Spanish Front in War on Truth
Those who want true democracy favor a well-informed public, but those who simply
want power understand that a smart electorate is a dangerous thing, so they seek
out and destroy truth-tellers, as is now happening to a crusading judge in
Spain, as Lawrence Davidson reports.
By Lawrence Davidson
Among the numerous wars that are perennially being waged worldwide is the one
between truth-tellers and those who would suppress the truth. I have alluded to
this war in prior analyses that took up the plight of such truth-tellers as
Bradley Manning and Julian Assange.
Their crime is not, as is sometimes suggested, the speaking of truth to Power.
As Noam Chomsky once suggested, Power already knows the truth, and doesn’t care
about it. No, their crime is the speaking of truth to the rest of us.
Disenchanting the public of official lies is what really rattles those in power.
Of course, it is quite possible that most of the public, in the U.S. and
elsewhere, doesn’t care about the truth either. However, Power is not taking any
chances in this regard.
Recently, a new front in this continuing war has opened up. On Jan. 17, Al
Jazeera reported that Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon had “gone on trial in the
country’s supreme court on [three separate] charges of abusing judicial powers.”
Garzon is a very important truth-teller, who has conducted a number of
investigations into violations of international law against torture. Using the
principle of universal jurisdiction, Garzon went after Chilean dictator Augusto
Pinochet back in 1998, and in March of 2009 he stated that Spain could bring
charges against six Bush Jr. administration officials for clearing the way for
the use of torture during the Iraq War.
At least four men, who are Spanish citizens and also former prisoners at the
Guantanamo Bay prison, have accused the U.S. military of torturing them. It was
at this point that the U.S. government appears to have placed Garzon in a
category that would also include Manning and Assange: the category of the
dangerous truth-teller.
The U.S. Ambassador to Spain in 2009, Eduardo Aguirre describes his actions (in
a diplomatic cable made public by Wikileaks in 2010) in relation to Garzon’s
investigation of the Bush administration’s torture policies as follows, “behind
the scenes we have fought tooth and nail to make the charges disappear.”
The significant word here is “disappear” for there are two approaches to
suppressing an unwanted truth. The first is to create a counter-story that makes
the truth appear untrue. The second is to simply suppress all evidence, all
references, all interest so that the particular truth just “disappears.”
Aguirre managed to get the cooperation of Spain’s Chief Prosecutor Javier
Zaragoza who is quoted in another U.S. diplomatic cable (also made public by
Wikileaks) to the effect that he had a plan to “embarrass” Garzon into dropping
his case against the Bush officials by misrepresenting Garzon’s actions in
previous cases. This sounds like a bit of blackmail.
Garzon did not relent and now he is on trial for “abusing judicial powers” in
this and other cases.
Garzon and his supporters, which include almost every human rights group on the
planet, claim that the charges are politically motivated and, to be sure, the
entire affair appears similar to the questionable rape charge facing Assange in
Sweden.
In the case of Garzon, the Spanish Public Prosecutor (different than the Chief
Prosecutor) has recommended acquittal on all three charges and yet there is
still serious doubt that this will happen. If Garzon is found guilty on any of
the charges, he “could be banned from serving as a judge for 20 years, in what
would be a career-ending blow to the 55-year-old,” Al Jazeera reported. This is
precisely the outcome the U.S. government would like to see.
The good news is that this battle to silence Garzon, has not yet intimidated all
other Spanish judges. On Jan. 20, another Spanish judge, Pablo Rafael Gutierrez,
took up the case of the former Spanish citizens who allege torture at Guantanamo
Bay. This judge, again used the principle of universal jurisdiction, and noted
that the U.S. government has consistently refused to investigate the Spanish
citizens’ charges.
James Goldston, the executive director of Open Society Justice Initiative,
described the situation this way: “These crimes [such as torture] are universal
crimes and it is very clear that until the United States holds to account those
responsible for these crimes, other judicial actors in other countries are going
to press for accountability.”
The most powerful and influential government in the world — the one with its
capital in Washington, D.C. — is going to fight to halt these foreign efforts.
And so, we have a war that seeks to replace the truth with either lies or
historical black holes.
Big Truths, Little Truths
One of the major themes of George Orwell’s classic novel, 1984, is the controls
of information. In book 1, chapter 3 of the novel we find this proposition if
government can control all media and all public records it can either impose a
lie as truth or simply make selected past events disappear from society’s
collective memory.
Orwell wrote: “Who controls the past…controls the future: who controls the
present controls the past.” Is this not what the U.S. government is trying to do
in the case of its policy of torture: manipulate and hide the truth so people
will ignore it and then forget it? And is this not what almost every country
tries to do relative to their present crimes or those embedded in their pasts?
It is really amazing just how common this sort of manipulation is. And, the
reason it is relatively easy for governments to get away with it is because the
average man and woman cares mainly about little truths and not big ones.
Little truths are local truths. Don’t be misled to think that little means
unimportant because that is not the case. Little truths are the truths that make
possible successful daily interactions and that, of course, makes them very
important indeed.
Thus, one major reason life can go on relatively smoothly is that, most of the
time, you can take as true what others tell you. That this is so means we can
rely on friends, have stable relationships with spouses and children, and
maintain successfully operating offices, business arrangements, etc. When the
little truths start to become lies, these relationships break down.
