Tens of thousands of poor South Asians have made their way to Iraq since the U.S. invasion, in the hopes of making money to send home to support their families.
Dishwashers, cleaners, drivers and cooks from countries like Bangladesh, India and Nepal form part of an army of contractors that service America's expensive war.
But the system that gets them to Baghdad is riddled with corruption and exploitation, leaving some South Asians living in hovels, jobless and afraid.
Four months ago, Sushil Khadka, 26, left his wife, his two children and his home country of Nepal for Iraq.
"I'd dreamt of a good job, sending home my salary every month to feed my family, to send my children to school. That's why I came here. But that never happened. The opposite happened. It's terrible," he says.
Now Khadka sits in a hut made out of salvaged cardboard, huddled next to a chain-link fence in a dusty corner near Baghdad's international airport. Flies swarm around splattered bits of old food and dirty blankets.
"They made fools of us," he says. "Had we gotten work, it would've been alright but they took our money and ran away."
He sold the family jewelry — all they had in the world — to pay a recruiter in Nepal $5,000. He says the recruiter promised him a job working for American contractor KBR that would earn him $800 a month — a fortune in Nepal. The average income there is $340 a year.
But when he arrived in Iraq he was told there was no work, he says. The agent who was supposed to help him was arrested and the visa in Khadka's passport was ripped out. He was left to his own devices, scrounging around the airport to find shelter and food.
Khadka is not alone. The 40-or-so men who live with him in this makeshift camp tell similar tales.
Upendra Das, 17, sits on the floor chopping vegetables on a dirty plank of painted wood.
"We eat once a day. Sometimes we can't even do that," he says. "I've been here three months so far. To get here I borrowed from the village moneylender. They charge a lot of interest. I can't leave so I'm still waiting, hoping that I will get some work."
Another group of 1,000 South Asians have been held in a nearby warehouse for several months by KBR subcontractor Najlaa Catering Services, a company based in Kuwait. The men say they had their passports taken away and were confined in substandard conditions.
The U.S. military and KBR say they are investigating.
The U.S. State and Defense departments have issued contracting guidelines that are supposed to protect workers in Iraq.
"As in all things, in Iraq there is a policy in place but there is no one really there to enforce it," says investigative journalist T. Christian Miller, who works for Pro Publica and has written a book called Blood Money about the mismanagement of Iraq's reconstruction.
He says that the abuse of South Asian workers in Iraq is common.
"It's definitely a situation of exploitation. You are talking about the most vulnerable people in the world," Miller says. "The U.S. has contracted some of the most dangerous and dirties jobs to some of the poorest people in the world. At this point, five years into the war, there are no excuses for U.S. companies not to be aware of the issue of human trafficking or labor trafficking."
Back at the Baghdad airport, a representative from the International Organization of Migration (IOM) has just showed up offering the homeless South Asians free repatriation. The IOM heard about the men only 10 days ago.
The men crowd around as Thair Issan hands out forms for them to fill out if they want to go home. Issan says the men's plight is desperate.
"Those are victims," he says. "You see the conditions they're living in. It's a very big humanitarian crisis."
Bangladeshi Mohammad Nazrul Islam says he wants to stay here but he's been told he'll be jailed if he does.
"The Iraqi authorities say ... they will jail us if we stay. If we leave right now, it's OK. But we don't want to leave because we've all paid a lot of money to get here," he says.
Where will we find the money to pay off that debt? he asks desperately, adding that he wants to stay but no one will give him a job.
ed note: The scares of a War President.
Showing posts with label Bush. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bush. Show all posts
Friday, December 12, 2008
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Bush signs legislation to allow US sale of civilian nuclear materials to India
President Bush on Wednesday signed legislation that reverses three decades of U.S. policy and allows American businesses to enter India's multibillion-dollar nuclear market.
The U.S. agreement on civil nuclear cooperation permits American businesses to sell nuclear fuel, technology and reactors to India in exchange for safeguards and U.N. inspections at India's civilian — but not military — nuclear plants.
