American shame: treatment of Guantanamo prisoners
One of the sad and regrettable side-effects of our the now-permanent War Against Terror is that America, once the bastion of freedom, free speech, and free expression, has felt it necessary to become more like those we consider our enemy than we are willing to admit. In essence, our government seems to feel that killing the patient in order to save it is the only way to protect our freedoms.
In places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Naval Base, Americans have engaged in the sort of torture and mistreatment most of us would find difficult to imagine. That those who would protect us and our freedoms would engage in this egregious and illegal behavior is difficult to imagine. In our post-9.11 world, in which any sort of government excess can be excused by using 9.11 as the explanation, it would seem that our sense of decency and respect for human rights has taken a back seat to our collective fear and paranoia.
The FBI has blown the whistle on the Defense Department’s military investigators by accusing them of abusive treatment of prisoners of war in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The FBI was especially outraged that the interrogators of suspected terrorists had posed as FBI agents.
Administration officials are usually pretty clubby folks who close ranks in times of trouble. But apparently, the FBI was not ready to take the fall for the Pentagon’s atrocious treatment of some prisoners of war.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has labeled the Pentagon’s behavior as “tantamount to torture.”
Is this what we have come to? Are we now willing to condone and implicitly endorse torture and maltreatment if we think it improves our security? Of course, it is this mindset that created an insurgency in Iraq out of whole cloth, introducing an element of terror where none had previoiusly existed. Of course, now that one does exist, we have a duty to fight terrorism where it lives, no? (Better to fight terrorism in the streets of Baghdad than New York or Los Angeles, no??)
This sort of reprehensible misconduct does not happen in a vaccuum. The behavior evident in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay may not be “officially” sanctioned, but it would not be happening without approvals from the highest levels, up to and likely including the White House.
The big question is why President Bush has tolerated inhumane treatment of detainees and why he has not ordered a full stop to this shaming of America.
He has to accept some of the blame for rejecting the Geneva Conventions on humane treatment of prisoners of war for so-called “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo Bay, site of a U.S. Navy base and the prison holding about 550 people from 40 different nations.
There are indications that prison guards and interrogators thought they were following orders from higher ups when they abused detainees.
The FBI didn’t complain publicly against the Department of Defense √≥ or DOD √≥ but a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union has smoked out memos written by FBI agents about the treatment of the detainees.
The records claimed the FBI learned that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had approved the impersonation of the FBI.
An ACLU attorney said the methods adopted by the military were “illegal, immoral and counterproductive.”
The documents showed that FBI agents were particularly upset with what they saw as physical and mental abuse of the detainees, including the sticking of lighted cigarettes in their ears, choking, beatings, temperature changes, hooding, the use of dogs and other forms of harassment.
One detainee was wrapped in an Israeli flag.
One of the agents complained that the military’s aggressive interrogation was “beyond the bounds of standard FBI practice.”
Yes, 9.11 gave us much to be angry about. The gravity of those attacks is something that many of us, myself included, still find difficult to comprehend. Does that anger and dismay give us license to use any method, however objectionable, in the pursuit of those responsible for the propagation of terrorism? Can we not see that our frequent and utter disregard for basic human rights could easily provide a breeding ground for yet more terrorist attacks against America and it’s interests?
As Gandhi once said, “An eye for an eye only leaves the whole world blind.” I fear that our hatred, anger, paranoia, and desire for retribution have left us more blind than we realize.
Torture and the denial of basic human rights in the name of protecting freedom is an oxymoron at best and demagoguery at worst. The fact that the Bush Administration seems to have implicitly if not officially approved these methods is reprehensible. WE DESERVE BETTER.
