Spring Break
Bush administration officials join ranks of tyranny
Robert Zaller
Issue date: 6/24/05 Section: Ed-Op
The American playwright Lillian Hellman titled her memoir of the McCarthy years Scoundrel Time. A memoir of this period in American history might well be called Gestapo Time.
It is now more than a year since the revelations of torture and homicide against prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the showpiece of our efforts to "democratize" Iraq, shocked and outraged the world. Torture and suicide at Guantanamo Bay, the concentration camp aptly described by Amnesty International as the gulag of our times, has been on the record for three years. Foreign nationals, recategorized as enemy combatants by basement bureaucrats, have disappeared down these and other black holes around the globe.
They have been denied legal process, access to counsel, and any contact with the outside world. This has no precedent in the law of nations, or in the practice of any but the most repressive dictatorships. Nor have American citizens themselves been spared this treatment. One, Jose Padilla, remains incarcerated without trial in defiance of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Another, Yaser Hamdi, was summarily deported to Saudi Arabia. Two others, Kashan and Zain Afzal, were imprisoned without charge for eight months in Pakistan, interrogated by the FBI, and threatened with deportation to Guantanamo.
This is how fascism comes. It comes through creating legal nonpersons of citizens and noncitizens alike. It comes through violating human rights standards, sanitizing torture, and condoning murder.
It comes through whitewash "investigations" of war crimes that leave the real perpetrators untouched, and a Congress resolutely determined to see and hear no evil. It comes through a press cowed by censorship and a judiciary impotent in the face of constitutional invasion.
Once, Thomas Jefferson wrote of Americans as having a decent respect for the opinion of mankind. We know that the war on Iraq is a war of aggression, in contempt of domestic and international law and in the teeth of worldwide opposition. We know that it has proceeded from bloody conquest to brutal repression, and that its makers intend a permanent military occupation. We know that in pursuit of these objectives, we have established a covert torture network around the globe, using both secret CIA facilities and the good offices of tyranny in Egypt, Syria, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere.
It is now more than a year since the revelations of torture and homicide against prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the showpiece of our efforts to "democratize" Iraq, shocked and outraged the world. Torture and suicide at Guantanamo Bay, the concentration camp aptly described by Amnesty International as the gulag of our times, has been on the record for three years. Foreign nationals, recategorized as enemy combatants by basement bureaucrats, have disappeared down these and other black holes around the globe.
They have been denied legal process, access to counsel, and any contact with the outside world. This has no precedent in the law of nations, or in the practice of any but the most repressive dictatorships. Nor have American citizens themselves been spared this treatment. One, Jose Padilla, remains incarcerated without trial in defiance of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Another, Yaser Hamdi, was summarily deported to Saudi Arabia. Two others, Kashan and Zain Afzal, were imprisoned without charge for eight months in Pakistan, interrogated by the FBI, and threatened with deportation to Guantanamo.
This is how fascism comes. It comes through creating legal nonpersons of citizens and noncitizens alike. It comes through violating human rights standards, sanitizing torture, and condoning murder.
It comes through whitewash "investigations" of war crimes that leave the real perpetrators untouched, and a Congress resolutely determined to see and hear no evil. It comes through a press cowed by censorship and a judiciary impotent in the face of constitutional invasion.
Once, Thomas Jefferson wrote of Americans as having a decent respect for the opinion of mankind. We know that the war on Iraq is a war of aggression, in contempt of domestic and international law and in the teeth of worldwide opposition. We know that it has proceeded from bloody conquest to brutal repression, and that its makers intend a permanent military occupation. We know that in pursuit of these objectives, we have established a covert torture network around the globe, using both secret CIA facilities and the good offices of tyranny in Egypt, Syria, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere.
Viewing Comments 1 - 2 of 3
jad62
jad62
posted 6/24/05 @ 4:34 PM EST
Professor Zaller is a liar and a traitor!
It is insulting to the students who pay good money to attend Drexel University to have Robert Zaller teaching history -- he should instead teach revisionist history -- but that's probably how his lectures wind up anyway. (Continued…)
abercrombie_guy_38
abercrombie_guy_38
posted 6/29/05 @ 9:06 PM EST
If Professor Zaller is appalled at the "torture" at Gitmo, I want his opinions on Drexel's frat houses. Surely worse goes on in those houses than at Gitmo. (Continued…)
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