It’s Official: US Abuse at Gitmo

November 30, 2004

While the images of U.S. solid­ers tor­tur­ing iraqi pris­on­ers at Al Grahib Prison in Badg­dad have been broad­cast around the world, US offi­cials have fre­quent­ly reas­sured us that con­di­tions at the U.S. deten­tion camp in Guan­ta­mano Bay, Cuba, were accept­able and in accord with the Gene­va Con­ven­tion’s rules for treat­ment of pris­on­ers. As proof the Pen­ta­gon and Bush Admin­is­tra­tion have fre­quent­ly cit­ed the fact that the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross reg­u­lar­ly inspects prison con­di­tions at Guan­ta­mano. They for­got to tell us what they’ve seen.
A con­fi­den­tial report pre­pared by the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross this sum­mer found that con­di­tions at Guan­ta­mano Bay were “tan­ta­mount to tor­ture.” Strong words from a cau­tious inter­na­tion­al body. Because of the way the IRC works, its reports are not made avail­able to the pub­lic but instead pre­sent­ed to the accused gov­ern­ment, in the hope that they will cor­rect their prac­tices. In pred­i­ca­ble fash­ion, the Bush Admin­stra­tion pri­vate­ly denied any wrong­do­ing and kept the IRC find­ings secret. In a dis­play of incred­i­ble audac­i­ty it then defend­ed itself _from oth­er accu­sa­tions of torture_ by cit­ing the IRC’s pres­ence at Guan­tanamo, con­ve­nient­ly omit­ting the IRC’s strongly-worded crit­i­cisms. Amaz­ing really.
The IRC report is still secret. We only know of it second-hand, from a memo obtained by the _Times_ that quotes from some of its find­ings (“Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantanamo“http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/politics/30gitmo.html, Nov 29). What kind of stuff is going on there? The _Times_ recent­ly inter­viewed British pris­on­ers who had been detained in Afghanistan and iraq and sent to Guan­tanamo Bay. Here’s one story:
bq. One one reg­u­lar pro­ce­dure was mak­ing unco­op­er­a­tive pris­on­ers strip to their under­wear, hav­ing them sit in a chair while shack­led hand and foot to a bolt in the floor, and forc­ing them to endure strobe lights and loud rock and rap music played through two close loud­speak­ers, while the air-conditioning was turned up to max­i­mum levels.
It’s not nee­dles under fin­ger­nails or elec­trodes to the pri­vates, but it is indeed “tan­ta­mount to tor­ture.” While it was hard to believe these pris­on­ers’ sto­ries when they were first pub­lished a few months ago, they become much more cred­i­ble in light of the IRC conclusions.
We still don’t know about what’s hap­pen­ing in the camp. The Bush Admin­is­tra­tion has the pow­er, not to men­tion the duty, to imme­di­ate­ly release Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross reports. But the Unit­ed States has cho­sen to sup­press the report. No tor­tur­ing gov­ern­ment has ever admit­ted to its actions. Sad­dam Hus­sein him­self denied wrong­do­ing when _he_ ran the Al Grahib prison and used it for tor­ture. We rely on bod­ies like the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross to keep us honest.
There are those who defend tor­ture by appeal­ing to our fears, many of which are indeed ground­ed in real­i­ty. We’re at war, the ene­my insur­gents are play­ing dirty, Osama bin Laden broke any sort of inter­na­tion­al con­ven­tions when he sent air­lin­ers into the World Trade Cen­ter. Very true. But the Unit­ed States has a mis­sion. I believe in the ide­al­is­tic notion that we should be a bea­con to the world. We should always strive for the moral high ground and invite the world com­mu­ni­ty to join us. We haven’t been doing that late­ly. Yes it’s eas­i­er to fol­low the lead of some­one like Sad­dam Hus­sein and just tor­ture any­one we sus­pect of plot­ting against us. But do we real­ly want him as our role model?

Big Lies & Mass Hysteria

September 11, 2003

It was Adolf Hitler, the world’s most notri­ous dic­ta­tor, who told us that The great mass of peo­ple … will more eas­i­ly fall vic­tim to a big lie than to a small one.