Critics in India argue the constraints compromise their country's right to conduct nuclear tests. Some private U.S. arms control experts say the deal is likely to speed up nuclear arms competition in Asia.
The Bush administration, however, considers the deal a key achievement of the president's second term.
"By undertaking new cooperation on civil nuclear energy, India will be able to count on a reliable fuel supply for its civilian reactors, meet the energy demands of its people, and reduce its independence on fossil fuels," Bush said at a ceremony in the East Room. "For our part, the United States will gain access to a growing market for civilian nuclear technologies and materials that will help American businesses create more jobs for our people here at home."
The signing of legislation, which approve U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear cooperation, is the result of three years of work by Indian officials and the Bush administration. The president said the measure would build on the growing ties between the world's two largest democracies, the United States and India.
Throughout the Cold War, relations between India and the United States were chilly. In the past decade, however, ties have grown closer in a range of areas, including trade, energy and security. The United States is now India's largest trading partner.
"This agreement sends a signal to the world: Nations that follow the path to democracy and responsible behavior will find a friend in the United States of America," Bush said.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee are expected to sign the overall bilateral nuclear cooperation accord on Friday.
Congress last week gave final congressional approval to legislation authorizing civilian nuclear trade with India, which built its atomic bombs outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
By signing the authorizing legislation, Bush is required to certify that the agreement with India is consistent with U.S. obligations under the treaty, an accord designed to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. He must also certify that it is U.S. policy to cooperate with international efforts to further restrict transfers of technology related to uranium enrichment and the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel.
U.S. opponents of the nuclear agreement say lawmakers rushed consideration of a complicated deal that could spark a nuclear arms race in Asia. The extra fuel the measure allows India to purchase, those critics say, could boost India's nuclear bomb stockpile by freeing up its domestic fuel for weapons.
The U.S. agreement on civil nuclear cooperation permits American businesses to sell nuclear fuel, technology and reactors to India in exchange for safeguards and U.N. inspections at India's civilian — but not military — nuclear plants.
Critics in India argue the constraints compromise their country's right to conduct nuclear tests. Some private U.S. arms control experts say the deal is likely to speed up nuclear arms competition in Asia.
The Bush administration, however, considers the deal a key achievement of the president's second term.
"By undertaking new cooperation on civil nuclear energy, India will be able to count on a reliable fuel supply for its civilian reactors, meet the energy demands of its people, and reduce its independence on fossil fuels," Bush said at a ceremony in the East Room. "For our part, the United States will gain access to a growing market for civilian nuclear technologies and materials that will help American businesses create more jobs for our people here at home."
The signing of legislation, which approve U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear cooperation, is the result of three years of work by Indian officials and the Bush administration. The president said the measure would build on the growing ties between the world's two largest democracies, the United States and India.
Throughout the Cold War, relations between India and the United States were chilly. In the past decade, however, ties have grown closer in a range of areas, including trade, energy and security. The United States is now India's largest trading partner.
"This agreement sends a signal to the world: Nations that follow the path to democracy and responsible behavior will find a friend in the United States of America," Bush said.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee are expected to sign the overall bilateral nuclear cooperation accord on Friday.
Congress last week gave final congressional approval to legislation authorizing civilian nuclear trade with India, which built its atomic bombs outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
By signing the authorizing legislation, Bush is required to certify that the agreement with India is consistent with U.S. obligations under the treaty, an accord designed to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. He must also certify that it is U.S. policy to cooperate with international efforts to further restrict transfers of technology related to uranium enrichment and the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel.
U.S. opponents of the nuclear agreement say lawmakers rushed consideration of a complicated deal that could spark a nuclear arms race in Asia. The extra fuel the measure allows India to purchase, those critics say, could boost India's nuclear bomb stockpile by freeing up its domestic fuel for weapons.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Obama: the change Asia needs?
The rest of the word may not be voting, but even to the most casual observer, it is already widely assumed by commentators that most non-Americans would prefer Barack Obama to win.
