To the Editor:
I object to James Ridgeway’s 12 Days of Christmas, where he wrote, “The holiday season offers Christians an opportunity to consider the different gifts they have brought to Iraq,” and then lists everything that has gone wrong with Bush’s war.
I am a Christian, but do not support the war in Iraq. I have written letters to my representatives in Congress, I have protested, I have given money to anti-war political candidates, and I have prayed my butt off over this catastrophe. There are millions of Christians in America who were opposed to the invasion, and many others who consider it a valid war of choice but who are appalled at the way the occupation has been managed.
The chronic shortages cited in today’s piece are not the fault of the Christian community. They are the result of an administration more concerned with rewarding its wealthiest supporters through tax cuts instead of spending what is necessary to protect our children overseas; an administration so pre-occupied with promoting an image of infallibility that they refuse to acknowledge miscalculations; an administration that claims to value the “sanctity of life” and yet deploys weapons of mass destruction on urban areas, endorses torture and withholds from prisoners international basic standards of legal rights.
I do not accept his blame.
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4 comments:
I agree with most of your points and you know how heated our arguments get over issues like this.
I do disagree with some things in your last paragraph, though.
I assume that because sanctitiy of life is in quotes that you are attacking the pro-life stance of the administration. But to compare this sanctitiy with using WMD's on the streets is a little far fetched. When has the U.S. used them? I do acknowledge that we have bombed the shit out some urban areas reslting in some severe collateral damage but lets not confuse a big ass bomb with a cannister of mustard gas released into a crowd of people.
The administration does not endorse torture any more than a police precinct endorses taking bribes because a few bad cops were doing it. The people involved in the prison abuse are being dealt with and they will be punished. I would say Dishonorable Discharges will be the least of their worries.
As far as the last statement about legal rights being withheld from the prisoners in Gitmo, I think this would be a better argument: Is it fair that the U.S. is using a loophole to keep the prisoners there?
I am glad there are so many people worried about the rights of the terrorists (Prisoners of War) in Cuba. But why don't these people all get together and protest the loopholes that set people free in Texas who shoot a repo man and get off using a law from the 1800's? Because it is fashionable to hate America these days.
Those prisoners have been held for a long time though. Send them to court and be done with it. It does raise suspicion about the validity of their capture when it has been this long. My guess is that not all of the prisoners have a strong case to find them guilty. I'm sure the ACLU will be all over it when every 6th prisoner is singled out, tried, and found guilty.
Actually TK, I am opposed to abortion, but I feel the right-wing's pro-life platform is motivated more by a misogynistic desire to disempower women rather than a sincere concern for the unborn. I can make this argument because as soon as you're born the Republicans don't give a flying fuck about your civil rights. A fetus is sacred, but if you're poor it's your own damn fault because obviously you're lazy. If you're black, the fact that you probably had to suffer through an underfunded public education in dilapidated facilities with ill-prepared teachers doesn't entitle you to special consideration when applying for college to help you break the cycle. If you don't have health insurance, you should have gone to college, gotten an MBA, and taken a job as a CEO. If you're gay, you're just a pervert. Etc.
As for WMD's, I was referring to cluster-bombs. Perhaps the comment was a tad glib, but come on...I was writing to the Village Voice. Consider my audience.
For all intents and purposes, the administration DOES endorse torture. You might remember the White House counsel, who's now going to be our Attorney General, who wrote an opinion that only torture for the sake of torture is wrong; torturing innocent people to get them to confess what you want to hear, even if it's a lie, is apparently okay. This is the same lawyer who called the Geneva Conventions "quaint." The International Red Cross has released several reports about our treatment of detainees in Iraq and Cuba and concluded many of the tactics are "tantamount to torture."
The reason so many people are concerned about the civil rights of terrorists is that we are trying to export democracy to a country that has only known totalitarianism. The foundation of democracy is the rule of law, and some of the most important principles of democracy are the rights of due process. If we want to encourage democracy in the middle east and elsewhere, then we have to treat even the worst criminals with all of the same rights as we would want for ourselves here: presumption of innocence until proven guilty, access to counsel, rights of appeal, etc. In Cuba, we have men who have been detained for three years and have not yet even been charged with a crime. The war on terror cannot be won with the U.S. military alone. Being a role model for human rights and the rule of law is a crucial component.
I don't hate America. I love it passionately and am so sad to see it betray its own ideals.
Well, I can see that this would be one of those merry-go-round talks for us.
The generalization about Rebs are well founded but the teeter-tottering of the Dems puts it in check. While the Rebs might not give a shit about the fetus after it is born the Dems make damn sure it gets on welfare as soon as possible to perpetuate the need for government control. The Dems in FL are trying to get enfranchisement for felons so they can vote. I guess they need the biggest supporters of Welfare to keep them office, huh? If the Democrats love the black people so much why did Clinton approve the Welfare reform act that hit the poorest of them so hard? Feh, both parties shit on everyone equally.
Again, the administration does not endorse torture any more than the military endorses hazing. The problem is that there is no clear definition of torture even within the Geneva Convention and the Red Cross. To get information out of prisoners requires methods that may seem harsh but I am dubious as to whether they would fall into the category of torture. You forget, these assholes in Cuba are not Prisoners of War. They are terrorists and beyond the pale of international law since they do not abide by them to begin with.
We are sending a clear message to Iraq. Don't bomb our fucking country or kill our soldiers and you will be treated fairly and IAW the Geneva Convention. Car bomb innocent women and children, suicide bomb night clubs, and bomb cummuter trains in Madrid and you will rot in prison- hopefully before they will rot in hell.
On a lighter note, how'd you like the surfing pics?!
From yesterday's New York Times:
Mr. Gonzales, as White House counsel, oversaw the drafting of several confidential legal memorandums that critics said sanctioned the torture of terrorism suspects in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and opened the door to abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
A memorandum prepared under Mr. Gonzales's supervision by a legal task force concluded that Mr. Bush was not bound either by an international treaty prohibiting torture or by a federal antitorture law because he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation.
The memorandum also said that executive branch officials, including those in the military, could be immune from domestic and international prohibitions against torture for a variety of reasons, including a belief by interrogators that they were acting on orders from superiors "except where the conduct goes so far as to be patently unlawful." Another memorandum said the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the conflict in Afghanistan.
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