And it is in the vein that I will pass along the lat­est poll by MS-NBC, that has found that 70% of Amer­i­can peo­ple think Hus­sein and 9/11 are linked. This is per­haps the biggest lie of my life­time. I fear for the very soul of my nation, that so many of my fel­low Amer­i­cans would deny all evi­dence to allow them­selves to go along with this myth. There has been no evi­dence of any con­nec­tion. Most of the hijack­ers were Sau­di nation­als, opposed to the U.S.-backed rul­ing Sau­di fam­i­ly. Al Qae­da is a group of reli­gious fun­da­men­tal­ists trained in part with CIA mon­ey who have always been opposed to the sec­u­lar social­ist regime of Sad­dam Hus­sein. There’s no mys­tery who the hijack­ers were or why they chose the U.S. as their tar­get. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries aren’t need­ed to explain the events of two years ago.

So why then do we believe Sad­dam blew up the World Trade Cen­ter tow­ers? Maybe there are too many of us who love our lives of con­ve­nience, who love our big cars, our big homes, our opu­lent lifestyles and maybe we know that deep down our lifestyle is based on con­trol of Mid­dle East oil. Or per­haps Sad­dam Hus­sein has become the demon we pour all our world­ly fears and guilt into, so that we think all the world’s trou­bles must come from him.

What­ev­er the rea­son, the results are a kind of mass hys­te­ria. Sev­en our of ten Amer­i­cans believe in a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry so divorced from any evi­dence that his­to­ry sure­ly pre­pares to mock us. Every so often I’ll read of the out­landish con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries run­ning through the Arab world — like the one that the planes were manned by Israelies and that all the Jews who worked in the tow­ers were warned not to come to work — and I’ll won­der how a peo­ple could live in such a state of unre­al­i­ty. But then I see American’s myths: just as incred­i­ble, just as based on our own demons. We have based a war and a for­eign pol­i­cy on the boogie-men of our sub­con­sciences. We have killed for our fears. What if we were to wake up to real­i­ty: could we still jus­ti­fy the war and occu­pa­tion of Iraq with the impe­ri­ous­ness and sure­ty that we’ve shown so far?

Insuring Violence Never ends

August 22, 2003

“Bill Hobbs”:http://hobbsonline.blogspot.com/2003_08_01_hobbsonline_archive.html#106139209827725521 chal­lenged Non​vi​o​lence​.org about the recent lack of con­dem­na­tions of Pales­tin­ian vio­lence. It’s a fair cri­tique and a good ques­tion. For the record, Non​vi​o​lence​.org agrees with you that bomb­ing bus­es is wrong. Hamas should be con­demned, thank you. Of course, Israelis build­ing in the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries is also wrong and should also be con­demned. The zealots in the con­flict there demand that every­one take sides, but to be paci­fist means nev­er tak­ing the side of evil and always demand­ing that the third way of non­vi­o­lence be found.
The Israelis and Pales­tini­ans have so much in com­mon. Both are a historically-persecuted peo­ple with con­test­ed claim to the land. The war between them has been large­ly fund­ed and egged on by out­side par­ties who seem to have a vest­ed inter­est in the vio­lence con­tin­u­ing ad infini­tum. Both sides chron­i­cle every bus bombed and bul­let fired, using the out­rage to ral­ly the faith­ful to fresh atroc­i­ties. Blogs like Bill Hobbs’ and orga­ni­za­tions like the Inter­na­tion­al Sol­i­dar­i­ty Move­ment help insure that the bomb­ings will nev­er stop. Caught in the mid­dle are a lot of naive kids: sui­cide bombers, sol­diers, and activists who think just one more act of over-the-top brav­ery will stop the violence.
The war in Israel and Pales­tine will only stop when enough Israelis and Pales­tini­ans declare them­selves trai­tors to the chants of nation­al­is­tic jin­go­ism. We are all Israelis, we are all Pales­tini­ans. There but for the grace of God go all of us: our hous­es bull­dozed, our loved ones killed on the way to work.
Once upon a time we in Amer­i­ca could think that we were immune to it all; the idea that we’re all Israelis and Pales­tini­ans seemed a rhetor­i­cal stretch. But I was one of the mil­lions who spent the night of 9/11/01 call­ing New York friends to see if they were safe (I was on my hon­ey­moon and was so shak­en that one of my calls was to an ex-girlfriend’s par­ents; my wife grace­ful­ly for­gave me). On that day, we Amer­i­cans were deliv­ered the mes­sage that we too are com­plic­it. We too must also declare our­selves trai­tors to our coun­try’s war mytholo­gies and start being hon­est about our his­toric com­plic­i­ty with war. As a peo­ple, Amer­i­cans weren’t inno­cent vic­tims at either Pearl Har­bor or the World Trade Cen­ter tow­ers (though as indi­vid­u­als we were, which is the point of non­vi­o­lent out­rage of nation­al­is­tic vio­lence). every blog post com­mem­o­rat­ing a vic­tim­hood, whether in New York City or Tel Aviv, sup­ports the cause of war. I will not con­demn every act of vio­lence but I will con­demn the cause of vio­lence and I will expose the mytholo­gies of war.

