Everyone Okay With this Brand of Justice?

I.

Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)
Letter to three students (1967)

Imagine this scenario: The Second World War has come to a conclusion. The Nazis and the Japanese fascists have been defeated, the great powers have met and decided who will occupy and control what territory, and the armed forces of the Allies are returning to their homelands. And so attention is turned to prosecuting those believed to be guilty of war crimes, the trials of which in the European theater are to take place in the German city of Nuremberg. But wait. Representatives of the four major allies — the U.S., Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union — have met with the top 20 defendants and have reported that these guys are not so bad after all, they are very sorry for what they did, and they promise they’ll never do it again. So, the four major allies have decided not to look backwards, but to look to the future. We’ll not hold any of those Nazis responsible for the crimes they allegedly committed in Nazi-occupied countries or in the concentration and extermination camps in Germany and eastern Europe. We'll just send them home.

Everyone okay with this brand of justice?

II.

I beseech your Majesty, let me have justice, and I will then trust the law.

Elizabeth Hoby Russell (1528-1609)
English diarist and courtier
Spoken to King James I, 1603

Or, imagine this scenario: On April 19, 1995, a bomb planted in a panel truck outside the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City goes off killing 168 people and injuring 450 in the deadliest act of terrorism ever to occur within the United States prior to September 11, 2001. Following an amazingly proficient investigation and some very good luck, three days later Timothy McVeigh is arrested and charged with 11 federal offenses. Although federal prosecutors intended to prosecute McVeigh for his crimes and, if convicted, seek the death penalty, just before his trial is to commence, the prosecutors hold a press conference and state that they have talked at length with the subject and found him not so bad after all, that the guy was sorry for what he did, and that he promised never to do it again. So, despite the trauma to the nation, they decided it was best not to look backwards, but to look to the future. Pursuant to a plea agreement, McVeigh would be sentenced to two years probation, required to wear an electronic monitoring device for six months, prohibited from leaving the country, and would be released on his own recognizance.

Everyone okay with this brand of justice?

III.

More than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. And many others have met a different fate. Let’s put it this way: They are no longer a problem for the United States. . . . One by one, the terrorists are learning the meaning of American justice.

President George W. Bush
2003 State of the Union Address

Or this one: In March 2004, members of the United States military are found by a commission headed by Major General Antonio M. Taguba to have committed the following acts of “intentional abuse of detainees” at the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq: “punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet; videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees; forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing; forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time; forcing naked male detainees to wear women’s underwear; forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped; arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them; positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture; writing “I am a Rapest” (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked; placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee’s neck and having a female soldier pose for a picture; photographing a male MP guard having sex with a female detainee; using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee; and taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.”

Following publication of what became known as the Taguba report, one male military policeman is sentenced to ten years in a military prison, one female military policewoman is sentenced to three years, and a female commissioned officer is demoted. Not one person higher in command, military or civilian, is touched by the military justice system. Meanwhile, the reputation of the United States world-wide is trashed, the military demoralized, the nation embarrassed and outraged, the Bush administration reduced to stupid and inane retorts and excuses — and, oh yes, Major General Taguba forced into retirement for effectively carrying out his assignment. That done, our government decides it’s best not to look backward, but to look to the future.

Everyone okay with this brand of justice?

IV.

We're a nation of law. We adhere to laws. We have laws on the books. You might want to look at these laws, and that might provide comfort to you.

President George W. Bush
after being asked if torture was justified
June 10, 2004

We need to get to the bottom of what happened — and why — so we make sure it never happens again.

Senator Patrick Leahy (D.VT)
Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee

And how about this one? Following the issuance of legal memoranda by the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice in 2002, the Pentagon and the CIA develop an “enhanced interrogation program” (as former Vice President Cheney recently called it) at several prison sites including Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, and a number of secret or “dark” sites located elsewhere in the world (Syria, Morocco, Thailand, Poland). The techniques authorized in connection with this system include waterboarding (simulated drowning), walling (use of a plastic neck collar to throw detainees against a wall), head slapping, sleep deprivation, light deprivation, excessive exposure to light, excessive exposure to sound, exposure to extreme hot and cold temperatures, stress positions, removal of clothing, threats to family, wrapping a detainee’s head in duct tape, use of military dogs — the list goes on and on. (Some of these techniques meet the internationally accepted definition of torture, some are referred to cynically as “torture light.”)

After years of detention (often in solitary confinement) without being charged, without the benefit of an attorney, and without trial, and after more than seven years of habeas corpus litigation in federal courts resulting in four important Supreme Court decisions favoring the detainees, as well as continuing requests by the ACLU for the production of documents and photographs pursuant to a federal statute, some of the procedures and some of the persons involved in the development and implementation of these procedures are brought to light. At this point, despite investigations and findings by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Senate Armed Forces Committee, not one person, military or civilian, responsible for enhanced interrogation practices is touched by either the military or civilian justice systems. Nonetheless, the president states that the CIA operatives who administered torture would not be prosecuted criminally; and, indeed, should they be sued in civil court by their victims for their wrongdoings, the United States would pay any judgment entered against them and pay their attorney fees as well. In addition, although several federal courts order release of the photographs of the acts of torture, the Obama administration announces it will oppose their release in further court proceedings. The reason? It’s time to “move beyond a dark and painful chapter in our history,” said the president.