Alleged big truths are the ones governments and the major media outlets tell the
masses. When the U.S. government tells its citizens that unregulated capitalism
will make the nation strong and prosperous, or that there must be a war to
prevent Iraq from using weapons of mass destruction; when the major U.S. media
outlets tell their viewers and readers that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons or
Israel is “just like us,” they are shaping perceptions that are not just local
but regional and national.
The problem is that, historically, most alleged big truths turn out to be big
lies. But by the time the citizenry realizes this, it is too late. Then it turns
out that the citizens’ historical memories are short and they forget past big
lies, which allows them to swallow new ones a generation later. And, finally, as
long as the little truths work, most people either don’t notice or don’t care
about the big lies.
Yet truth-tellers — like Manning, Assange and Garzon — have good historical
memories and they do notice and do care. They realize that when big truths turn
out to be big lies people suffer they suffer in the millions, bombs rain down
from the skies, economies falter and the public sphere of life becomes like a
poisoned well.
That is why accountability for the crimes hidden behind big lies is so
important. That is why no government, no politician, no media organization
should be allowed to manipulate the truth about the past or the present. On this
the future depends.
Lawrence Davidson is a history professor at West Chester University in
Pennsylvania. He is the author of Foreign Policy Inc.: Privatizing America’s
National Interest; America’s Palestine: Popular and Offical Perceptions from
Balfour to Israeli Statehood; and Islamic Fundamentalism
The Gulag That Is Gitmo
Still under powerful neocon influence and fearing the old “soft on terror” label
Congress has blocked President Obama’s efforts to close “the gulag at
Guantánamo,” forcing Obama to retreat from his promise to Americans and an
outraged world, as Marjorie Cohn notes.
By Marjorie Cohn
Travelers to Cuba and music lovers are familiar with the song “Guantanamera”,
literally, the girl from Guantánamo. With lyrics by José Martí, the father of
Cuban independence, “Guantanamera” is probably the most widely known Cuban song.
But Guantánamo is even more famous now for its U.S. military prison. Where
“Guantanamera” is a powerful expression of the beauty of Cuba, “Gitmo” has
become a powerful symbol of human rights violations, so much so that Amnesty
International described it as “the gulag of our times.”
That description can be traced to January 2002, when the base received its first
20 prisoners in shackles. General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, warned they were “very dangerous people who would gnaw hydraulic lines
in the back of a C-17 to bring it down.”
We now know that a large portion of the 750 plus men and boys held there posed
no threat to the United States. In fact, only five percent were captured by the
United States; most were picked up by the Northern Alliance, Pakistani
intelligence officers, or tribal warlords, and many were sold for cash bounties.
The Guantánamo story starts in 1903, when the U.S. Army occupied Cuba after its
war of independence against Spain. The Platt Amendment, which granted the United
States the right to intervene in Cuba, was included in the Cuban Constitution as
a prerequisite for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the rest of Cuba.
That provision provided the basis for the 1903 Agreement on Coaling and Naval
Stations, which gave the United States the right to use Guantánamo Bay
“exclusively as coaling or naval stations, and for no other purpose.”
In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a new treaty with Cuba that
allows the United States to remain in Guantánamo Bay until the U.S. abandons it
or until both Cuba and the United States agree to modify their
arrangement. According to that treaty, “the stipulations of [the 1903] agreement
with regard to the naval station of Guantánamo shall continue in effect.”
That means Guantánamo Bay can be used only for coaling or naval
stations. Additionally, article III of the 1934 treaty provides that the
Republic of Cuba leases Guantánamo Bay to the United States “for coaling and
naval stations.” Nowhere in either treaty did Cuba give the U.S. the right to
utilize Guantánamo Bay as a prison camp.
It is no accident that President George W. Bush chose Guantánamo Bay as the site
for his illegal prison camp. His administration maintained that Guantánamo Bay
is not a U.S. territory, and thus, U.S. courts are not available to the
prisoners there. But, as the Supreme Court later affirmed, the United States,
not Cuba, exercises exclusive jurisdiction over Guantánamo Bay.
Amanda Williamson, a spokeswoman in the Red Cross’ Washington office, noted that
prisoners at Guantánamo “have been placed in a legal vacuum, a legal black
hole.” Amnesty International went further, noting an obvious gap between U.S.
rhetoric and practice: “Given the USA’s criticism of the human rights record of
Cuba, it is deeply ironic that it is violating fundamental rights on Cuban soil,
and seeking to rely on the fact that it is on Cuban soil to keep the U.S. courts
from examining its conduct.”
Although the Convention Against Torture, a treaty the United States has
ratified, forbids the use of coercion under any circumstances to obtain
information, prisoners released from Guantánamo have detailed assaults,
prolonged shackling in uncomfortable positions, sexual abuse, and threats with
dogs.
Mustafa Ait Idr, an Algerian citizen who was living in Bosnia when he was sent
to Guantánamo, charged that U.S. military guards jumped on his head, resulting
in a stroke that paralyzed his face. They also broke several of his fingers and
nearly drowned him in a toilet. Mohammed Sagheer, a Pakistani cleric, claimed
the wardens at Guantánamo used drugs “that made us senseless.”
French citizen Mourad Benchellali, released from Guantánamo in July 2004, said,
“I cannot describe in just a few lines the suffering and the torture; but the
worst aspect of being at the camp was the despair, the feeling that whatever you
say, it will never make a difference.”
Benchellali added, “There is unlimited
cruelty in a system that seems to be unable to free the innocent and unable to
punish the guilty.”
