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COMMENTARY
Gulags: Shooting the
messenger
By Ehsan Ahrari
America was often described
by former president Ronald Reagan as the "shining
city on the hill" and a beacon of hope to the
world. Others talked about American
"exceptionalism" - that is, the
uniqueness of the
country for its unfaltering commitment to uphold
human dignity worldwide. That shining city and
that exceptional force, under the simplistic
slogan of the "war on terrorism", have now created
their own gulags: Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and
Guantanamo Bay prison on the island of Cuba. In
Abu Ghraib there was a widespread abuse of Iraqi
prisoners, while in the Guantanamo Bay detention
facility some detainees - whose crimes were never
proven, and who were never charged with offenses
or given rights to defend themselves - were
tortured and abused. There were reported incidents
of the desecration of the holy book of Islam, the
Koran.
In a speech accompanying
the release of Amnesty International's 2005
human-rights report last week, Irene Khan, the
organization's secretary general, said,
"Guantanamo has become the gulag of our times,
entrenching the notion that people can be detained
without any recourse to the law." She urged the US
to close the detention facility at its Cuban base
and either release or charge its prisoners.
What was George W Bush's response? In a
news conference on Tuesday, he dismissed as
"absurd" a charge by Amnesty International that
his administration has created "the gulag of our
times" at Guantanamo. He went on to add that
allegations of mistreatment originated from
detainees who "hate America" and who were trained
to lie. Bush's dismissive reaction
notwithstanding, something very serious has gone
wrong, and America's status as a global moral
force has been seriously damaged.
G K
Chesterton wrote, "America is the only nation in
the world that is founded on a creed. That creed
is set forth with dogmatic and even theological
lucidity in the Declaration of Independence ..."
Eminent American sociologist Seymour Martin
Lipset, expounding on Chesterton's preceding
statement, observed, "Being an American ... is an
ideological commitment. It is not a matter of
birth. Those who reject American values are
un-American." Such a concept is so unique that all
believers in these values can lay certain claim to
being Americans. The US - or America, as it is
affectionately or even somewhat conceitedly called
- has always stood for freedom, human dignity and
the rule of law.
In the aftermath of the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, most of
these concepts were thoughtlessly ignored, or
purposely discarded. When it came to the
"detainees" - persons arrested in Afghanistan, or
those who were arrested by the Pakistani
government and later handed over to the US
government - it appeared that there were virtually
no rules of law to be followed. It was argued that
the detainees were so dangerous they didn't
deserve any of the civilized or humane treatment
accorded to the accused in the American justice
system. They were not even brought onto US soil.
The government was afraid that the US courts would
insist on applying the standard procedures of the
accused. They were not even called prisoners,
fearing that the next step would be to categorize
them as "prisoners of war". They could not be
called this, legal pundits said, because they were
not wearing any uniforms, or were not part of a
conventional military, when they were captured.
Little thought was given to the fact that the very
nature of their arrest - especially the massive
arrests that were carried out in Afghanistan
during the American military operation - was such
that many innocents might have been among those
rounded up.
The operating rationale for
the perpetration of this American treatment was
the slogan "global war on terrorism". When there
is a war, as the adage goes, there aren't any
rules and everything is fair. How far did the
American prison masters go in extracting
information - called "intelligence" in the
parlance of the "war on terrorism" - from those
detainees? Where were the boundaries of allowable
or decent human behavior? There were no such
boundaries, it seems. The argument was that the US
was dealing with the sworn enemies of America. So,
it followed that all was fair, including insulting
the detainees' religion and their religious
symbols, especially since they decided to commit
acts of terror on America in the name of their
religion.
The systematic brutality,
torture, even murder, of Iraqis in Abu Ghraib
prison gave Saddam Hussein the moniker "the
Butcher of Baghdad". The US's widespread
dehumanized treatment and torture of Iraqi
prisoners forever deprived that country of the
moniker of a "liberator" of Iraq. The worst part
of that tragedy was that no ranking officials were
found culpable for prisoner abuse. Only one
reserve brigadier general was demoted. The worst
that happened to Lieutenant General Ricardo
Sanchez, the ranking military officer who presided
over Abu Ghraib, is that he did not get his fourth
star.
America's top leadership in the
executive branch shared the frame of mind that was
directly responsible for the prisoner abuses in
Abu Ghraib and also was behind similar abuses of
detainees in Guantanamo. The only difference is
that the top leaders were not caught on tape
issuing orders for such actions. However, those
who perpetrated those acts at the lower level of
America's military and intelligence bureaucracies
knew full well what they had to do in order to
crack the prisoners and detainees.
"Enemies" are never treated with humanity
and decency, even in the American conduct of war.
We have known that fact only too well from the My
Lai massacre in Vietnam. The "war on terror" is
different because, despite everyone's denial, it
contains a heavy dosage of religion. That frame of
reference has been constantly alive. America's top
leadership denies it. However, when it is seen
from the ranks of low-level interrogators from the
Central Intelligence Agency or by a young soldier
from the backwoods, the "war on terror" remains
nothing but a religious war. In this sense,
America's exceptionalism has been soiled. The
shining city on the hill appears to be made of
chalk, with fake lights shining on it.
The
question remains whether America's reputation can
be retained, whether that much-touted
exceptionalism may be salvaged and rejuvenated? It
is possible, but not while Bush dismisses the
aforementioned charges of "gulag" as "absurd". The
starting point of correcting any mistakes, undoing
any wrongs - no matter how severe or grave - is
first to admit the mistakes. Unless that happens,
the second step - the earnest implementation of
systematic corrective measures - cannot be taken.
The US has to acknowledge the unfortunate
transformation of its detention system (Abu Ghraib
and Guantanamo) into virtual gulags and apologize
for the behavior of American guards, who behaved
anything but as interrogators of a democracy.
Finally, it will have to allow the international
community to see how those detainees and prisoners
are treated. If the shoe were on the other foot,
the Bush administration would not have accepted
anything less.
Ehsan Ahrari is
an independent strategic analyst based in
Alexandria, Virginia, US. His columns appear
regularly in Asia Times Online. He is also a
regular contributor to the Global Beat Syndicate.
His website: www.ehsanahrari.com.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us for information
on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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