After Abu Ghraib, sheeple having been bleating about how the Iraqi prisoner abuse is not part of America. How America is better than that. How our society and our military just don't operate like that. George says its "not the America I know" and Rummy says its "un-American."
Furthermore, this post is partly inspired by MeteorBlades recent poll in which almost 60% of the Kos visitors said that Abu Ghraib did not represent America but represented this administration.
Let me introduce you to another side of America...
United States Domestic Policy: A National Security State
The US has a higher percentage of its citizenry in prison than any other country in history, and accounts for an astonishing 25 percent of the world's prison population.
In 2002 a record 2,019,234 prisoners were incarcerated in American state and federal facilities.
Fifty-three percent of all state inmates were incarcerated for nonviolent crimes.
The US is a leader not only in incarceration, but also in capital punishment. There are more than 3,600 condemned inmates on death rows across the US.
839 individuals have been executed since 1976... 301 in Texas alone.
George W. Bush, during his five years as Texas governor before assuming the presidency, presided over 152 of these state killings. These executions included women, the mentally impaired and those sentenced to death for crimes committed as juveniles.
Abuse in Prison
Human Rights watch has documented hundreds of instances of sexual assault, rape, harassment and other abuse of female prisoners by male guards.
Human Rights watch has documented abuse, murder, beatings and sodomy by prison guards in US prisons.
Corcoran State Prison in California opened in 1988, fifty inmates, most of them unarmed, were shot by prison guards and seven were killed.
In Pennsylvania, dozens of guards from one facility, SCI Greene, were under investigation for beatings, slamming inmates into walls, racial taunting and other mistreatment of inmates.
There's more in the full report (see the sources link below)
America the Violent
America is one of the most violent "civilized" nation in modern history.
15,000 murders and 90,000 forcible rapes in 2000 alone. Proportionally more violent crime than any other 1st world country.
You wanna talk about lynchings? How about Mathew Shepard? Or Abner Louima? Or James Byrd? Or Rodney King? Or.. Or... Or... Yes, that sort of thing happens in other countries too. And that's my point - we're not different.
United States Foreign Policy: Imperial Aggression
We used to talk about stopping Communist aggression, now its stopping "rogue" states.
There isn't a rogue state out there that has a worse record for aggression than the United States. Invasions ... bombings ... overthrowing governments ... suppressing movements for social change ... assassinating political leaders ... perverting elections ... manipulating labor unions ... manufacturing "news" ... death squads ... torture ... biological warfare ... depleted uranium ... drug trafficking ... mercenaries ... working with Nazis and their collaborators...
This is a list of overt & covert military actions directly attributed to the United States gov't since 1945.
- China (1945 to 1960s) Was Mao Tse-tung just paranoid?
- Italy (1947-1948) Free elections, Hollywood style
- Greece (1947 to early 1950s) From cradle of democracy to client state
- The Philippines (1940s and 1950s) America's oldest colony
- Korea (1945-1953) Was it all that it appeared to be?
- Albania (1949-1953) The proper English spy
- Eastern Europe (1948-1956) Operation Splinter Factor
- Germany (1950s) Everything from juvenile delinquency to terrorism
- Iran (1953) Making it safe for the King of Kings
- Guatemala (1953-1954) While the world watched
- Costa Rica (Mid-1950s) Trying to topple an ally (Part 1
- Syria (1956-1957) Purchasing a new government
- Middle East (1957-1958) The Eisenhower Doctrine claims another backyard for America
- Indonesia (1957-1958) War and pornography
- Western Europe (1950s and 1960s) Fronts within fronts within fronts
- British Guiana (1953-1964) The CIA's international labor mafia
- Soviet Union (Late 1940s to 1960s) From spy planes to book publishing
- Italy (1950s to 1970s) Supporting the Cardinal's orphans and techno-fascism
- Vietnam (1950-1973) The Hearts and Minds Circus
- Cambodia (1955-1973) Prince Sihanouk walks the high-wire of neutralism
- Laos (1957-1973) L'Armée Clandestine
- Haiti (1959-1963) The Marines land, again
- Guatemala (1960) One good coup deserves another
- France/Algeria (1960s) L'état, c'est la CIA
- Ecuador (1960-1963) A text book of dirty tricks
- The Congo (1960-1964) The assassination of Patrice Lumumba