Australian lawyer Richard Bourke, who has represented many of the men
incarcerated at Guantánamo, charged that prisoners have been subjected to “good
old-fashioned torture, as people would have understood it in the Dark Ages.”
According to Bourke, “One of the detainees had described being taken out and
tied to a post and having rubber bullets fired at them. They were being made to
kneel cruciform in the sun until they collapsed.”
Abdul Rahim Muslimdost, an Afghan who was released from Guantánamo in April
2005, said he suffered “indescribable torture” there.
U.S. and international bodies have verified reports of torture and
abuse. Physicians for Human Rights found that “the United States has been
engaged in systematic psychological torture of Guantánamo detainees” at least
since 2002.
FBI agents saw female interrogators forcibly squeeze male prisoners’ genitals
and witnessed detainees stripped and shackled low to the floor for many hours.
In February 2006, the United Nations Human Rights Commission reported that the
violent force-feeding of detainees by the U.S. military at Guantánamo amounts to
torture.
The very existence of the Guantánamo prison camp harms America’s international
reputation. A January 2005 editorial in Le Monde concluded, “The simple truth is
that America’s leaders have constructed at Guantánamo Bay a legal monster.”
Moreover, it has created more enemies of the United States. Writing for the New
York Times, Somini Sengupta maintained that Guantánamo Bay has been a setback in
the war on terror insofar as it has “emerged as a symbol of American hypocrisy.”
The list of Guantánamo critics is a long one. Archbishop Desmond Tutu dubbed it
a stain on the character of the United States. Former U.N. Secretary General
Kofi Annan said the United States must close the camp as soon as possible.
The Economist called for the facility to be dismantled, described the treatment
of the prisoners there as “unworthy of a nation which has cherished the rule of
law since its very birth,” and claimed it “has alienated many other governments
at a time when the effort to defeat terrorism requires more international cooperation in law enforcement than ever before.”
The National Lawyers Guild, Association of American Jurists, Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights, and Amnesty International have all called for
closing the prison camp and releasing or charging prisoners with criminal
offenses in accordance with international legal norms.
In addition to legal and political problems with Guantánamo, there are enormous
human costs to consider. Attorney Joseph Margulies has been to death row in six
states and watched his client be executed. But as he noted, “I have never been
to a more disturbing place than the military prison at Guantánamo Bay. It is a
place of indescribable sadness, where the abstract enormity of ‘forever’ becomes
concrete: this windowless cell; that metal cot; those steel shackles.”
Indeed, Army Col. Terry Carrico, the first warden at Guantánamo, complained that
when he was there, the men were held in “basically outdoor cages,” adding, “It’s
what you would normally find in a veterinarian’s facilities to hold animals.”
Carrico said “very few” of the men imprisoned during his tenure had useful
intelligence. He favors closing Guantánamo, but doubts that will ever happen.
President Barack Obama said a year ago that he was committed to closing
Guantánamo because it was a symbol that was “probably the No. 1 recruiting tool”
on terrorist websites. But Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act
(NDAA), which bars any transfer of detainees to U.S. prisons, even for trial.
The act also restricts the President’s authority to transfer detainees to other
countries. Of the 171 men remaining at Guantánamo, 89 have been cleared for
release by a review conducted by the CIA, FBI, military, and Department of
Homeland Security. But those men will likely die at Guantánamo because Obama
refused to put the brakes on Congress’s use of the issue as a political football
in the NDAA.
In a recent op-ed in The New York Times, Harvard lecturer Jonathan M. Hansen
wrote, “It is past time to return this imperialist enclave to Cuba,” adding, “It
has served to remind the world of America’s long history of interventionist
militarism.”
Obama should heed Hansen’s words. For the abiding presence of the Guantánamo
gulag is not simply illegal and immoral. It also continues to be a symbol of
U.S. hypocrisy, and makes us a target for more terrorist attacks.
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and past
president of the National Lawyers Guild. Her most recent book is The United
States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse. See her blog:
www.marjoriecohn.com. .
The Enduring Shame of Guantanamo
On President Obama’s second full day in office, he promised to close the
Guantanamo Bay prison, but then encountered fierce resistance from Congress,
leading to a humiliating retreat underscored now by the prison’s tenth
anniversary — and by renewed worldwide condemnation, as Nat Parry reports.
By Nat Parry
When the Guantanamo prison camp, originally dubbed by the U.S. military Camp XRay, opened in January 2002, the United States came under international
criticism that was nearly unprecedented in its intensity in modern U.S. history.
Some of the loudest complaints came from the staunchest U.S. ally, the United
Kingdom, where three cabinet ministers Robin Cook, Patricia Hewitt and Jack
Straw expressed concern that international agreements about the treatment of
prisoners of war were being breached. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human
Rights, Mary Robinson, also objected to the camp and called on President George
W. Bush’s administration to follow the Geneva Conventions.
In a Jan. 19, 2002, column in the British Independent, Robinson argued that
because the Afghanistan conflict was of an international nature, “the law of
international armed conflict applies.” She took issue with the administration’s
assertion that the prisoners were “unlawful combatants” and thus outside the
protections of the Geneva Conventions.
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said that despite the Sept. 11
atrocities,”changing our values and our way of life would be terrorism’s first
victory.”
