Not In Our Name, Mr. President

http://www.annistonstar.com/opinion...

Not In Our Name, Mr. President
02-21-2005

An opportunity for productive social outreach looms on the horizon. A day is coming - maybe in weeks, maybe in months or maybe in years - when President Bush’s true-believers hit the wall of credibility.

They have been led to believe our “war on terror,” as the president calls it, pits the forces of good vs. the forces of evil. Unfortunately, every report of the United States inhumanely abusing prisoners in its care tarnishes our gold star and dirties our white hat.

It won’t be a pretty sight when Bush’s dedicated supporters reach the breaking point. Make no mistake they will finally realize that lowering ourselves to the methods of our enemies damages the ultimate cause. As one former FBI agent is quoted in a recent magazine article, “Brutalization doesn’t work. We know that. Besides, you lose your soul.”

Many of Bush’s supporters, are devout Christians, serious in their faith and deeply concerned about the condition of the soul. They believe in right and wrong. They love their country. They are convinced that this president they so revere would never steer them wrong.

When the truth comes out about what’s been done in their name by the current administration there will be a need for healing. It will be a sad day when they finally reckon the cost to them and their children and their children’s children.

Trust, such an essential ingredient for our democracy, will have to be restored.

A slew of stories on the abuses of men who the Bush administration thinks are terrorists is making that clearer by the day. The United States is cutting corners in pursuing people it suspects are terrorists.

Due process is being shoved aside. Human rights are not respected. American citizens are having their rights put on a shelf.

The White House has played a dangerous game, setting itself apart from prohibitions against torture. In the reports from places where U.S. soldiers have abused and tortured prisoners, it has reaped a whirlwind of shame.

In some cases, the United States has shipped off men it suspects are terrorists to nations where cruelty and torture are the norm. The New Yorker magazine reports that the suspects are taken to places where electrical shock, boiling of one’s hand and water torture techniques are the norm.

The Feb. 12 New York Times told the story of Mamdouh Habib, who was recently released from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Habib carries the scars and bruises from his time at the prison. Officials believe Habib trained with al-Qaida in Afghanistan.

Various experts report that even if Habib was closely linked to terrorists, abusing him is not the way to get information. Harshly abuse a prisoner, former intelligence agents report, and that person will say anything just to make the pain stop.

Yes, we must round up the bad guys. But by humane treatment and by following due process, the United States can make great strides in diffusing the foul propaganda used by Muslim extremists to recruit terrorists.

Can it be that the Bush administration is thwarting human rights and rule of law in order to spread freedom and democracy? That sounds a little too close to burning down the village in order to save it, the Vietnam-era slogan that summed up the waywardness of the U.S. mission in Southeast Asia.

Tom Parker, an ex-British intelligence agent, told The New Yorker, “The U.S. is doing what the British did in the nineteen-seventies [with the Irish Republican Army], detaining people and violating their civil liberties. ... It did nothing but exacerbate the situation. Most of those interned went back to terrorism. You’ll end up radicalizing the entire population.”

As details spread about abuse to suspects in the custody of Americans, the news will only harden the hearts of those who wrongly see the United States as a force of pure evil.

For now, the president’s domestic supporters will likely dismiss the stories from The New Yorker and the Times as coming from a “liberal media” out to get Bush. But the sources reporting abuse of human beings is growing, and it’s coming from sources other than the so-called liberal media.

Many of Bush’s friends were fond of posing the question, “What will we tell the children?” during the ugliness of the Clinton intern scandal.

It’s still a valid question. What are we to tell our children about abuse being done in the name of Americans?