Cross posted from mine and some friends' blog,
http://thenextelection.blogspot.com
Friday, January 28, 2005
Apologies in advance for the rambling.
I saw something that disturbed the living hell out of me today, and I've been thinking about how to address it, but I can't seem to make a line in my head with all my thoughts, so I'm just going to write.
As many of you know, there was a news report of some of the abuses at Gitmo today. The most disturbing of which included smearing menstural blood on the faces of detainees. Beyond being disgusting, this is also a violation of one of the more important laws of Islam. This is the equivalent of making an orthodox Jew eat ham.
That's wrong.
You wonder why they hate us?
Iraq, before we deposed Saddam, was a shithole. No two ways about it. Not too many people were happy about their country, either, but they were repressed, so they couldn't do anything about it. So we went in and we did. Agree or disagree, the fact that Saddam is gone is a good thing. But what the hell did we replace it with?
Under Saddam, they had running water. They had a river that wasn't filled with raw sewage (granted, the raw sewage was generally set aside for losing soccer teams, but still). They had electricity. They had homes. And as long as they kept their mouths shut, they had their families. Good or bad, that's the way it was.
Under the occupation, they are having problems restoring running water and electricity to vast chunks of the country. They dodge rubble. They have asshole insurgents setting off car bombs around their schools, their police stations, their polling sites. They have the opportunity to vote in an election that isn't rigged on its surface (because who the hell knows what Bush has planned--Anonymous Shiites A through R could all be Allawi, for all we know), but they get death threats if they even think about going there.
Put yourself in their shoes. Wouldn't you be pissed off? You're free for the first time in a LONG time, but everything around you is shit. You love your country, and you're proud to have at least the semblance of self determination. But everywhere you look, it's all screwed up. So what do you do? You get pissed off. You want power. You want running water. You want a job. You want to be left alone.
These feeling sit and fester, and the longer the shit goes on, the more pissed off you get. Then you hear stories about acquaintances, neighbors who are just as proud and just as happy to be out from under Saddam's porn stache disappearing. Then you hear about this shit.
Can you see where this is going?
Can you see, at least for a second, where they're coming from?
I'm not saying fighting the US is the way to go. I'm not saying it's the right thing to do. But the people you see as responsible for the lack of power, water, your job, the people partially responsible for the rubble surrounding you completely disrespect your religion, force you to eat ham, force you to renounce your faith in Christ.
Wouldn't you be pissed off?
Now, some people need to be captured. Some people need to be interrogated. I'm not denying this fact. We have to defend ourselves, we have to defend our troops, we are obligated to gather GOOD intelligence in any way we can. But first, torture does not provide good intelligence. Second, we're better than that.
Allow me to repeat.
WE'RE BETTER THAN THAT.
If we want people to take us seriously as the best country in the world, as a model for their development, we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard. We have to expect nothing short of brilliance out of every single member of our society, from the President to our generals to Lyndie England to the guy flipping your burgers at the Wendy's down the street.
This is why I cannot support Alberto Gonzalez' nomination for AG. Not only is he incompetent and lazy, he's also not good enough, as a human being, to serve this country. His personality, his morals, his values, if you want to say that, do not meet the minimum standards for public service in this country.
Now, there are people out there rationalizing away the torture as necessary. I understand where you're coming from. You're scared shitless. You put on a facade like you're tough, like you're patriotic, but it's really just hiding the fact that on September 11, your world got fucked with bad. You saw that you weren't safe at home.
I'm scared too. I'm terrified of living in the second biggest target in this country. September 13th, a friend and I went down to the west side highway to see it, to take it all in, to show ourselves up close how fucked up it was. I helped pass along supplies down the West Side Highway. I watched the firefighters come down the highway, clean and waving and smiling at the cheers, and I watched them going back up the highway, exhausted, battered, covered from head to toe in dust. And it shook me.
But we can't let that fear cloud our better judgement. We know that torture does NOT yield good intelligence. And better than that, deep down inside, we know that what we're doing is wrong. It's an affront to our decency. It runs counter to EVERYTHING we believe in, everything we hold dear as a society. When a criminal does this, they are given the worst punishment they can be given, often times with an admonishment from the judge that they wish we could do more.
Just because some of them are trying to kill us doesn't make it right.
Just because some of them did kill us doesn't make it right.
Just because we're pissed off and afraid, because some of them hurt us, doesn't make it right.
I'm scared of what the world's like right now, too. But I'm almost as scared at some of the things we're doing. If we keep doing this, we won't be able to claim "greatest nation on earth" for much longer. And I won't let that happen.
You know what is right. You know what is wrong. We all have an obligation to fight for what is right, to fight to protect ourselves and our society not only from destructive forces on the outside pushing in, but from destructive forces that seek to erode the pillars of our society from the inside. Small rationalizations, in the name of "justice" or "security". Doing this is not making us safer, it's making us more vulnerable.
We have to fight. We have to fight against the fear. We have to fight against our own desire for vengance. We have to use our better judgement, rather than compromise it. We know what's right. We have to go against our urges, for lack of a better term, and fight.
And I've got a message for those of you out there who think it's absolutely hysterical what we're doing to them. This message comes from me and me alone; no one else on this blog endorses this opinion, nor do they necessarily agree with it.
You are some of the worst people on the face of this earth. You are savages, and you are almost as evil as the people who killed 3000 of us. There is something functionally wrong with your brain, that you find these violations humorous. Please do us all a favor and go rearrange the squirrel skull collection in your treehouse for the next 100 years. I'm embarrassed to be the same species as you, because you're all animals. I will never forget this.
We'll be joining the coalition.