Amnesty International expressed concern about the tactics being used and the
secrecy surrounding the camp. “Keeping prisoners incommunicado, sensory
deprivation, the use of unnecessary restraint and the humiliation of people
through tactics such as shaving them, are all classic techniques employed to
‘break’ the spirit of individuals ahead of interrogation,” the human rights
group said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross — in an unusual deviation from its
practice of not publicly criticizing detaining governments — said the United
States might have violated Geneva Convention rules against making a spectacle of
prisoners by distributing pictures of the detainees being subjected to sensory
deprivation, which were published worldwide.
British human rights attorney Stephen Solley said the treatment of the suspects
was “so far removed from human rights norms that it [was] difficult to
comprehend.”
Seven years later, just two days into his administration, President Barack
Obama’s announcement that he would close the Guantanamo camp was greeted with
international praise equally intense. An Executive Order Obama signed on Jan.
22, 2009, seemed to unambiguously mandate the closure of Guantanamo within a
year:
“The detention facilities at Guantánamo for individuals covered by this order
shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date
of this order. If any individuals covered by this order remain in detention at
Guantánamo at the time of closure of those detention facilities, they shall be
returned to their home country, released, transferred to a third country, or
transferred to another United States detention facility in a manner consistent
with law and the national security and foreign policy interests of the
United States.”
Michele Cercone, spokesperson for the European Union Justice and Home Affairs
Commission, said at the time that the commission “has been very pleased that one
of the first actions of Mr. Obama has been to turn the page on this sad episode
of Guantanamo.”
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay also praised Obama’s Executive
Order, saying that it was a good day for the rule of law. “The fact that
President Obama has placed such a high priority on closing Guantánamo and set
in motion a system to safeguard the fundamental rights of the detainees there is
extremely encouraging,” she stated.
“The United States has in the past been a staunch supporter of international
human rights law, and this is one of the reasons that the regime that was
established in Guantánamo has been viewed as so damaging,” the High
Commissioner added.
Now at Guantanamo’s ten-year anniversary and nearly three years after President
Obama’s Executive Order there is a palpable sense of disappointment and betrayal
from the human rights community. The United States is finding itself on the
receiving end of now-familiar criticism of its indefinite detention policies,
with human rights organizations and intergovernmental bodies renewing their
complaints that for the past ten years, the U.S. has flouted international human
rights standards in its practices at the notorious prison camp.
“Human Rights Watch opposes the prolonged indefinite detention without trial of
terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere,” said HRW in a statement on
Jan. 6. The group reminded the U.S. of its obligations to prosecute terrorist
suspects and to compensate detainees who have been wrongly imprisoned and
mistreated over the past decade:
“The practice [of indefinite detention] violates U.S. obligations under
international law. Human Rights Watch has strongly urged the U.S. government to
either promptly prosecute the remaining Guantanamo detainees according to
international fair trial standards, or safely repatriate them to home or third
countries.
“We have also called for investigations of U.S. officials implicated in
torture of terrorism suspects and for adequate compensation for detainees who
were mistreated. Human Rights Watch will continue to press for compliance with
these obligations. Failure to do so does enormous damage to the rule of law both
in the US and abroad.”
On the eve of Guantanamo’s tenth anniversary, Amnesty International said,
“Guantanamo has politicized justice internationally by portraying detainees as
having no human rights.” Amnesty has described the legacy of the Guantanamo Bay
prison as a “decade of damage to human rights” not only in the United States,
but across the world.
In a report released on Dec. 16, 2011, Amnesty stated:
“The USA speaks the language of human rights fluently on the global stage, but
stumbles when it comes to applying human rights standards to itself. The Bush
administration promised to put human rights at the centre of its counterterrorism strategy, but singularly failed to do so. The Obama administration has
promised the same thing, but the USA continues to fall short of this commitment,
despite what were undoubtedly positive initial steps in the right direction.”
“From day one,” said Amnesty, “the USA failed to recognize the applicability of
human rights law to the Guantánamo detentions.”
Ambassador Janez Lenarčič, the Director of the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights
(ODIHR), also expressed dismay over the failure to close the Guantanamo
facility.
“Universal human rights standards require that the detention of terrorist
suspects shall be accompanied by concrete charges and the persons detained under
these charges shall be immediately informed of them and brought before a
competent judicial authority,” Lenarčič said.
In a press release, ODIHR reminded the United States of its OSCE obligations:
“As a participating State of the OSCE, the United States has committed itself to
respect human rights in the fight against terrorism and to ensure the right to a
fair trial within a reasonable time before an independent and impartial
tribunal. In the OSCE Bucharest Document of 2001, participating States expressed
their determination to protect their citizens from security challenges such as
terrorism ‘while safeguarding the rule of law, individual liberties, and the
right to equal justice under law.’”
Lenarčič regretted that the practice of indefinite detention without trial has
been codified into U.S. law with the recent adoption of the 2012 National
Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). He called for a swift closure of the
Guantánamo detention center and urged the authorities to prosecute promptly the
remaining Guantánamo detainees in accordance with international fair trial
standards, or release them.
Moazzam Begg, a 43-year-old British Muslim who was wrongly detained at
Guantanamo for three years two of them in solitary confinement until British
authorities negotiated his release in January 2005, is more despondent about the
prospects of closing the prison camp.
“Gitmo will never close. That is a fantasy,” Begg recently told CNN. “I’ve
stopped wishing for it. Even if it closes its doors, it will be only symbolic.
The detainees who are still there will go somewhere else to be held and be
treated possibly worse, and still not get their time in court. And Gitmo, in a
way, will always be open. It will be in my memory, in my head, just like
everyone else who experienced that hell.”
