We are Americans. We live in and vote in America. We elect our leaders. Thus we are responsible for what our leaders do.
We here may look upon ourselves as different.
But each of the other 7 Billion human beings we share this planet with, looks at us as Americans.
As a country, as an entity. The Americans selected George Bush to lead them. A country is what its leaders do. And our leaders were George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld. In the period after 9/11, to the rest of the world, they represented America. The rest of the world was ready to join with America after the attacks. To the rest of the world, they were...and still are...America. What they did...America did.
Each and every American did. It is how we judge others, how we judge other countries....by what their leaders do. And so, it is how we are judged.
And it is how we will be judged. How we are being judged. By what George Bush, Dick Chenmey, and Donald Rumsfeld did. That is just how it works. Fair or not, it is true. America DOES torture.
We are Americans, and this is what we did.
The International Red Cross says so. The United Nations is investigating US.
The Americans under George Bush attacked and invaded Afghanistan. We rounded up thousands of people ourselves and we paid a bounty of five thousand dollars to have others turned in or rounded up. Some of them, around 900 of our fellow human beings, we put in cargo containers, sealed them in and left them in the heat to die. Others we killed, we beat them to death while 'interrogating' them. So that we could round up the ones they incriminated, while being tortured. We called them unlawful enemy combatants, because that was the lowest status we could give them. The lowest there is in all the world.
When we named them unlawful enemy combatants we took away all of their rights. When a man has no rights, none at all, is he even still a man? We can kill him then, torture or beat him to death, and no one will ever know. Maybe. Especially if we give him no record, if we hide him from the world. So that is what we did. Snatched them off the streets or from their homes, away from their wives and children. We took them. We killed some, we tortured others. Even those we knew to be innocent. But then time passed and we needed to do something more permanent, once our bloodlust had boiled down a bit.
Then we very cleverly, we thought, invented a new kind of prison for the ones who survived being tortured. It wasn't in the United States, so these faceless, nameless, captured men, many of whom we knew to be innocent, could not be granted rights, had no access to the courts, no access to any law at first. ANY law.
Brandon Neely, a prison guard at Guantanamo tells the story of what we did then. Read it. We tortured them. We beat and shackled and froze and shocked and anally raped them with night sticks.
But Cheney and Rumsfeld were not satisfied, they wanted, they said....more ...information. So they put Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Millerin charge of developing a torture program, an 'interrogation' program. To get more information from these men, even when WE knewsome of them to be innocent.
People, Americans, we, sat in rooms and decided how best to torture people. What methods of torture to use, how much pain to inflict.
Other of us, attorneys like John Yoo, sat in rooms and made up lies as to why it was ok for US to torture people....in ways that we had hung others for after WW2....when we had always condemned others for torturing. When we had accused whole nations of being torturers. Just as we are condemned as torturers ourselves, now.
In the White House, The Principals met to decide....we met to decide how to torture people. One of us The Attorney General of America John Ashcroft said "We should not be talking about this in the White House, history will not judge us kindly." Yet they did, we did. When we had the Torture Program we wanted, though not the Army that we wanted, we exported it in the person of Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller. Exported it to Abu Ghraib.
Where as it turned out, it was not a few bad apples who were blowing off steam like frat boys. But instead part of OUR organized torture program. One of us blew the whistle and sent in the now famous pictures. We have been allowed to see the mildest of the pictures of what we did in Abu Ghraib. But until just a few days ago, the really really bad ones had been concealed from us. Now they are to be released. We are about to see what WE really did at Abu Ghraib.
And it was not just Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. WE had a whole network of Black Sites.Secret Torture Prisons. OUR CIA had what amounted to a private Torture Airline to fly those who had been renditioned to be tortured all around the world, to conceal what we were doing.
We waterboarded people, we slapped them and punched them and beat them to death, We sexually harassed and tortured deeply religious men. We cut off their beards, we flushed their holy books down the toilet, we wired electrodes to their genitals and shocked them. We sliced their penises with razor blades.
In his sworn statement about the torture he endured while imprisoned at Abu Ghraib, Ameen Sa’eed Al-Sheikh details what happened to him: US guards put a bag over his head. They screamed at him. They threatened to rape his wife. They threatened to rape him in the shower. They refused to let him sleep. They forced him to stand for hours. They shoved him. They pushed him. They beat his broken leg. They took away his clothes and blankets. They shot him. They forced him to eat pork and drink liquor. They made him curse Islam and praise Jesus. They burned his skin with hot liquid. They drew a picture of a woman on his back and made him stand holding his buttocks. They suspended him with handcuffs from his bed. They beat him until he was unconscious. They hung him from a door.
In his testimony he says, "I asked the interrogators why? They said they did not know."
Their (lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights, the ACLU, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense, and Veterans for Peace) complaint noted, "Photographs and videos leaked to the press have established beyond any doubt that detainees held in Iraq have been subjected to humiliating and degrading treatment. The government has conceded that numerous detainees have died in custody; at least sixteen of these deaths have been classified as homicides. There is growing evidence that the abuse of detainees was not aberrational but systemic, that in some cases the abuse amounted to torture and resulted in death, and that senior officials either approved of the abuse or were deliberately indifferent to it."
We did this, Americans did this, and....in the eyes of the rest of the world.... YOU did this.
Rape. Torture. Murder. It is what Americans do. Unless we prove it isn't.
Unless YOU now make sure that WE investigate charge and try the people who authorized, ordered and carried out these acts... as YOUR government, in YOUR name, with YOUR money, by YOUR soldiers and intelligence agencies....YOU did this.
Because you are an American, and Americans did this.
And unless we do something about it, that IS the historical record. America did this. Not Bush or Cheney, America.
Right up to the day that we charge the individuals who did this...as individuals.
Right up to the day we try the President and Vice-President who did this....NOT as Americans. Not as representatives of America. But as men. Men who have broken the law NOT in the name of every American. But in their own name.
Until these MEN are brought to justice and tried as War Criminals, these are not just their crimes as individuals who broke the law. These are ALL of OUR Crimes, as Americans.
The only way to clear YOUR name, to clear America's name....is to charge, try, and convict George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld as men, as private individuals, who committed War Crimes NOT in our name, NOT with our consent, but in their own name, on their own abused authority.
Is their any greater crime, any greater sin possible, than to rape and torture a fellow human being to death? And yet this IS what we did.
As much as we seem to want to pretend we didn't.
Until the responsibility lies directly on the individuals who ordered these inhuman atrocities, then it lies with us, the People in whose name this was done. Until WE find THEM guilty, we are guilty. As Americans in an America that does torture.
Until we prove we don't. Through prosecuting those who did.
Until Justice is done. Or at least attempted, those who are not attempting it, US....
....Each Of Us Shares This Sin.
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Join the Facebook Group for a Special Prosecutor.
Update
From Activist Guy in the comments, who sums it up perfectly:
In a democratic republic
In the final analysis, the actions of our government, if legitimate*, are ultimately a reflection of the national will. If we have the national will to torture, but not the national will to prosecute torturers, what other judgment can reasonably be passed but that as a nation, as a people, we believe that torture is acceptable.
*If the government is illegitimate we have a moral obligation to overthrow such a regime and build a new one.