Especially since becoming the Democratic Party’s candidate, the international media has been filled with commentaries suggesting it is not just Europeans who see Mr Obama as the candidate of change – but also most Asians, Africans and Latin Americans.
Given the foreign policy views of John McCain, the Republican candidate, this assumption is not surprising. Mr McCain’s continued support for the war in Iraq, and the constant emphasis on his experience in Vietnam – another war where US reliance on military might to change hearts and minds ended in failure – impress few outside America.
But it is also hubris: yet another example of how too many commentators lazily assume that their vision of a United States as ultimately a force for good in the world – whatever its short-term failings – is shared by others.
What is going on is easy to explain. After George W. Bush’s two terms as president, the world’s chattering classes want to see their faith in the American dream and its supposed self-correcting democratic traditions restored.
The best way to do this? Elect the country’s first black president. That way redemption is delivered and American exceptionalism once again held up as a beacon for everyone else to aim for.
Hold on. Many people in the rest of the world may still admire America’s traditional support for liberty and the rights of individuals – notwithstanding the battering both have taking under the Bush administration.
But after the past eight years the bar has been set very low – too low.
Simply electing someone who is black and spent part of his childhood living in a predominantly Muslim country offers no guarantee of real change in America’s foreign policy mentality.
For sure, if elected, Mr Obama would want to rebuild the US’s reputation around the world. But before anyone outside America is called upon to endorse him, we need to know a lot more about his thinking on several key issues.
First – and most important – will he replace America’s exceptionalist view of itself with an awareness that leadership will require a far more sophisticated understanding of its position in a global community of nations?
Even if arguably a waning superpower, it will remain a dominant force in global affairs. But it will have to acknowledge that its rights and powers have accompanying duties and obligations – in particular to involve other countries in debates that accept they have legitimate interests, even if these sometimes clash with those of America.
Where such a change would be most immediately apparent, and where it could also bring the most significant short-term returns, is in the Middle East.
An apology for the invasion of Iraq would be a good starting point, along with a commitment to work with all of that country’s neighbours, including Iran, towards building a stable and peaceful region.
Second, would the US under Mr Obama show leadership in building global co-operation that will be necessary to deal with the threat of global warming?
A useful sign of intent would be an undertaking to agree to international agreements, particularly the successor to the Kyoto Protocol, that will play a key role in shaping the world’s long-term future.
Of course, this will require taking on various domestic sectoral interests, but no one ever said that contributing to global leadership was easy.
Third, would he start working with rather than against the United Nations, with the goal of making it a more effective organisation?
Fourth, will he acknowledge that the Group of Eight nations is an archaic body formed out of the geopolitics of the second world war, but which now needs urgently to be expanded to include China, India, Brazil and an African representative?
And finally, will he make changes to agricultural policy, removing the farming subsidies and support for bio-fuels which between them are having a disastrous effect on the poorest people of the developing world?
Given Mr Bush’s abysmal foreign policy record, it is abundantly clear that the US needs a new approach. Mr McCain so far looks to be offering more or less the same. This should not mean, however, accepting Mr Obama by default. Unless he can demonstrate that the US will finally end its claims to exceptionalism, commentators should refrain from endorsing him.
If Mr Obama can demonstrate a willingness to work towards the creation of a better, fairer and freer world in which America’s role is about facilitation not coercion, then maybe we can offer him conditional support.
For now, while we may not be voting in this November’s election, we need to let the US know that its claims to exceptionalism no longer stand up to inspection and cannot be the basis for foreign policy.
The writer is founder and chief executive of the Global Institute For Tomorrow
Especially since becoming the Democratic Party’s candidate, the international media has been filled with commentaries suggesting it is not just Europeans who see Mr Obama as the candidate of change – but also most Asians, Africans and Latin Americans.
Given the foreign policy views of John McCain, the Republican candidate, this assumption is not surprising. Mr McCain’s continued support for the war in Iraq, and the constant emphasis on his experience in Vietnam – another war where US reliance on military might to change hearts and minds ended in failure – impress few outside America.