Colonel Morris Davis, a chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay during the Bush
administration, concurs with Moazzam Begg, saying that Obama “doesn’t have the
balls” to close Guantanamo.
Nat Parry is co-author of Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W.
Bush. [This story first appeared at ComplianceCampaign.
Are Americans in Line for Gitmo?
Exclusive: Though the 9/11 attacks occurred more than a decade ago, Congress
continues to exploit them to pass evermore draconian laws on “terrorism,” with
the Senate now empowering the military to arrest people on U.S. soil and hold
them without trial, a serious threat to American liberties, says ex-CIA analyst
Ray McGovern.
By Ray McGovern
Ambiguous but alarming new wording, which is tucked into the National Defense
Authorization Act (NDAA) and was just passed by the Senate, is reminiscent of
the “extraordinary measures” introduced by the Nazis after they took power in
1933.
And the relative lack of reaction so far calls to mind the oddly calm
indifference with which most Germans watched the erosion of the rights that had
been guaranteed by their own Constitution. As one German writer observed, “With
sheepish submissiveness we watched it unfold, as if from a box at the theater.”
The writer was Sebastian Haffner (real name Raimond Pretzel), a young German
lawyer worried at what he saw in 1933 in Berlin, but helpless to stop it since,
as he put it, the German people “collectively and limply collapsed, yielded and
capitulated.”
“The result of this millionfold nervous breakdown,” wrote Haffner at the time,
“is the unified nation, ready for anything, that is today the nightmare of the
rest of the world.” Not a happy analogy.
The Senate bill, in effect, revokes an 1878 law known as the Posse Comitatus
Act, which banned the Army from domestic law enforcement after the military had
been used ,and often abused, in that role during Reconstruction. Ever since
then, that law has been taken very seriously, until now. Military officers have
had their careers brought to an abrupt halt by involving federal military assets
in purely civilian criminal matters.
But that was before 9/11 and the mantra, “9/11 changed everything.” In this case
of the Senate-passed NDAA more than a decade after the terror attacks and even
as U.S. intelligence agencies say al-Qaeda is on the brink of defeat Congress
continues to carve away constitutional and legal protections in the name of
fighting “terrorism.”
The Senate approved the expanded military authority despite opposition from
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper
and FBI Director Robert Mueller and a veto threat from President Barack Obama.
The Senate voted to authorize and generally to require “the Armed Forces of the
United States to detain covered persons” indefinitely. And such “covered
persons” are defined not just as someone implicated in the 9/11 attacks but
anyone who “substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces
that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition
partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has
directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.”
Though the wording is itself torturous and there is a provision for a waiver
from the Defense Secretary regarding mandatory military detentions the
elasticity of words like “associated forces” and “supported” have left some
civil libertarians worried that the U.S. military could be deployed domestically
against people opposing future American wars against alleged “terrorists” or
“terrorist states.”
The Senate clearly wished for the military’s “law and order” powers to extend
beyond the territory of military bases on the theory that there may be
“terrorsymps” (short for “terrorist sympathizers”) lurking everywhere.
Is the all-consuming ten-year-old struggle against terrorism rushing headlong to
consume what’s left of our constitutional rights? Do I need to worry that the
Army in which I was proud to serve during the 1960s may now kick down my front
door and lead me off to indefinite detention, or worse?
My neighbors have noticed, after all, that I now wear a longish beard and,
sometimes, even a hat like Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. And everyone knows
what a terrorsymp he was. “If you see something, say something!”
Worse still, a few of my neighbors overheard me telling my grandchildren that
President Obama should be ashamed to be bragging about having Awlaki, an
American citizen, and later his 16 year-old son murdered without a whiff of due
process. “If you hear something, say something!”
A Lost Respect
Citizens of powerful countries used to have their rights widely respected, at
home and abroad. “I am a Roman citizen”,“Civis Romanus Sum” once counted for
something. Even more respect tended to greet “I am an American”, because of our
power abroad and our once famous adherence to a written Constitution at home.
Adherence? Lately not so much. Not since power-hungry politicians set out to
exploit 9/11 so that “everything changed,” including even the rights formerly
guaranteed us by the Bill of Rights and the habeas corpus protection in the
Constitution itself.
Awlaki’s is an interesting case in point. A Muslim whose moderating influence
was sought after by the Washington Establishment in the immediate aftermath of
9/11, he became “radicalized” by our warring on his fellow Muslims. By noting
that little-known fact, am I showing “support” for “al-Qaeda, the Taliban or
associated forces”? Will the U.S. military be obliged to target me, too?
“Not you, Grandpa,” my grandchildren reassured me at Thanksgiving. “Even with
the beard and the hat, you don’t really look very much like Awlaki, or like any
kind of terrorsymp. You look different; and your light skin and American
citizenship should suffice to keep you safe.”
I agreed that I would probably be okay, even if I kept up my vocal criticism of
what is happening. But, truth be told, I harbored doubts even on Thanksgiving.
And that was before the Senate version of the defense appropriation bill passed
last Thursday.
Civis Americanus Sum. Yes, I am. But does that really count for much today? It
certainly offered no protection to Awlaki, or to his son. What’s to prevent one
of my former colleagues at the military or the CIA, those I have roundly
criticized for endorsing and cheering on the kidnappers, torturers and assassins
in their employ, from adding me to the “kill-or-capture-but-preferably-kill
list”?
