New Hope Falters In the Torture 'Debate'
It is easy to predict that humanity has no long term prospects for survival, at least free, and easier still once thinking that way, to make it come true. Its continuation based on how we live, treat each other, and the direction we seem to be headed in, expecting it can go on like this for very long defies logic, common sense, and even reason. We are teaching and being taught every day to despise the very international institutions we founded generations ago to bring us together and promote peace. Greed and power frames all discussions on how to treat each other. Those who would profit from setting us apart from each other, forever at each other, never seeing or admitting we all, all around the world, are ohana, family, brothers and sisters, they always rise to the top and forever divide us. I forget often that hope needs no reason nor foundation. It grows even in the most abysmal and desperate circumstances. That is why it is so hard to kill it. Hope is forever our only road forward, and even blind hope might help us find our way forward. Hope must flow into us from beyond this world, for otherwise it would have been stolen from us and sold back to us like everything else.
I am not pointing fingers at anyone. It is a dangerous world we live in. Torture being done, scientists perfecting it. People have been promoting it (TORTURE!) here on TV or making it palatable to the general public and are getting multi-million dollar salaries in return. But others have silently, and some not so silently, rebelled against this. It is in them and in their lives the hope of any bright future is to be found. Some when asked to torture, to murder unjustly, to go on TV and say how it is debatably reasonable to do such things to people who quite possibly are completely innocent to "possibly" "save" others, namely yourselves from some threat, real or imagined, they quit.
105 years ago, those who were found guilty of practicing waterboarding at the behest of the US government not only feared jail, they went to jail despite that it was approved of by the President. Congress was not willing to simply sweep it all under the rug and give everyone immunity before the truth could come out, and thankfully for awhile, then at least, a little sunlight was shown, and for awhile at least, publicly at least, it was a crime. And all that even though then, there was no Geneva Conventions then for America to have been violating by such torturing of its prisoners, whereas now they are indeed international war crimes and not just bad manners. Just back then, a sense of decency, morality, and possibly military codes of action that were deemed by some to be "quaint" until there were, somewhat reluctantly reestablished.
I have mentioned him before in my writings, and mentioning him now is because so many have not heard his most famous words, now dead in the hearts of Americans, many but not all, and need rekindling now more than ever. All that was great about America, the government at least, that small portion of what is America, has gone terribly wrong. Former President James Carter's belief in a self-correcting mechanism is unfortunately seemingly misplaced at the moment. We have been fed illusions of our worth, blinded to the suffering we are inflicting all over the world in the name of values it is apparent to all all over the world we are not living by and seemingly no longer believe in except to use as an excuse to take what we wish and do whatever is our will.
Nothing can I remember having moved me more deeply than when I read the words below. It is not just words, not just pain or agony at the reality of war we have been sanitized from, protected from, and because of which, that distancing, we watch men and women without hearts advocating things on television to us and to children, what they are teaching to a new generation, advocating avoidable attacks that would cost thousands of innocent lives, without guilt over what they say, without hesitation in what they are advocating, and without regrets. Joseph's pain inoculated me against thinking like that, and his words will outlive the hate mongers, the torture advocators, and those who scorn diplomacy and the avoidance of war as "weak".
These words, his words, will outlive those people because the world they advocate cannot endure, would not survive. A world which not only remembers these words but learns from them, takes them into its heart as I have into mine, that is a world which can endure. That is the future I work for, hope for, would live and die for, but the future we are creating now, what our present leaders wish to give the world, that is nothing I would want to be a part of. That world in which we have already recently killed tens of thousands of innocents in cold blood unnecessarily, and would kill millions if not billions to prevent the world from growing beyond the systems we have now, based on the need for war, the rewarding of aggression, and the sanctity of mass murders beyond scale in the name of country and in the name of God. May their notions not be passed on. Humanity could not long survive it if they do.
It is not always easy for me to have hope for things outside of my control. For many the election of Barack Obama was the beginning of a renewal of hope. Those without that hope will have a much harder time getting through what will no doubt be one of the most severe trials America and the world will have to endure, the economic crisis and wildfires of ethnic hatred, micro- and neo-nationalisms, and worse. From the previous post, I have a hard time with the idea that one can or should simply bury ones head in the sand, flash forward to a few years and say, "Gee wasn't it stupid we thought we had anything to worry about, of course it was all going to turn out alright."
My hope is diminished by the general loss of ground. Not of any political view or viewpoint but that of general tolerance, civility, and even a loss of humanity. And the focus of hope, President Obama, and not without due reason, has fallen repeatedly to doubt, callousness, and lack of fortitude. So many will say, rightly, one has to choose ones battles carefully, not do what is doomed to failure at the expense of doing what one can succeed at, and thus lessening ones potential to do any good at all.
