The Disappeared

Brutal Honesty

I looked at Berlin and laughed. I looked at a city still so giddy with reunion that all its walls are glass. I walked down the line where East met West and pickaxes and words tore down cement. The only sad things in the heart of Old Europe were the U.S. and British embassies, the only two buildings so hated as to require blockades and Jersey barriers. Armed guards with fingers on triggers introduced Berliners to the Stars & Stripes and Union Jack. I laughed at the contrast of barbed wire in the shadow of the transparent Reichstag, at the perceptions of this war.
In a special session of Congress on Sept. 20, 2001, the Man explained "why they hate us:" "They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." Now, leaving aside how rude, useless and bigoted the us/them dichotomy is, I'm struck with just how well they are knocking us around. Bad news -- the terrorists already won.

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) noted after the Patriot Act became law: "Collectively the administration has swept away the independent judiciary, the right to a public trial, the right to an appeal, the right to counsel, due process, equal protection, and habeas corpus."

Ask Jose Padilla how free he feels. On May 8, 2002, Padilla was arrested at O'Hare. The Man directed Rumsfeld to consider Padilla, an American citizen, an "enemy combatant." Being held on suspicion of activities relating to al-Qaeda, the Chicago native has no access to due process, representation, freedom. In June the Supreme Court, 5-4, ruled that his writ for habeas corpus had been improperly filed; the 4 dissenting justices wanted to examine the case on its merits and undoubtedly would have given Padilla back his Constitutional rights.

Ask Federal Judge Jay S. Bybee about the freedom to not be tortured. Bybee is the author of the 50-page August 2002 memo from the Justice department to Bush that explained why Bush and his surrogates could, legally, torture enemy combatants. "As Commander-in-Chief, the President has the constitutional authority to order interrogations of enemy combatants to gain intelligence information concerning the military plans of the enemy." Further, Bybee said that torturing suspected al-Qaeda members abroad "may be justified" and that international laws against torture "may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogation" conducted against suspected terrorists. If this doesn't sound like your America, wake up. It's not Chomsky writing this, it's The Washington Post, June 9, 2004.

We're torturing people. If OBL really is pure evil, he must be warming up to us by now.

He must support the CIA, at whose request at least 100 "enemy combatants" have been held in and outside Iraq as "ghost soldiers." Ghosts are kept of prison/torture room/detention facility rosters. Our armed forces are actually hiding their existence from the Red Cross, one of those far-left groups. "Why would all these people not follow Army regulations, not report violations to the Geneva Convention, wait months to inform commanders of vital information?" Senator Reed, (D-Ri.), asked five sitting generals at a House Armed Services hearing on Thursday. It's simple, Senator: With no identity, no acknowledgement of their existence, and the flimsy invocation of the "enemy combatant" distinction, we can beat them to death.

We're a free people, the freest country in the world, we hear, but our military-industrial corporate complex insists and succeeds in destroying transparency, law and order. A top secret CIA study in September 2002 raised grave doubts on the value Guantanamo prisoners offered (still over 500 nameless, faceless, rightless human beings), yet the government cannot simply open the doors at Camp Delta and say "sorry." It's axiomatic that we're right, they're wrong, and they hate us because we're so free. So the truth is mangled, tortured. We're bombing for peace. We're still occupying the independent Iraq and carrying out air raids on "guerrilla-held" cities.

Our Homeland protectors are protecting us from those who hate our freedom by trashing freedoms. Scorched earth begins at home.

Ariel Dorfman, the Chilean author who was forced to flee his state after its Sept. 11 in 1973, when Pinochet began his purge of "terrorists" presciently compares Operation Condor -- part of South America's dirty wars against "terrorists" that left thousands dead -- to our War on Terror. Reflecting on the anniversary, Dorfman says "I can think of no better way to pay homage to the victims of both attacks, no better way to defeat the terrorists who killed them, than to build a transparent humanity and reject the Pinochet model; no better way of showing respect for their buried lives than to reaffirm our fearless belief in democracy and justice for every inhabitant of this sad and hopeful earth of ours."

The Pinochet model is the Bush model. It is the argument that right-wing governments use to eliminate opposition with every means available, no matter how barbaric and repressive. The "need to limit civil liberties and conceal their deliberations from apprehensive citizens" is a crime against humanity, an excuse to torture, disappear, destroy. Democracy is a joke when its cheerleaders use secret detention facilities and dogs. Freedom is the slogan they're using to get Chevron in Kufa. It's this war's logo, an attractive packaging campaign, no different from Coca-Cola's red swirls. Oddly, the terrorists, they who hate our freedom, have succeeded brilliantly in making us just as evil as they. Under their headline of Islamic Power they're murdering civilians with bombs and jets; under our glossy banner of "democracy-freedom-free markets" we're dropping bunker busters and torturing. So, if they hate us for our freedom, we're already surrendered; they no longer have a reason to hate us.

Jeff Purcell is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at jlp56@cornell.edu. Brutal Honesty appears Mondays.