What has been happening in this continuation of a seemingly endless “war on
terror” amid widespread public indifference makes Richard Nixon’s “Enemies List”
look like a board game. At least, the Nixon White House had a modicum of good
sense not to flaunt its skirting the law and violating constitutional rights.
It is a safe bet that functionaries at the National Security Council are
updating the kill-or-capture list even now, confident that President Obama will
sign the Senate version of the bill into law once it gets predictably endorsed
by the Republican-controlled House.
Then, what is to prevent NSC “counterterrorist” functionaries from summoning the
go-to lawyers still ensconced in the Justice Department and asking them for help
in navigating what appear to be deliberate ambiguities in the new bill’s
language.
Backed by a John Yoo-style “legal justification,” an order could be issued to
“terminate” me, while reassuring my neighbors that, yes, just as you suspected,
he was a terrorsymp. Or maybe they’ll simply order some troops from the 82nd
Airborne at Fort Bragg, where I was stationed a half-century ago, to apprehend
me and give me a free one-way ticket to Guantanamo.
After all, how bad could that be? Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
explained to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in June 2005 that the detainees at Guantanamo
were “living in the tropics. They’re well fed. They’ve got everything they could
possibly want.” And would Rumsfeld lie?
Early Obfuscation
From my erstwhile colleagues at CIA, there has been more mumbo-jumbo aimed at
disguising what is really afoot. According to press reports, the CIA general
counsel has already said, disingenuously:
“American citizens are not immune
from being treated like an enemy if they take up arms against the United
States.”
But one does not need to “take up arms” in order to be labeled a “combatant,” as
the government is defining such terms. Awlaki didn’t take up arms; he was said
to have provided “material support to terrorism” by his alleged but unproven
encouragement of terrorist attacks on the United States. (Under the new NDAA, a
similar fate could befall someone who advocates resistance to “coalition
partners,” like NATO countries or some corrupt governments that are U.S. allies,
such as the Karzai regime in Afghanistan or the terror-linked government of
Pakistan).
In the broad strokes of defining American “partners” and al-Qaeda/Taliban
“associated forces,” will Israel fall into the first group and Iran, Hamas and
Hezbollah get lumped into the second?
Could material support be nothing more than providing financial support for the
U.S. Boat to Gaza, which challenged the
Israeli embargo of Hamas-ruled Gaza? If
creative lawyers for this or some future administration get busy, would the new
NDAA provide authority for the military to detain such a U.S. citizen under the
Law of War and transfer him or her to Guantanamo or elsewhere?
Conflicting legal interpretations of the bill are now more about whether
military detentions would be mandatory or would the president still retain some
discretion.
In sum, the wording appears to create a parallel military justice system that,
theoretically, we are all subject to. All that would be needed is an allegation
by someone that we assisted someone who in some way assisted someone else in
some way. An actual terrorist act would not be needed and neither would a trial
by one’s peers as guaranteed by the Constitution to determine actual “guilt.”
Should you be tempted to dismiss this as “liberal fear-mongering,” take a look
at this item from FoxNews.com with its gleeful headline: “Democrat-Controlled
Senate Passes Constitution-Shredding Defense Authorization Bill”:
“The bill would require military custody of a suspect deemed to be a member of
Al Qaeda or its affiliates and involved in plotting or committing attacks on the
United States. The legislation also would give the government the authority to
have the military hold an individual suspected of terrorism indefinitely,
without a trial.
“‘Since the bill puts military detention authority on steroids and makes it
permanent, American citizens and others are at greater risk of being locked away
by the military without charge or trial if this bill becomes law,’ said
Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties
Union.”
A key element in the Senate bill, like the House version, is to expand the
original Authorization of the Use of Military Force Act (AUMF) of September 2001
so it no longer links exclusively to 9/11. This creates the kind of ambiguity
that allows Sens. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina,
to claim that the bill’s stringent provisions do apply to U.S. citizens, as well
as non-citizens.
In addition, the new wording adds “associated forces” (whatever that means) to
the previous AUMF’s list of targets. The language of the AUMF of September 2001
was limited to “those nations, organizations, or persons he [the President]
determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that
occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.”
Burning the Midnight Oil
It is a safe guess that the legal pharisees were burning the midnight oil,
dissecting how the draft bill can say, on the one hand, that this or that
provision does not apply to American citizens, but, oops, this other provision
seems to allow them to be shipped off to Guantanamo, too.
Not being expert enough to do so, I happily leave it to them to parse the
language, diagram the sentences, and do surgery on each jot and tittle. There
will be a veritable feast for the legal beagles.
What speaks loudest to me is the fact that two key amendments did not pass.
Senate Amendment 1125 would have limited the mandatory detention provision to
persons captured abroad. And Amendment 1126 would have provided that the
authority of the military to detain persons without trial until the end of
hostilities would not apply to American citizens. Both amendments were voted
down 45 to 55.
Though President Obama has objected to the Senate bill as going too far even by
his “death-to-Awlaki” standard, a more troubling question is what might these
new powers mean if, say, another terrorist attack hits the United States or if a
more hard-line president comes to power.
Take, for example, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, one of the Republican presidential
hopefuls. Before a stump speech in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Tuesday, Perry
gave us a hint of what his policies, and maybe even his Cabinet, would look
like.
Perry flew in none other than racial profiler par excellence, the sheriff of
Maricopa County, Arizona, Joe Arpaio. No, I’m not kidding; Perry apparently saw
this as a way to strengthen his “law and order” credentials (accent, of course,
on “order”).