But it is also hubris: yet another example of how too many commentators lazily assume that their vision of a United States as ultimately a force for good in the world – whatever its short-term failings – is shared by others.
What is going on is easy to explain. After George W. Bush’s two terms as president, the world’s chattering classes want to see their faith in the American dream and its supposed self-correcting democratic traditions restored.
The best way to do this? Elect the country’s first black president. That way redemption is delivered and American exceptionalism once again held up as a beacon for everyone else to aim for.
Hold on. Many people in the rest of the world may still admire America’s traditional support for liberty and the rights of individuals – notwithstanding the battering both have taking under the Bush administration.
But after the past eight years the bar has been set very low – too low.
Simply electing someone who is black and spent part of his childhood living in a predominantly Muslim country offers no guarantee of real change in America’s foreign policy mentality.
For sure, if elected, Mr Obama would want to rebuild the US’s reputation around the world. But before anyone outside America is called upon to endorse him, we need to know a lot more about his thinking on several key issues.
First – and most important – will he replace America’s exceptionalist view of itself with an awareness that leadership will require a far more sophisticated understanding of its position in a global community of nations?
Even if arguably a waning superpower, it will remain a dominant force in global affairs. But it will have to acknowledge that its rights and powers have accompanying duties and obligations – in particular to involve other countries in debates that accept they have legitimate interests, even if these sometimes clash with those of America.
Where such a change would be most immediately apparent, and where it could also bring the most significant short-term returns, is in the Middle East.
An apology for the invasion of Iraq would be a good starting point, along with a commitment to work with all of that country’s neighbours, including Iran, towards building a stable and peaceful region.
Second, would the US under Mr Obama show leadership in building global co-operation that will be necessary to deal with the threat of global warming?
A useful sign of intent would be an undertaking to agree to international agreements, particularly the successor to the Kyoto Protocol, that will play a key role in shaping the world’s long-term future.
Of course, this will require taking on various domestic sectoral interests, but no one ever said that contributing to global leadership was easy.
Third, would he start working with rather than against the United Nations, with the goal of making it a more effective organisation?
Fourth, will he acknowledge that the Group of Eight nations is an archaic body formed out of the geopolitics of the second world war, but which now needs urgently to be expanded to include China, India, Brazil and an African representative?
And finally, will he make changes to agricultural policy, removing the farming subsidies and support for bio-fuels which between them are having a disastrous effect on the poorest people of the developing world?
Given Mr Bush’s abysmal foreign policy record, it is abundantly clear that the US needs a new approach. Mr McCain so far looks to be offering more or less the same. This should not mean, however, accepting Mr Obama by default. Unless he can demonstrate that the US will finally end its claims to exceptionalism, commentators should refrain from endorsing him.
If Mr Obama can demonstrate a willingness to work towards the creation of a better, fairer and freer world in which America’s role is about facilitation not coercion, then maybe we can offer him conditional support.
For now, while we may not be voting in this November’s election, we need to let the US know that its claims to exceptionalism no longer stand up to inspection and cannot be the basis for foreign policy.
The writer is founder and chief executive of the Global Institute For Tomorrow
Friday, July 18, 2008
War Zero: Nothing Honorable About the Vietnam War
MEvery presidential candidacy relies on a myth. Reagan was a great communicator; Clinton felt your pain. Both storylines were ridiculous. But rarely are the constructs used to market a party nominee as transparent or as fictional as those we're being asked to swallow in 2008.
Still more laughable than the notion of Obama as the second coming of JFK is the founding myth of the McCain campaign: (a) he is a war hero, and (b) said heroism increases his credibility on national security issues. "A Vietnam hero and national security pro," The New York Times calls him in a typical media blandishment.
John McCain fought in Vietnam. There was nothing noble, much less heroic, about fighting in that war.
Some Americans may be suffering another of the periodic attacks of national amnesia that prevent us from honestly assessing our place in the world and its history, but others recall the truth about Vietnam: it was a disastrous, unjustifiable mess that anyone with an ounce of sense was against at the time.
