Suffering from a desire for denial
Some may choose to continue believing in the Bush Administration and the Republican party.
But it would be hard to defend the war in Iraq, or the war on terrorism as it is being carried out.
It takes a willingness to deny the evidence that has begun stacking up that the United States has trampled on the most basic of human rights.
It takes a desire not to know, a wish not to believe that U.S. authorities and the government have overstepped the bright line between aggressive policies and knowing condemnation of people based on nothing more than their country of origin or religion.
Which is why the new law governing military commissions of detainees suspected of terrorism is so troubling. The most egregious and dangerous of parts of the new law is the suspension of prisoners’ claim to contest their detention, or have their detentions reviewed - known as the claim (or writ in formal terms) of habeus corpus.
This is all the more alarming because of the stories of men who were caught up in the tornado of U.S. agents, officials and policy that swept through their countries, carrying them into the hands of U.S.-run detention facilities like Guantanamo Bay.
A military official told me a couple of years ago that the sweep of Central Asian and Middle Eastern countries after 9/11 was chaotic and so sudden that he and his colleagues had just days to filter hundreds and hundreds of men dumped on the Cuban island. The men were caught in a net indiscriminately spread across lands by officials who neither spoke the language nor were able to assess false from credible accusations.
Some villagers made claims against neighbors for personal reasons, a lawyer for several detainees told me. Some men were picked up for wearing Casio wristwatches – supposedly an indicator that he was a terrorist, the lawyer said. The stories of arbitrary justice are chilling in their lack of justice, in their number and in their similarity.
The men never had a chance.
At Guantanamo Bay, soldiers were informed the moment they landed on that barren island that the men in their keep were responsible for 9/11 and would stop at nothing to destroy America.
James Yee, the former Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo Bay who was accused of aiding Islamic terrorists, writes, “After September 11, I grew accustomed to seeing images of that day used to motivate service men and women, but reminders of the attacks were especially prevalent at Guantanamo. From the moment we stepped on base, the connection between the hijacked planes and our mission was spelled out. At the newcomer’s briefing, Captain Polet presented a slide show that included images of the September 11 attacks as well as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. It also included bloody images of the aftermath of the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the 1996 attack on the U.S. military complex…in Saudi Arabia, and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole…The message was clear: this could happen here, and that could be you.”
Yee was ultimately locked up in solitary confinement in the same military prison that housed some of the most infamous suspected terrorists, including Hamdi and Padilla. He was later exonerated for claims that he has aided the detainees and, ultimately that he had used government-owned computers to view pornography (The claim was also false, but it was strange given that I'd bet many soldiers stranded in Iraq look at their share of online porn).
Yee also writes that soldiers were briefed that, “Members of Al Qaeda had already infiltrated the Caribbean, and they were willing to do anything possible to ‘free their Muslim brothers’” That included at least several boys who would not be old enough to drive in the United States.
They are, as far as I know, still in detention.
A similar situation evolved in Iraq, most infamously at Abu Ghraib. The lawyer for Charles Graner, the former corporal convicted for his part in the sexual exploitation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, defended his client’s acts by characterizing every detainee as a potential enemy or terrorist. “When you make an omelette, you break some eggs,” he said during the closing statement on behalf of Graner, who was the man giving the thumbs up as he sat atop the human pryramid of naked Iraqis. Grainer was sentenced to 10 years in Ft. Leavenworth, the longest sentence so far for detainee abuse.
The capricious attitude that reduces humans to eggs is not confined to the military.
There is a pernicious fear lurking among Americans today. Muslims have become the enemy within and there’s no way to tell a “good” Muslim for a “bad” one – as if that was a reasonable distinction.
When I wrote a story about the anger of young U.S. Muslim man at the suspicion and scrutiny he encounters especially at airports, a reader wrote that if he didn't like being checked out all the time he should move to Iran. Huh?
In that light, the rule of law and due process become paramount.
Latin for "you have the body," habeus corpus is considered the most fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action. [Harris v. Nelson, 394 U.S. 286, 290-91 (1969). See http://www.lectlaw.com/def/h001.htm]
It can be - and has been - revoked temporarily in times of national crisis, such as by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. But this administration has suspended the prisoners' sole path to justice and has said that there is no end in sight to this so-called war on terror.
How can the detainees contest evidence that they and their lawyers are denied access to? How to prove their innocence when they are denied the right to challenge their detention?
How to escape the Kafkaesque nightmare in which they are ensnared?