Celebrating nuclear terror with amnesia and techno-lust

August 19, 2003

The Smith­son­ian Muse­um in Wash­ing­ton has “reassem­bled the eno­la Gay, the plane that dropped the atom­ic bomb on the Japan­ese city of Hiroshi­ma in 1945”:www.nytimes.com/2003/08/19/national/19MUSe.html. Try­ing to avoid the con­tro­ver­sy that accom­pa­nied a 1995 exhi­bi­tion, the cur­rent muse­um direc­tor says this exhib­it will:
bq. “focus on the tech­no­log­i­cal achieve­ments, because we are a tech­no­log­i­cal muse­um… This plane was the largest and most tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced air­plane for its time.”
This con­tin­ues the moral blind­ness that cre­at­ed the blood­i­est cen­tu­ry in human his­to­ry. Instead of look­ing at how pol­i­tics, war and tech­nol­o­gy inter­sect­ed in an event that instant­ly killed 80,000 peo­ple, we shine up the met­al and blab­ber on about tech­nol­o­gy. The bomb­ing’s death count far over­shad­ows the 3,000 deaths at the World Trade Cen­ter two years ago. If the sight of the tow­ers col­laps­ing is a hor­ror we can nev­er for­get or min­i­mize, then so too is Hiroshi­ma’s mush­room cloud.
The only way mil­i­tarism and nation­al­ism sur­vives is by abstract­ing war and ignor­ing the very real death, blood and tragedy. The Japan­ese peo­ple caught up in their coun­try’s lust for war were vic­tims as soon as the fight­ing start­ed. Their par­tic­i­pat­ing in their coun­try’s war was a result of pro­pa­gan­da and nation­al­is­tic fer­vor, the same mix that led so many Amer­i­cans to sup­port the war in Iraq.
The over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of peo­ple killed on August 8, 1945 were peo­ple who nev­er fired a gun. They were sim­ply try­ing to stay alive in a world full of human-made ter­ror. They were ordi­nary peo­ple who watched as their coun­try’s lead­ers plot­ted and warred. Most were afraid to say no to war, to unite with paci­fists around the world, or to denounce mil­i­tarism wher­ev­er it exist­ed and with what­ev­er excuse it gave for its horror.
The roots of World War II were oil and ter­ror: Japan­ese lead­ers attacked its neigh­bors to gain con­trol of the indus­tri­al resources the home islands did­n’t have. Amer­i­can lead­ers (indus­tri­al and polit­i­cal) had waged war against Hawaii and the Philip­pines for con­trol of Pacif­ic ship­ping lanes. The plot­ting for war start­ed long before Pearl Har­bor and involved the lead­ers in both coun­tries. In a very real way, the war in Iraq is just the lat­est chap­ter in the century-long war over oil.
But his­to­ry, truth and moral­i­ty will all be stripped out of the Smith­so­ni­an’s new exhib­it, as spokes­peo­ple for the Amer­i­can Legion and Air Force have declared:
bq. “As long as the eno­la Gay is pre­sent­ed in the light that it was used — to end the war and save lives — that’s fine.”
bq. “We are sat­is­fied that it is in his­tor­i­cal con­text this time and does not make com­ments about U.S. aggres­sion in the Pacific.”
No, school­child­ren vis­it­ing Wash­ing­ton won’t learn the truth about the bomb­ing. Anoth­er gen­er­a­tion will be spoon-fed pro­pa­gan­da about its coun­try’s great­ness and good­ness. Anoth­er gen­er­a­tion will not pause to con­sid­er its coun­try’s old sins and trag­ic mis­takes. A typ­i­cal blog entry about the Smith­son­ian exhib­it that claims “no sin­gle plane did more to save lives in World War II”:http://www.hobbsonline.blogspot.com/2003_08_01_hobbsonline_archive.html#106130896137661056 . Abstract death and claim right­eous­ness to your coun­try, keep mil­i­tarism going and keep peace­ful peo­ple from unit­ing across nation­al boundaries.

