its commitment to the worldwide elimination of torture. Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right, and we are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law.
Throughout the world, there are many who have been seeking to have their voices heard, to stand up for their right to freedom, and to break the chains of tyranny. Too many of those courageous women and men are paying a terrible price for their brave acts of dissent. Many have been detained, arrested, thrown in prison, and subjected to torture by regimes that fail to understand that their habits of control will not serve them well in the long-term. America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies. All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: The United States will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.
Of course, THAT speech was given just two days after the U.S. admitted to the United Nations that we had tortured prisoners at US detention centers in Guantánamo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq.
And that's not all. The Washington Post, who reported on the latest chapter of our national disgrace just last week, chose not to publish the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert prison program, "at the request of senior U.S. officials," because "the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation."
Faulking Truth to Washington Post: Disclose the locations! These are not legitimate prisons where international law is followed, they are houses of torture. We, as Americans who actually cherish democracy, and believe that freedom is our nation's most precious commodity, have a right to know exactly what is going on in these prisons....and where. As long as our government ignores our own Constitution, and utilizes loopholes to take away our freedoms on foreign shores, then it's just a matter of time before freedom ceases to exist right here at home, before our own citizens are subjected to the same treatment as our enemies.
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