Between one and two million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans were sent to their deaths by a succession of presidents and Congresses--fed to the flames of greed, hubris, and stupidity. The event used to justify starting the war--the Tonkin Gulf "incident"--never happened. The Vietnam War's ideological foundation, the mantra cited to keep it going, was disproved after we lost. No Southeast Asian "dominos" fell to communism. To the contrary, the effect of the U.S. withdrawal was increased stability. When genocide broke out in neighboring Cambodia in the late 1970s, it was not the U.S., but a unified Vietnamese army--the evil communists--who stopped it.
Not even General Wesley Clark, shot four times in Vietnam, is allowed to question the McCain-as-war-hero narrative. "Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president," he argued. The Obama campaign, which sells its surrogates down the river with alarming regularity, promptly hung the former NATO commander out to dry: "Senator Obama honors and respects Senator McCain's service, and of course he rejects yesterday's statement by General Clark."
Even in an article criticizing the media for repeatedly framing McCain as a war hero, the liberal website Media Matters concedes: "McCain is, after all, a war hero; everybody agrees about that."
Not everyone.
I was 12 when the last U.S. occupation troops fled Saigon. I remember how I--and most Americans--felt at the time.
We were relieved.
By the end of Nixon's first term most people had turned against the war. Gallup polls taken in 1971 found that about 70 percent of Americans thought sending troops to Vietnam had been a mistake. Some believed it was immoral; others considered it unwinnable.
Since then, the political center has shifted right. We've seen the Reagan Revolution, Clinton's Democratic centrism, and Bush's post-9/11 flirtation with neo-McCarthyite fascism. Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of Americans--including Republicans--still think we should never have fought the Vietnam War.
"After the war's 1975 conclusion," Michael Tomasky wrote in The American Prospect in 2004, "Gallup has asked the question ("Did the U.S. make a mistake in sending troops to fight in Vietnam?") five times, in 1985, 1990, 1993, 1995, and 2000. All five times...respondents were consistent in calling the war a mistake by a margin of more than 2 to 1: by 74 percent to 22 percent in 1990, for example, and by 69 percent to 24 percent in 2000."
Moreover, Tomasky continued, "vast majorities continue to call the war 'unjust.'" Even in 2004, after 9/11, 62 percent considered the war unjust. Only 33 percent still thought it was morally justified.
Vietnam was an illegal, undeclared war of aggression. Can those who fought in that immoral war really be heroes? This question appeared settled after Reagan visited a cemetery for Nazi soldiers, including members of the SS, at Bitburg, West Germany in 1985. "Those young men," claimed Reagan, "are victims of Nazism also, even though they were fighting in the German uniform, drafted into service to carry out the hateful wishes of the Nazis. They were victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps."
Americans didn't buy it. Reagan's poll numbers, typically between 60 and 65 percent at the time, plunged to 41 percent after the visit. Those who fight for an evil cause receive no praise.
So why is the McCain-as-war-hero myth so hard to unravel? By most accounts, John McCain demonstrated courage as a P.O.W., most notably by refusing his captors' offer of early release. But that doesn't make him a hero.
Hell, McCain isn't even a victim.
At a time when more than a fourth of all combat troops in Vietnam were forcibly drafted (the actual victims), McCain volunteered to drop napalm on "gooks" (his term, not mine). He could have waited to see if his number came up in the draft lottery. Like Bush, he could have used family connections to weasel out of it. Finally, he could have joined the 100,000 draft-eligible males--true heroes, to a man--who went to Canada rather than kill people in a war that was plainly wrong.
When McCain was shot down during his 23rd bombing sortie, he was happily shooting up a civilian neighborhood in the middle of a major city. Vietnamese locals beat him when they pulled him out of a local lake; yeah, that must have sucked. But I can't help think of what would have happened to Mohammed Atta had he somehow wound up alive on a lower Manhattan street on 9/11. How long would he have lasted?
Maybe he would have made it. I don't know. But I do know this: no one would ever have considered him a war hero.