How Come the U.S. Trains All the Terrorists?

November 13, 1997

I’ve just been read­ing today’s New York Times arti­cle about the con­vic­tion of the New York City World Trade Cen­ter bombers. With it is a com­pan­ion piece about the plot leader, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, who hoped to kill 250,000 peo­ple when the tow­ers col­lapsed onto the city below. Born in Kuwait to a Pak­istani moth­er and Pales­tin­ian father, his life began as an alle­go­ry for the social dis­place­ments of the Mid­dle East, and he grew up with anger towards the Israelis-and by exten­sions the Americans-who had forced his father from his home­land. Even so, Yousef came to school in the West, to Wales, where he stud­ied engi­neer­ing. But in 1989 he left it for anoth­er edu­ca­tion, fueled by his anger and lead­ing to the death of six in the heat and smoke of the mas­sive under­ground explo­sion in down­town Manhattan.

Yousef trav­eled to Afghanistan to join the Muja­hedeen rebels in their fight against Sovi­et occu­piers, and there learned the guer­ril­la tech­niques he would lat­er employ in New York. Who sup­port­ed the Muja­hedeen and paid for Youse­f’s train­ing in ter­ror­ism? The Unit­ed States Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency, who fun­neled the Afghan rebels mil­lions of U.S. tax­pay­ers dollars.

It would seem a sim­ple case of U.S. mil­i­tarism com­ing home to roost, but it is not so sim­ple and it is not uncom­mon. Fol­low most trails of ter­ror­ism and you’ll find Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment fund­ing some­where in the recent past.

Tim­o­thy McVeigh was anoth­er angry young man, one who had to drop out of col­lege, could­n’t find a steady job, and moved from trail­er park to trail­er park as an adult, won­der­ing if the Amer­i­can Dream includ­ed him. He did what a lot of economically-disadvantaged young kids do, and enlist­ed in the U.S. Army (this has been described by some as “the pover­ty draft”).

In 1988, he met Michael Forti­er and Ter­ry Nichols at the U.S. Army base at Ft. Ben­ning, Geor­gia (coin­ci­den­tal­ly home of the infa­mous School of the Amer­i­c­as). There he was taught how to turn his anger into killing and was quick­ly pro­mot­ed, get­ting good reviews and being award­ed with the Bronze Star and Com­bat Infantry Badge for his ser­vice in the Gulf War.

Lat­er he came back to the U.S. with his Ft. Ben­ning friends and turned his anger against the U.S. gov­ern­ment. He used his mil­i­tary skills to build a bomb (alleged­ly with Nichols, now at tri­al, with the knowl­edge of Forti­er, who turned state’s wit­ness). On a spring day in 1995, he drove the bomb to Okla­homa City’s fed­er­al build­ing and set it off, killing 168 peo­ple. McVeigh’s moth­er said, “It was like he trad­ed one Army for anoth­er one.” (Wash­ing­ton Post, 7/2/95)

Anoth­er ter­ror­ist trained by the Unit­ed States government.

But it does­n’t end there either. This same dynam­ic hap­pens on the nation-state lev­el as well. Today’s head­lines also include sto­ries about the stand­off between Iraq’s Sad­dam Hus­sein and Unit­ed Nations arms inspec­tors, a sit­u­a­tion which threat­ens to renew mil­i­tary fight­ing in the region. Who fund­ed Hus­sein and gave him mil­lions of dol­lars worth of weapons to fight the Ira­ni­ans dur­ing the 80s? Why, it’s the U.S. gov­ern­ment again​.How come the Unit­ed States is direct­ly involved in train­ing some of the biggest ter­ror­ists of the decade? Haven’t we learned that mil­i­tarism only leads to more mil­i­tarism? Would Ramzi Ahmed Yousef and Tim­o­thy McVeigh just be polit­i­cal unknowns if the Unit­ed States had­n’t taught them to kill with their anger? Would Sad­dam Hus­sein be just anoth­er ex-dictator if the U.S. had­n’t fund­ed his mil­i­tary dur­ing the 1980s?

We can nev­er know these answers. But we can stop train­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of ter­ror­ists. Let’s stop fund­ing war, let’s stop solv­ing prob­lems with guns and explo­sives. Let today’s angry twen­ty year olds cut peo­ple off in traf­fic and do no more. Let’s stop these unde­clared wars.