But it would be hard to defend the war in Iraq, or the war on terrorism as it is being carried out.
It takes a willingness to deny the evidence that has begun stacking up that the United States has trampled on the most basic of human rights.
It takes a desire not to know, a wish not to believe that U.S. authorities and the government have overstepped the bright line between aggressive policies and knowing condemnation of people based on nothing more than their country of origin or religion.
Which is why the new law governing military commissions of detainees suspected of terrorism is so troubling. The most egregious and dangerous of parts of the new law is the suspension of prisoners’ claim to contest their detention, or have their detentions reviewed - known as the claim (or writ in formal terms) of habeus corpus.
This is all the more alarming because of the stories of men who were caught up in the tornado of U.S. agents, officials and policy that swept through their countries, carrying them into the hands of U.S.-run detention facilities like Guantanamo Bay.
A military official told me a couple of years ago that the sweep of Central Asian and Middle Eastern countries after 9/11 was chaotic and so sudden that he and his colleagues had just days to filter hundreds and hundreds of men dumped on the Cuban island. The men were caught in a net indiscriminately spread across lands by officials who neither spoke the language nor were able to assess false from credible accusations.
Some villagers made claims against neighbors for personal reasons, a lawyer for several detainees told me. Some men were picked up for wearing Casio wristwatches – supposedly an indicator that he was a terrorist, the lawyer said. The stories of arbitrary justice are chilling in their lack of justice, in their number and in their similarity.
The men never had a chance.
At Guantanamo Bay, soldiers were informed the moment they landed on that barren island that the men in their keep were responsible for 9/11 and would stop at nothing to destroy America.
James Yee, the former Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo Bay who was accused of aiding Islamic terrorists, writes, “After September 11, I grew accustomed to seeing images of that day used to motivate service men and women, but reminders of the attacks were especially prevalent at Guantanamo. From the moment we stepped on base, the connection between the hijacked planes and our mission was spelled out. At the newcomer’s briefing, Captain Polet presented a slide show that included images of the September 11 attacks as well as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. It also included bloody images of the aftermath of the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the 1996 attack on the U.S. military complex…in Saudi Arabia, and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole…The message was clear: this could happen here, and that could be you.”
Yee was ultimately locked up in solitary confinement in the same military prison that housed some of the most infamous suspected terrorists, including Hamdi and Padilla. He was later exonerated for claims that he has aided the detainees and, ultimately that he had used government-owned computers to view pornography (The claim was also false, but it was strange given that I'd bet many soldiers stranded in Iraq look at their share of online porn).
Yee also writes that soldiers were briefed that, “Members of Al Qaeda had already infiltrated the Caribbean, and they were willing to do anything possible to ‘free their Muslim brothers’” That included at least several boys who would not be old enough to drive in the United States.
They are, as far as I know, still in detention.
A similar situation evolved in Iraq, most infamously at Abu Ghraib. The lawyer for Charles Graner, the former corporal convicted for his part in the sexual exploitation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, defended his client’s acts by characterizing every detainee as a potential enemy or terrorist. “When you make an omelette, you break some eggs,” he said during the closing statement on behalf of Graner, who was the man giving the thumbs up as he sat atop the human pryramid of naked Iraqis. Grainer was sentenced to 10 years in Ft. Leavenworth, the longest sentence so far for detainee abuse.
The capricious attitude that reduces humans to eggs is not confined to the military.
There is a pernicious fear lurking among Americans today. Muslims have become the enemy within and there’s no way to tell a “good” Muslim for a “bad” one – as if that was a reasonable distinction.
When I wrote a story about the anger of young U.S. Muslim man at the suspicion and scrutiny he encounters especially at airports, a reader wrote that if he didn't like being checked out all the time he should move to Iran. Huh?
In that light, the rule of law and due process become paramount.
Latin for "you have the body," habeus corpus is considered the most fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action. [Harris v. Nelson, 394 U.S. 286, 290-91 (1969). See http://www.lectlaw.com/def/h001.htm]
It can be - and has been - revoked temporarily in times of national crisis, such as by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. But this administration has suspended the prisoners' sole path to justice and has said that there is no end in sight to this so-called war on terror.
How can the detainees contest evidence that they and their lawyers are denied access to? How to prove their innocence when they are denied the right to challenge their detention?
How to escape the Kafkaesque nightmare in which they are ensnared?
posted by A.W. Woodall at 6:15 PM
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