As I sat in the audience, Arpaio’s arrival took me by surprise, so perhaps I can
be forgiven for reflexively bellowing a prolonged boo, as Arpaio made his way
slowly and carefully up to the lectern to warm up the crowd. Later it occurred
to me that booing may be something that gets you on the chain gang in Maricopa
County; Arpaio did not seem at all used to it, and he did not take it well.
Reaching the podium, he turned and demanded to know who was booing, so I stood
up from my second-row-center seat and raised my hand high. Fortunately for me,
he had none of his deputies along, and booing is apparently not yet banned at
Town Hall meetings in New Hampshire. Only Arpaio seemed to pay much heed.
Although I knew enough about Arpaio to consider him fully deserving of a loud
boo or two, I did not know the half of it. Let me treat you to some encomia from
the sheriff’s own official Web site:
“Arpaio knows what the public wants, [and] has served them well by establishing
several unique programs. Arpaio
started the nation’s largest Tent City for
convicted inmates. Two thousand convicted men and women serve their sentences in
a canvas incarceration compound. It is a remarkable success story.
“Of equal success and notoriety are his chain gangs, which contribute thousands
of dollars of free labor to the community. The male chain gang, and the world’s
first-ever female and juvenile chain gangs, clean streets, paint over graffiti,
and bury the indigent in the county cemetery.
“Also impressive are the Sheriff’s get tough policies. For example, he banned
smoking, coffee, movies, pornographic magazines, and unrestricted TV in all
jails. He has the cheapest meals in the U.S. too. The average meal costs between
15 and 40 cents, and inmates are fed only twice daily, to cut the labor costs of
meal delivery. He even stopped serving them salt and pepper to save tax payers
$20,000 a year.
“Another program Arpaio is very well known for is the pink underwear he makes
all inmates wear. Years ago, when the Sheriff learned that inmates were stealing
jailhouse white boxers, Arpaio had all inmate underwear dyed pink for better
inventory control. Arpaio looks forward to many more years as Sheriff of
Maricopa County.”
Again, I am not making this up. You can check out the sheriff’s Web site for
yourself for still more.
I have to concede that I find the last sentence about Arpaio’s future plans
somewhat reassuring because if he plans to stay in Maricopa County, it means his
policing policies would stay limited to a fairly small geographic area (although
perhaps that’s not good news for the people of Maricopa County).
But things could be worse if a President Perry picked Arpaio to take over the
Department of Justice and Attorney General Arpaio had a chance to incarcerate
more of us in tent prisons. But Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder hasn’t
exactly shown himself to be a great defender of constitutional rights either.
Perry Strutting His Stuff
Back in New Hampshire, after Arpaio provided a lackluster introduction, Perry
took the stage, offering unctuous thank yous to Sheriff Joe. Perry then reminded
us forcefully that he is a “law and order guy.”
That resonated with me in an unusually personal way, so much so, that I missed
some of his other by now notorious remarks, like his appeal for all those 21 or
over (sic) to vote for him in the New Hampshire primary and those from 18 to 21
to work hard and look toward the day when they too can vote. (sic)
Still, the words “law and order” stuck in my mind. I thought under what law did
Perry several months ago call on Attorney General Holder to prosecute me and the
other passengers on the Audacity of Hope, the U.S. Boat to Gaza as it challenged
Israel’s blockade?
Because Perry had been busy glad-handing folks off to the side when I rose to
plead guilty to booing Arpaio, the governor didn’t see who it was. And, as luck
would have it, he called on me for the first question of the Q & A:
“I’m Ray McGovern, and I thank you for coming here, Governor Perry. My question
pertains to a letter that you wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder on the 28th
of June of this year, and I quote: ‘As governor of one of the largest states, I
write to encourage you to aggressively prosecute those on the U.S. Boat to Gaza,
who plan to interfere with Israel’s maritime blockade of Gaza.’
“You may not have been aware that, three days previous, the State Department
spokeswoman was asked three times whether Israel’s maritime blockade of Gaza was
legal and she refused to say the blockade was legal. I was one of those
passengers on the U.S. Boat to Gaza, and with my co-passengers we were wondering
what you, as the governor of Texas, a ‘law and order’ person … under what law
did you wish to prosecute my co-passengers and me?”
Perry turned his response into a commentary on how much he supports Israel, no
matter what. Like all of his rivals for the Republican nomination (except Ron
Paul, who generally refuses to play this craven game), Perry is not about to let
anyone outdistance him in expressing unqualified support for Israel.
And so, he
began:
“The issue was that … a … I am a very strong supporter of Israel. I’ve made my
point; I must stand with Israel. I’m going to stand with Israel. And you’re free
to go stand with who you want to, Sir, but I will be standing with Israel.”
“No matter what?” I asked.
“No matter what” was his emphatic response that can
be heard beneath a crescendo of applause from Perry supporters. [To watch the
video of this encounter, click here.]
How Far Will It Go?
With the new language in the NDAA, it would appear that Gov. Perry and others
might soon have all the law they need to stifle acts or words that give support
to Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran or any other perceived threat to Israel, at least
after Obama signs the legislation and some smart lawyers get to work on the
definition of “associated forces.”
Then, will the 82nd Airborne be sent to fetch me if I continue to write and speak
what I believe to be the truth on issues like these? What will I be risking if I
keep hammering home little known facts like the following, which seldom, if
ever, find their way into the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM)?