- Brazil (1961-1964) Introducing the marvelous new world of death squads
- Peru (1960-1965) Fort Bragg moves to the jungle
- Dominican Republic (1960-1966) Saving democracy from communism by getting rid of democracy
- Cuba (1959 to 1980s) The unforgivable revolution
- Indonesia (1965) Liquidating President Sukarno ... and 500,000 others
- East Timor (1975) And 200,000 more
- Ghana (1966) Kwame Nkrumah steps out of line
- Uruguay (1964-1970) Torture, as American as apple pie
- Chile (1964-1973) A hammer and sickle stamped on your child's forehead
- Greece (1964-1974) "Fuck your Parliament and your Constitution," said the President of the United States
- Bolivia (1964-1975) Tracking down Che Guevara in the land of coup d'etat
- Guatemala (1962 to 1980s) A less publicized "final solution"
- Costa Rica (1970-1971) Trying to topple an ally, Part 2
- Iraq (1972-1975) Covert action should not be confused with missionary work
- Australia (1973-1975) Another free election bites the dust
- Angola (1975 to 1980s) The Great Powers Poker Game
- Zaire (1975-1978) Mobutu and the CIA, a marriage made in heaven
- Jamaica (1976-1980) Kissinger's ultimatum
- Seychelles (1979-1981) Yet another area of great strategic importance
- Grenada (1979-1984) Lying, one of the few growth industries in Washington
- Morocco (1983) A video nasty
- Suriname (1982-1984) Once again, the Cuban bogeyman
- Libya (1981-1989) Ronald Reagan meets his match
- Nicaragua (1981-1990) Destabilization in slow motion
- Panama (1969-1991) Double-crossing our drug supplier
- Bulgaria 1990), Albania (1991) Teaching communists what democracy is all about
- Iraq (1990-1991) Desert holocaust
- Afghanistan (1979-1992) America's Jihad
- El Salvador (1980-1994) Human rights, Washington style
- Haiti (1986-1994) Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?
- Kosovo (1999) Slobodon gets out of line
- Iraq (1992-2004) Sanctions, bombings, invasion and occupation
What other country has a record like that?
You'll notice I only listed post WWII actions in which our gov't was directly involved. I didn't bring up slavery, native americans, phillipines, cuba, mexican war, etc.
(And don't even ask me about the 35 or 36 CIA sponsored assassination attempts on foreign leaders).
Militarism - Operation in brainwashing
It's the system stupid. A 20 year old kid won't normally torture another human being. In fact, most of use will admit it's pretty tough to kill someone you know, love and respect. Part of military training is to infuse American exceptionalism into young recruits... we kill because we're different, we're better. So its okay.
Anyone who has been in the military (including my girlfriend (US Army), my brother (USMC) and my father (USAF)) will tell you, the purpose of bootcamp is to break you down and then build you up; psychologists call this brainwashing. So you take a bunch of 18 year old kids, yell at them, deprive them of sleep and work them hard. You've heard of a military cadence right, the songs they sing as they are running 10 miles with backpacks through the heat? Consider the two below (my g/f actually sang the napalm one at Fort Jackson, SC in 1989).
Now think about this, we put these kids through a few months of bootcamp in which they are taught to kill. Then we give some of them a week's training in Geneva convention (mostly so they know their rights if they are captured) then send them to war. And we're "surprised" when a few of them short circuit.
A-10 A-10 flying high
drop that napalm from the sky.
See those kids by the river
drop some napalm watch them quiver.
Napalm (emphasize napalm) sticks to kids!
Napalm sticks to kids!
See those kids by the lake
drop some napalm watch them bake.
Napalm (emphasize napalm) sticks to kids!
Napalm sticks to kids!
See those kids the hut
shove some napalm up their butt!
Napalm (emphasize napalm) sticks to kids!
Napalm sticks to kids!
or how about this one:
Come along and join the party.
Come along and have some fun.
We're the guys from the US Army.
Dropping rounds on everyone.
Throw some candy to the children.
Await until they gather round.
Lock and load your M-16.
And blow those little suckers down.
Walk up into their school house.
Await until you hear the bell.
Pull a pin from a grenade and
send those bastards straight to hell.
So you see... while the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib turned my stomach, I wasn't really shocked at all.
Sources
http://hrw.org/advocacy/prisons/u-s.htm
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/apr2003/pris-a10.shtml
http://hrw.org/reports/1996/Us1.htm#_1_36
http://users.erols.com/loriryan/offensive.html
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
http://members.aol.com/bblum6/American_holocaust.htm