Human Rights Leaders?
Published by michael May 31st, 2005 in politics, war
Amnesty released an extensive report last week, and I started a post, but ran out of time. Amnesty called for an end to “the gulag of Guantanamo,” alleging that the US has “thumbed its nose at the rule of law and human rights.” In a press release on their site, Irene Khan states,
The USA, as the unrivalled political, military and economic hyper-power, sets the tone for governmental behaviour worldwide. When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity.
Numerous organizations, including the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, have documented violations of human rights and international law by the U.S. both within Guantanamo, as well as throughout the world.
Then of course, the hyperbolic backlash, shredding any semblance of sanity, or as Robert Stribley puts it, “a blast of untempered hypocrisy Bush administration almost caused a rift in the time-space continuum.” That was regarding White House’s Newsweek-bashing I wrote about in my last entry.
Just yesterday, on the much esteemed US television network Fox News, Gen Myers said the camp was “essentially a model facility”. He also said that, “I mean essentially, they’ve (ICRC) been there the whole time. And we get good marks for the way we take care of people.” That wouldn’t conflict with what the ICRC themeselves have to say about the same subject would it?
A number of recommendations have been partly implemented, but the ICRC feels that significant changes need to be made. The ICRC’s dialogue with the US on the conditions of internment and the treatment of internees remains frank and open. Nonetheless, serious divergences of opinion persist on a number of crucial issues.
I wonder if in Myers’ vocabulary the word essentially is less than completely, wholly, and truthfully?
My overview of the skirmish between human rights and public relations wouldn’t be complete without a quote from our Master-in-chief who claims these accusations stemmed from “people who hate America, people that have been trained in some instances to disassemble, [sic] that means not tell the truth”. The word one would presume he was told to say is dissemble, and it means “To disguise or conceal behind a false appearance.” Strange irony that he should say that.
As Saul Williams put it when I went to go see him live a week or so ago, we really have come a long way to have the actual archetype of what is wrong with our political and social paradigm in the office of the president. Saul interprets this as progress on a grand scale, in a sincere and non-mocking way. I am with him in his vision of optimistic change for the better, even while the partisian vitriol can be so discouraging.
As a followup to the Newsweek story, Wikipedia has an incredible broad evolving story: Guantánamo Bay Qur’an desecration allegations, where over a dozen pre- and several post-Newsweek sources are all quoted as having alleged the same things Newsweek was so railed for, namely psychological torture, and specifically desecration of the Qu’ran.
Molly Ivins puts it pretty simply,
So where does all this leave us? With a story that is not only true, but previously reported numerous times. So let’s drop the “Lynch Newsweek” bull. Seventeen people have died in these riots. They didn’t die because of anything Newsweek did — the riots were caused by what our government has done. Get your minds around it. Our country is guilty of torture.
Then came the story today, about the mysterious “Deep Throat” operative having finally come forth for leaking the truth of the criminal activities of the Nixon administration. I read the story and I marvelled at how deeply divided and dualistic our society has become. Today, impropriety of a scale like Watergate I really think would a) never be leaked b) be denied, twisted, and re-hashed in doublespeak so fast as to make 2/3ds of the country quite confused. Really, these are increasingly odd times.
2 Responses to “Human Rights Leaders?”
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There was an investigation launched because of the Newsweek article’s exposing the US government and military mistreatment of the Quran. I heard on NPR this morning that although the specific case of a soldier flushing the Quran down the toilet has not been confirmed, there have been several instances of the Quran being mishandled. Among them were stories of soldiers urinating and allowing it to splash on the prisoners and their Quran, and soldiers throwing water balloons into a cell which splashed the holy book. The tone of these broadcasts is that although there were several cases which supported the Newsweek story, ultimately, they did not do the proper research and they have been proven wrong in their assertions. I do believe that news reporters should extensively research before they report anything, especially such incendiary material. In there somewhere is the question of how much money Newsweek could afford to spend on such research. Undoubtedly the investigation would have exceeded their budget. How much research can they reasonably be expected to do before publishing? Could they at least have cited their story in a less authoritative way? Perhaps by quoting hearsay or rumors? Either way, the investigation did not prove them wrong so much as ill-phrased. Urinating on the Quran is pretty close to flushing it. They were not far from the truth at all.
I wonder how it came to be that we have attempted to disguise our war efforts behind a humanitarian front. Is it really shocking that prisoners are beaten or disrespected? Did we really expect to send soldiers away to fight with respect and empathy, with mercy? It’s a pitiful compromise and an inconceivable twist of logic that we are willing to accept a war as long as human rights are respected. The very definition of war is to diminish the humanity of a people and to crush them and the threat that they pose. Perhaps it is true, like in WWII, that war is sometimes necessary; this does not change what it means to engage in war.
Personally I have no doubt that the Newsweek story was true. To me the issue of precisely how the Qu’ran was mistreated is somewhat irrelevant, suffice it to say that human rights and religious freedoms have been frequently trampled by all players in the war as well as by the guards of US-run concentration camps like Camp X-ray in Guantanamo.
Since you raise the point of what actually happened, and there is clearly, an issue of accuracy in reporting, a perusal of the media is thick with stories that purport the same thing. Why would Newsweek’s story be bogus? There was simply a confidential source who balked under pressure and refused to come foward and cite his sources. He was likely credible, the events likely real and documented (albeit classified) and the political coverup fast and self-righteous.
After all, the disclosure that you cited on NPR was from military sources and was released on a Friday night (typically a good time for bad news to be covered-up and glossed over during the weekend).
Here’s a brief quote from the Washington Post.
The reality is far worse is going on well beyond the public eye, this is obvious from the glimpses that leak despite a thick wall of collusion between a media-savvy administration and a media-web “sin huevos.” Newsweek is a convenient political piñata for the right wing, but the inability to cite a confidential source is far from telling me that the story is bogus.
Why, after all did the administration not bash the Washington Post, the BBC, the Hartford Corant, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Miami Herald, or the New York Times, when they reported mostly identical stories on seperate occaisions?
Here’s a link to the original Newsweek article if you haven’t read it. Oh and you really should peruse the Wikipedia entry on this subject (which is where I drew the list of newspapers from)