Israel itself helped to create Hamas in 1987 as a Muslim fundamentalist, divideand-conquer counterweight to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO).
The bulk of Hamas’s popular appeal, like that enjoyed by Hezbollah in Lebanon,
stems not from the crude rockets fired toward Israel, but rather from the
tangible help Hamas provides to oppressed Palestinians.
Is James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, now treading on thin ice?
This is what Clapper included as a sort of afterthought at the end of his 34page “Worldwide Threat Assessment” before the House Intelligence Committee on
Feb. 10, 2011. (You guessed right; the FCM, for some reason, missed it):
“We see a growing proliferation of state and non-state actors providing medical
assistance to reduce foreign disease threats to their own populations, garner
influence with affected local populations, and project power regionally. In some
cases, countries use health to overtly counter Western influence, presenting
challenges to allies and our policy interests abroad over the long run.
“In last year’s threat assessment, the Intelligence Community noted that
extremists may take advantage of a government’s inability to meet the health
needs of its population, highlighting that HAMAS’s and Hizballah’s provision of
health and social services in the Palestinian Territories and Lebanon helped to
legitimize those organizations as a political force.
This also has been the
case with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.”
This, most assuredly, is not the Official Washington party line. Could the
Director of National Intelligence himself be prosecuted by those who believe
that any good word for those that Israel considers enemies, like Hamas,
Hezbollah and Iran, is tantamount to “material support” for terrorism?
(I do hope readers were not shocked by the diabolically clever way these
“terrorist” movements garner public support, by providing life-saving medical
care, for example.)
–It was on that public-service record (and also because of wide awareness of
flagrant corruption in the PLO), that Hamas won a key parliamentary election in
January 2006, defeating the PLO-affiliated Fatah party. While the election
results were not disputed, they were not what the U.S., Israel and Europe
wanted. So the U.S. and the EU cut off financial assistance to Gaza.
Confidential documents, corroborated by former U.S. officials, show that
thereupon the White House had the CIA try in 2007, with the help of Fatah
strongman Muhammad Dahlan, to defeat Hamas in a bloody civil war. That, too, did
not go as expected. Hamas won handily, leaving it stronger than ever. [See “The
Gaza Bombshell” by David Rose, in Vanity Fair, April 2008, for the entire sad
story.]
Israel and Egypt then imposed an economic blockade on Gaza eventually reducing
virtually all Gazans to a bare subsistence level, with 45 percent unemployment.
From Dec. 27, 2008, to Jan. 18, 2009, while President George W. Bush was a lame
duck, Israel launched an armed attack on Gaza, killing about 1,400 Gazans
compared to an Israeli death toll of 13. Israel’s stated aim was to stop rocket
fire into Israel and block any arms deliveries to Gaza.
President-elect Barack Obama said nothing. His unconscionable silence at the
slaughter should have told us at that early juncture that he, too, would feel so
politically intimidated that he would mute any objections to Israeli behavior.
Since then, he has retreated from even his mild objections to Israel’s expanded
settlements on Palestinian lands.
Guilt by Association
The United States is widely seen as responsible for Israel’s aggressive
behavior, which is hardly surprising. It is no secret that Israel enjoys
financial assistance ($3 billion per year), military backing, and virtually
unquestioned political support from Washington.
What is surprising, in the words of Salon.com commentator Glenn Greenwald, is
“how our blind, endless enabling of Israeli actions fuels terrorism directed at
the U.S.,” and how it is taboo to point this out.
Take for example former CIA specialist on al-Qaeda, Michael Scheuer, who had the
audacity to state on C-SPAN: “For anyone to say that our support for Israel
doesn’t hurt us in the Muslim world is to just defy reality.”
The Likud Lobby got Scheuer fired from his job at the Jamestown Foundation think
tank for his forthrightness, and the Israeli media condemned his C-SPAN remarks
as “blatantly anti-Semitic.” There can be a high price to pay for candor on this
issue.
That is what those behind the noxious language in the NDAA seem to intend. Sens.
Carl Levin and John McCain are said to be the driving force behind the new
language. No one in the Senate or House has received more funding from donor
institutions related to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)
than Levin, a Michigan Democrat.
For his part, McCain loves to demonstrate his unquestioning support for Israel,
no matter what. He has even called for the release of convicted Israeli spy
Jonathan Pollard, who is currently serving a life sentence for passing highly
sensitive, highly damaging U.S. secrets to Israel.
A few weeks ago, McCain parroted Tel Aviv’s line on Iran alleged drive to
acquire a nuclear weapon (for which U.S. intelligence sees no concrete evidence)
and how that creates a “direct existential threat to the state of Israel.”
McCain added that Israel “may feel compelled to neutralize this threat.”
Would it be risking running afoul of the language in the defense authorization
bill to expose this rhetoric for what it is, rubbish, noxious rubbish that makes
it easier for Israel to believe it will enjoy full U.S. support, no matter what,
should Israeli leaders decide to attack Iran?
The supreme irony is that such an attack would probably bring on a major war,
global economic collapse, and possibly the destruction of Israel itself. Oops,
what was that sound at the door? What do you mean, the 82nd is on the front
porch?
Sorry; gotta go. Send cards and letters. My wife will probably be told, in due
course, where they’ve put me. My only hope now is that Rumsfeld, for once, was
telling the truth about detainees having “everything they could possibly want”
in that tropical resort named Guantanamo?
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church
of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. An Army officer and then CIA analyst
for a total of 30 years, he now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).