_______
About author
Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge.
Still more laughable than the notion of Obama as the second coming of JFK is the founding myth of the McCain campaign: (a) he is a war hero, and (b) said heroism increases his credibility on national security issues. "A Vietnam hero and national security pro," The New York Times calls him in a typical media blandishment.
John McCain fought in Vietnam. There was nothing noble, much less heroic, about fighting in that war.
Some Americans may be suffering another of the periodic attacks of national amnesia that prevent us from honestly assessing our place in the world and its history, but others recall the truth about Vietnam: it was a disastrous, unjustifiable mess that anyone with an ounce of sense was against at the time.
Between one and two million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans were sent to their deaths by a succession of presidents and Congresses--fed to the flames of greed, hubris, and stupidity. The event used to justify starting the war--the Tonkin Gulf "incident"--never happened. The Vietnam War's ideological foundation, the mantra cited to keep it going, was disproved after we lost. No Southeast Asian "dominos" fell to communism. To the contrary, the effect of the U.S. withdrawal was increased stability. When genocide broke out in neighboring Cambodia in the late 1970s, it was not the U.S., but a unified Vietnamese army--the evil communists--who stopped it.
Not even General Wesley Clark, shot four times in Vietnam, is allowed to question the McCain-as-war-hero narrative. "Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president," he argued. The Obama campaign, which sells its surrogates down the river with alarming regularity, promptly hung the former NATO commander out to dry: "Senator Obama honors and respects Senator McCain's service, and of course he rejects yesterday's statement by General Clark."
Even in an article criticizing the media for repeatedly framing McCain as a war hero, the liberal website Media Matters concedes: "McCain is, after all, a war hero; everybody agrees about that."
Not everyone.
I was 12 when the last U.S. occupation troops fled Saigon. I remember how I--and most Americans--felt at the time.
We were relieved.
By the end of Nixon's first term most people had turned against the war. Gallup polls taken in 1971 found that about 70 percent of Americans thought sending troops to Vietnam had been a mistake. Some believed it was immoral; others considered it unwinnable.
Since then, the political center has shifted right. We've seen the Reagan Revolution, Clinton's Democratic centrism, and Bush's post-9/11 flirtation with neo-McCarthyite fascism. Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of Americans--including Republicans--still think we should never have fought the Vietnam War.
"After the war's 1975 conclusion," Michael Tomasky wrote in The American Prospect in 2004, "Gallup has asked the question ("Did the U.S. make a mistake in sending troops to fight in Vietnam?") five times, in 1985, 1990, 1993, 1995, and 2000. All five times...respondents were consistent in calling the war a mistake by a margin of more than 2 to 1: by 74 percent to 22 percent in 1990, for example, and by 69 percent to 24 percent in 2000."
Moreover, Tomasky continued, "vast majorities continue to call the war 'unjust.'" Even in 2004, after 9/11, 62 percent considered the war unjust. Only 33 percent still thought it was morally justified.
Vietnam was an illegal, undeclared war of aggression. Can those who fought in that immoral war really be heroes? This question appeared settled after Reagan visited a cemetery for Nazi soldiers, including members of the SS, at Bitburg, West Germany in 1985. "Those young men," claimed Reagan, "are victims of Nazism also, even though they were fighting in the German uniform, drafted into service to carry out the hateful wishes of the Nazis. They were victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps."
Americans didn't buy it. Reagan's poll numbers, typically between 60 and 65 percent at the time, plunged to 41 percent after the visit. Those who fight for an evil cause receive no praise.
So why is the McCain-as-war-hero myth so hard to unravel? By most accounts, John McCain demonstrated courage as a P.O.W., most notably by refusing his captors' offer of early release. But that doesn't make him a hero.
Hell, McCain isn't even a victim.
At a time when more than a fourth of all combat troops in Vietnam were forcibly drafted (the actual victims), McCain volunteered to drop napalm on "gooks" (his term, not mine). He could have waited to see if his number came up in the draft lottery. Like Bush, he could have used family connections to weasel out of it. Finally, he could have joined the 100,000 draft-eligible males--true heroes, to a man--who went to Canada rather than kill people in a war that was plainly wrong.