By the most unflattering view possible, President Obama has made some of America's worst transgressions of International Law 'popular' and even 'cool'. Having lost control of the debate over torture, he risks institutionalizing it, doing what Democrats have done at the since the beginning of my time, taking it and making it their own rather than to risk looking weak by opposing it. Think this is an exaggeration or no longer valid? Take as an example of Bill Richardson's recent rationalization of signing a bill outlawing the death penalty in his state by having to caveat it with roughly, "But this is even more cruel than executing them. They will be wishing they could die." Thus America's so-called 'left' destroying further (and far more than any Republican could) any rationale behind condemning what almost all of the West outside of America believes to be a barbaric punishment. We will end it, but only if we can justify making prisoners lives even crueler than death so they will literally be praying daily to die.
The torture debate will be over, and in the Dick Cheney's of the world favor soon simply because President Obama thinks "I have closed that chapter," as if it is just another autobiography book of his. "Not in MY courts!" Winning the war, losing the humanity. I was shocked that 8 years ago 20 to 40 million Americans could be so moved against Democracy by the television that they could answer in a Gallup poll that regardless of who won the election, they wanted George Bush to be president anyway. That was a pittance of the hope destroying fact that today, a mere 8 years later, 20 to 40 million Americans can be moved by the same sort of television commentators (and sometimes the same ones) to justify or even argue about justifying the torture of human beings. If Obama truly was looking forward, it is not hard to see where such a trend is going, and fast, and that nothing could EVER be more important.
That is what crushes my hope. Not that people can be that mislead, that mistaken. But because the system my government functions with and by rewards such terror advocators with million dollar salaries, makes those who would advocate the worst abuses possible by humans to other humans as 'responsible distinguished commentators' and not least of which, one of only two major parties in the country cannot help but be flirting with coming out in favor of torture, within limits of course. (Of course.)
Obama may yet rise to the occasion and recognize what he himself far more than the television commentators is creating, the normalcy of American Torture, not in secret, but as a political issue embraced by tens of millions of Americans as a reasonable means of action that only the wimps would wish to do away with or rule out. Cheney only set up the shot. It is Obama who is making it his own legacy and advancing it far further than any Republican ever could.
But for now, my hope has been emboldened a bit by yet another diatribe by some war resister. Not by flowery words, not by outrages, or by a good hope inspiring speech. By introspection, self-indictment, and looking at the larger picture of what is being created. Even the brave have things about themselves, things they have done, how they think, how these influences combine and effect or harm much else, that they are afraid to look at. He did so quite bravely by many different measures. THAT gives me hope. When the average person starts to demand honesty from himself or herself, it is not long before they start DEMANDING it from their leaders as well. It is only our cowardice to admit our own weaknesses, our own mistakes, to ourselves and thereby to then be able to outgrow them which permits us to create and live in a country that is incapable of doing the same. And right now that shortcoming of honest self-reappraisal is perfectly embodied by our very leadership itself.
Another day I will write about torture, believe it or not, far from my favorite subject and one difficult to balance my outrage, hurt, and hope. This short post is because that, for today anyway, my strength to confront such topics honestly without shrinking (despite what I have written well about it before is not always easy for me) was helped due to foot soldiers willing to risk everything to expose truths and stand up for truth, instead of by leaders elected to expose the truth and promote peace, who seek rewarding that trust with burying the truth as well as their causes, to increase their political power and their ability to get on with 'more important' things. And in the process undermining and sabotaging all those who seek to improve the country by searching out and knowing and telling the truth.
The article mentioned here is best read in its entirety but a short unrepresentative excerpt is below.
IVAW represents the voices of conscience for an entire generation of Americans, and really our entire society. We, the Winter Soldiers of the War on Terror, who will speak our truths, no matter what the personal cost, and stand our ground no matter what adversity we may face, and reflect openly and honestly upon ourselves, we represent hope for this nation.
In South Africa after Apartheid fell, truth and reconciliation commissions were set up to investigate crimes committed by both Apartheid forces and rebel forces. To bring about witnesses to reveal crimes which they participated in or knew about, the commission had to grant amnesty to a large number of people who testified to things not greatly different than we do.
And we risk everything to come forward and are asking for NOTHING but an ear to hear us, and the means to carry on, and the willingness to know the truths of our government's policies. And it lays so many of us so very low, as we struggle in a society that would rather shut our real histories, us, who we are, out, for a lie, one big murderous soul-sucking lie.
Well we're done taking it, we're done being victims, and we are organizing a victory, for truth, for the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, for our nation in distress, for the people of the world who we have treated like dispensable objects for too long! For the troops, who languish and grow further away from us while our nation worries about paying rent! For the veterans, who are sleeping homeless on the streets and stuck with the image of a gun in their mouth, or with the sounds of screaming babies. For the women, who are first and most being made the victims of these policies and occupations, and for the female Soldiers in Iraq, don't ever forget that THIS IS NOT NORMAL!!! And for the Muslim people in the United States who have languished in this climate of racism and hate. We are sorry! Your liberation is most important to us!
IVAW represents hope for all these people, and it represented hope for me, when I needed it most, and it continues to represent so much hope to me. We are going to end this war and we need the support right now folks, more than ever, and we need your energy as we move into Spring and Summer.Confessions of a War Resister, by Matthis Chiroux, April 25, 2009
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/04/25
posted by Jared DuBois | 1:29 AM
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