Today’s Topic: Torture In The Real World
In yesterday’s Truthout 18 November 2007, Elizabeth de la Vega had a riveting commentary on torture, but she simply did not go far enough.
I plan to take it further, and to do so in short order.
If a man lives his life in accordance with all the laws of the state and country then he can be truly said to be a patriot. If a man serves his country he can be truly said to be a patriot. If a man serves his country and, at some interim point, decides that he can no longer support the mechanism that governs the country, then truly he can be said to be a patriot.
If a man never served the country and by happenstance or mechanization gets elected to office he cannot be said to be a patriot.
If a man never served the country and by happenstance or mechanization gets elected to the office of the President of the United States he cannot be said to be a patriot.
If a man never served the country and by happenstance or mechanization gets elected to the office of the President and one man dies from torture during his tenure he CANNOT BE a patriot.
We forget the rule of numbers in our imposed clinical depression. One man, twenty men, foreign "enemy combatant", American citizen, who the hell cares anymore?
But the law says that one man dying of torture is against all that America and 138 other countries have stood for in the past 60 years, and the President presiding when one man dies from authorized torture is NOT a patriot.
Don’t get me wrong. Terrorism is real and frightening, but this country has fought greater threats with far higher moral clarity and far greater loss of our citizen’s lives. Indeed the terrorism we fight today is due to the fact that America feels it may play fast and loose with foreign policy, such as choosing to support a dictator in Augustus Pinochet instead of Chile’s elected President. And it is a fact that these willy-nilly decisions usually result in tens of thousands of innocent deaths along the way. General Pinochet learned how to intimidate and terrorize his own people with lessons from the United States via the CIA. Now the US is putting those same lessons to practice on our own people. How many? Who knows, but one man, woman or child is TOO MANY.
Where is America’s remorse for these acts? The answer is that we lost the ability to have and show remorse when we lost the ability to see that our laws are fully functional and unambiguous and treaties are our acknowledgement of international law by signing these treaties. The White House lawyers would like you to think otherwise.
So today we are still playing the same foreign policy games in supporting Pakistani President Musharaf’s regime and double-dealing to enlist his countrymen into the war against terror by bribing and arming these same people who are hiding the Taliban and Osama bin Ladin. Nothing bodes well with this fast, footloose and insane foreign policy. Remember the definition of insane is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. After all, we armed the Afghani people and now the people we seek in Pakistan are using those arms against us. Our foreign policy is obviously a broken instrument.
And our enemies can see this.
I’ve said it before, but it bears worth repeating. If ONE American isn’t free in this country, then ALL AMERICANS ARE NOT FREE. If one man dies by the hands of Americans by torture, all Americans are sullied and soiled.
We can no longer sit by and have our government tell us that common sense knowledge is too much for an American citizen to grasp. We have juries indicting and convicting on the basis of evidence presented to them in cases both local and federal. We have innocent people languishing in jail because of this principle and a failed court system that continually changes the balance between the accused and the government. But in large our court system has the ability to handle this terrorist situation just fine.
But when we can simply torture even ONE person to the point of being dead or, in the case of Jose Padilla, becoming unable to help in his own defense, we have exceeded the mandates of law and lost our moral and guiding light.
Just take a moment to consider this case. On June 16th, 2002, Time bellied up to the Bush Administration’s line about how this man was unequivocally guilty of the accusations thrust upon him, yet for 4 long years this American citizen was held without any charges and subsequent representation in court. No telephone calls, no lawyers present at his interrogations, and no ability to address the court directly, his right of habeas corpus being violated from the moment he was "arrested".
An American citizen was placed in limbo for 4 years, and when outside actions finally forced the situation to the US Supreme Court, the Bush administration cheated and moved him into a system that was likely to convict him even though he could offer no appreciable defense support.
One of the prime elements of adversarial law in this country is that A) a defendant has the right to question his accusers, and B) that a defendant has the ability to help in his own defense. A man unable to have either of these benefits of an honorable society sworn to these ideals is a man doomed to the mechanization of a morally corrupt administration.
Again let me say, if ONE American is denied his rights then NO American can lay claim to their rights ever again. At least one cannot claim their rights without concerted effort and removing the offending administration from power.
Of course, the point is moot if you haven’t read the article I started this blog with, but the fact is that even you can determine in your own mind those actions which you would consider torture. If you can make that leap, then it’s not that big of a leap to say that virtually any American is more than capable of understanding the definition of torture, regardless of what the Bush administration says about the legal complications. The only complications are presented by the administration and their inability to understand the 60-year-old laws of the Geneva Conventions, which America initiated.
It’s the old game of "look over there" whilst one is stabbing America in the back over here.
I’ll have to agree with both Karl Rove and Lewis Black in the same statement. Once your attention is moved to something they are already doing something else because you are not paying attention to THEM.
Karl Rove said "we are creating new realities, and while you analyze these new realities for history’s sake, we’ll already be creating new realities".
Lewis Black said things were changing so fast that he couldn’t write it down quick enough to make fun of.
If both the administration and our comedians can make fun of the same thing from different viewpoints then its time to re-evaluate our existence as a free country. And it’s most definitely time to re-evaluate the performance of our executive branch and adjust accordingly. After all, reality is actually what is real, not what we are told to believe is real. Certainly Americans have at least the brain power to understand the difference.
So if we have an environment where one American can’t fight the system because the system keeps changing, how can you or I expect to have any of our rights?
The truth is that we don’t need more restrictions on the rights of our citizens, but a return to our history of rights and concern for our citizens well being, which was what made us great. Any President who decides that he decides without the consent of America isn’t deciding anything. He’s dictating.
Any questions?