When McCain was shot down during his 23rd bombing sortie, he was happily shooting up a civilian neighborhood in the middle of a major city. Vietnamese locals beat him when they pulled him out of a local lake; yeah, that must have sucked. But I can't help think of what would have happened to Mohammed Atta had he somehow wound up alive on a lower Manhattan street on 9/11. How long would he have lasted?
Maybe he would have made it. I don't know. But I do know this: no one would ever have considered him a war hero.
_______
About author
Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Hanoi McCain, Torture By Andrew Sullivan
Is it not a rather fantastic historical irony that the torture techniques that the North Vietnamese used against McCain that forced him to offer a videotaped false confession ... are now the techniques the Bush administration is using to gain "intelligence" about terror networks.
How is it possible to know that everything John McCain once said on videotape for the enemy was false, because it was coerced, and yet assert that everything we torture out of terror suspects using exactly the same techniques, is true? In fact, McCain at least knew somewhere that his own government knew he existed, that there were procedures to eventually release him, that he was on someone's radar. The average prisoner at Gitmo or in the other parts of the detention program believes that no one will ever save him, that he could be disappeared for ever, that there are no procedures for his eventual release and no government to remember him. If McCain uttered lies on tape to stop the torture, why would an Islamist tell the truth?
Nothing more accurately exposes the classic moral error of the Bush administration and its enablers in war crimes. If the enemy tortures, it defines their moral evil and all intelligence gleaned from such coercion is self-evidently false propaganda. If we do it, it isn't wrong, and it leads to good intelligence.
Got that? And these people have the gall to describe their ideological opponents as moral relativists.
How is it possible to know that everything John McCain once said on videotape for the enemy was false, because it was coerced, and yet assert that everything we torture out of terror suspects using exactly the same techniques, is true? In fact, McCain at least knew somewhere that his own government knew he existed, that there were procedures to eventually release him, that he was on someone's radar. The average prisoner at Gitmo or in the other parts of the detention program believes that no one will ever save him, that he could be disappeared for ever, that there are no procedures for his eventual release and no government to remember him. If McCain uttered lies on tape to stop the torture, why would an Islamist tell the truth?
Nothing more accurately exposes the classic moral error of the Bush administration and its enablers in war crimes. If the enemy tortures, it defines their moral evil and all intelligence gleaned from such coercion is self-evidently false propaganda. If we do it, it isn't wrong, and it leads to good intelligence.
Got that? And these people have the gall to describe their ideological opponents as moral relativists.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Flag-waving questions beg patriot's reply | courier-journal |
As America gears up for its Fourth of July birthday party without all the birthright optimism of its past, much less being able to afford the ice cream and cake, I'm thinking about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the presidential race -- and the price of gasoline.
Today's flag-waving questions for all automatic patriots:
Unless you have family or friends in the military, what kind of real sacrifices have you made to support the men and women fighting these wars -- as in at least being willing to pay for them?
If it turns out our presence in oil-rich Iraq will help feed America's selfish energy needs, does that help justify its cost in tax dollars and lives?
For those with mixed feelings about the war, is there now a tiny part of you saying, yes, we now need to do whatever it takes to boost our steadily slipping standard of living?
Was this war, as many have charged, really about access to oil all along? Since there were no weapons of mass destruction, and democracy in Iraq remains an ethnic-charged illusion, are you willing to rationalize our permanent presence there if it will help keep gasoline under $5 a gallon?
With four giant oil companies -- Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP -- hovering over no-bid Iraqi oil concessions, have all those soldiers died in part to help keep oil company profits at obscenely high levels?
Just something to think about as you drive to the lake.
The presidential race of late has become bogged down in military rhetoric and symbolism -- but what else is new?
The symbolism thing comes way too easily. Barack Obama never served in the military -- the great majority of Americans do not these days -- but John Wayne never did, either. So which one would be your first choice to lead the country into war -- and why?
Gen. Wesley Clark, an Obama supporter who was seriously wounded and won a Silver Star while a company commander in Vietnam, took some verbal shots at John McCain, who was a tortured POW in Vietnam for 5½ years, by saying, "I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president."
Nobody wins at that level of argument -- and Obama backed away from it. But if military record and experience is so important, how did we end up with our present commander in chief?
He used family influence to get into the Air National Guard during a time when that mostly insured not seeing any combat -- and ended up fighting the Vietnam War in Alabama.
Granted, he is now the lamest of ducks, but where was all the military argument -- unless you consider "swiftboating" military patriotism -- the last time around?
Just something to think about on the way to see the kids.
Which brings us to the cost of gasoline to get there. The news headline that most brought that chicken home to roost went, "Energy experts puzzled over oil prices."
They are not alone. From what I've read, the nation's demand is down just a tad, the availability of oil is steady -- and the price at the pump jumps 20 cents a day.
My fully unscientific theory is that we are being had by oil companies -- who will again reap enormous profits -- cynical politics, market manipulators and greed.
Just something to think about while driving to the Fourth of July parade.
Bob Hill's column appears on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach him at (502) 582-4646 or bhill@courier-journal.com. Comment on this column, and read his blog and previous columns, at http://www.courier-journal.com/bobhill
Flag-waving questions beg patriot's reply courier-journal The Courier-Journal
Today's flag-waving questions for all automatic patriots:
Unless you have family or friends in the military, what kind of real sacrifices have you made to support the men and women fighting these wars -- as in at least being willing to pay for them?
If it turns out our presence in oil-rich Iraq will help feed America's selfish energy needs, does that help justify its cost in tax dollars and lives?
For those with mixed feelings about the war, is there now a tiny part of you saying, yes, we now need to do whatever it takes to boost our steadily slipping standard of living?
Was this war, as many have charged, really about access to oil all along? Since there were no weapons of mass destruction, and democracy in Iraq remains an ethnic-charged illusion, are you willing to rationalize our permanent presence there if it will help keep gasoline under $5 a gallon?
With four giant oil companies -- Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP -- hovering over no-bid Iraqi oil concessions, have all those soldiers died in part to help keep oil company profits at obscenely high levels?
Just something to think about as you drive to the lake.
The presidential race of late has become bogged down in military rhetoric and symbolism -- but what else is new?
The symbolism thing comes way too easily. Barack Obama never served in the military -- the great majority of Americans do not these days -- but John Wayne never did, either. So which one would be your first choice to lead the country into war -- and why?
Gen. Wesley Clark, an Obama supporter who was seriously wounded and won a Silver Star while a company commander in Vietnam, took some verbal shots at John McCain, who was a tortured POW in Vietnam for 5½ years, by saying, "I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president."
Nobody wins at that level of argument -- and Obama backed away from it. But if military record and experience is so important, how did we end up with our present commander in chief?
He used family influence to get into the Air National Guard during a time when that mostly insured not seeing any combat -- and ended up fighting the Vietnam War in Alabama.
Granted, he is now the lamest of ducks, but where was all the military argument -- unless you consider "swiftboating" military patriotism -- the last time around?
Just something to think about on the way to see the kids.
Which brings us to the cost of gasoline to get there. The news headline that most brought that chicken home to roost went, "Energy experts puzzled over oil prices."
They are not alone. From what I've read, the nation's demand is down just a tad, the availability of oil is steady -- and the price at the pump jumps 20 cents a day.
My fully unscientific theory is that we are being had by oil companies -- who will again reap enormous profits -- cynical politics, market manipulators and greed.
Just something to think about while driving to the Fourth of July parade.
Bob Hill's column appears on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach him at (502) 582-4646 or bhill@courier-journal.com. Comment on this column, and read his blog and previous columns, at http://www.courier-journal.com/bobhill
Flag-waving questions beg patriot's reply courier-journal The Courier-Journal
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