Everyone okay with this brand of justice?

By using torture, we Americans transform ourselves into the very caricature our enemies have sought to make of us. True, that miserable man who pulled out his hair as he lay on the floor at Guantanamo may eventually tell his interrogators what he knows, or what they want to hear. But for America, torture is self-defeating; for a strong country it is in the end a strategy of weakness. . . . [T]he road back — to justice, order and propriety — will be very long. Torture will belong to us all.

Mark Danner
Author and Journalist
“We Are All Torturers Now”
New York Times (January 6, 2005)



And oh, by the way, as I'm sure you know, the first two scenarios are fictitious. The last two are true (so far).

Where Have All the Protests Gone?

On Monday of this week (May 11), IndyFlix sponsored a showing of “Finding Our Voices” at the State Theater in downtown Traverse City. This is a film about the ways in which Americans expressed their dissent to the war in Iraq over the past eight years. It features the voices of six persons: the mother of a New York City fireman killed on 9/11 at the World Trade Center; the mother of a young soldier who was killed in Iraq, three weeks after he returned, reluctantly, for his second tour of duty; a soldier who was a squad leader in Baghdad who, when furloughed home refused to follow orders to return to Iraq, went AWOL, became a conscientious objector and spent nine months in a military prison; another soldier who became entirely disenchanted with what he saw and did in Iraq and founded an organization of Iraq veterans against the war; a social activist and the founder of Code Pink; and a black Christian minister-activist from New York City. The most recent peace demonstration shown in the film took place at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis last summer.

The film, and the lives of those it featured, was inspiring. But the predominant feeling I had watching it was sadness, sadness over the fact that we in this country have lost our way and that in spite of the good things that have happened since last November, we still haven’t found it. Dazzled by the election, dazzled by the inauguration, dazzled by the first 100 days, we are, sadly, still lost. I had the feeling that if my one of my highschool-age grandkids would have seen the movie with me, she might have said, “Grandpa, this movie is sooo over, it’s sooo yesterday.”

Which reminded me of the piece by Dexter Filkins that appears in the current issue (May 20) of The New Republic (www.tnr.com). Filkins is a reporter for the New York Times and is one of the most respected war correspondents in the world today; he covered the war in Iraq since its inception (out of which came his acclaimed book, The Forever War) and is now doing it all over again in Afghanistan. I’m not going to tell you what Filkins said in his article (which is a review of Thomas Ricks’ new book on the surge, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008); I’m going to quote verbatim its first two paragraphs:

“From centrality to banality: perhaps no other event in modern American history has gone from being contentious to being forgotten as quickly as the war in Iraq. Remember the war? It consumed a trillion American dollars, devoured a hundred thousand Iraqi lives, squandered a country’s reputation, and destroyed an American presidency. Given the retreat of the American press — the first American withdrawal from Iraq, you might say — one could almost be excused, in the spring of 2009, for forgetting that 140,000 American troops are still fighting and dying there.

“That an undertaking as momentous and as costly as America’s war in Iraq could vanish so quickly from the forefront of the national consciousness does not speak well of the United States in the early twenty-first century: not for its seriousness and not for its sense of responsibility. The American people, we are told, appear to be exhausted by the war in Iraq. But exhausted by what, exactly? Certainly not from fighting it. The fighting is done by kids from the towns between the coasts, not by any of the big shots who really matter. And they are not exhausted by paying for it, either: another generation will do that. No, when Americans say that they are tired of the war in Iraq, what they really mean is that they are tired of watching it on television or of reading about it on the Internet. As entertainment, as Topic A, the agony has become a bore. 'A car bomb exploded today in a crowded Baghdad marketplace killing 53 and wounding 112.' Click.”

There were about 25 people there to watch the film Monday evening, one of the lowest turn-outs of the IndyFlix series at the State.

“Finding Our Voices.” Ho-hum.

It was so over, so yesterday.

Click.


Postscript

I shouldn’t mislead you. Despite his intelligence and incisive reporting, you’re probably not going to find Dexter Filkins in the front lines of an anti-war demonstration. He’s too much a “realist” for that and, besides, he (and Thomas Ricks) are of the view that the United States has so terribly and so tragically screwed things up in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East that we can’t in good conscience just get up one morning, blow a bugle, and march out of there.

Moreover, he and Ricks are also of the view that, though the results are not all in, the surge appears to have been a success, at least for the short term. Filkins writes: “Today, in the spring of 2009, it no longer really matters whether Bush was brilliant or stupid, a man who listened to reason or an idiot savant struck, Forrest Gump-like, by a fleeting insight. Whatever one’s view of the war, it is impossible to deny that in the eleventh hour Bush was right. The gamble has worked, at least so far.”

Nonetheless, the “greatest irony of the surge,” says Filkins, is that, even if temporary, even if “the outcome of the war in Iraq is still up for grabs,” its success has “all but ensured an even longer American commitment to the people of Iraq. And, we might as well add, to the people of Afghanistan.” Filkins then comes on with this admonition: “America, take note: we are still in the middle of two terrible and complicated wars, and we are likely to be fighting them for many years to come, even if we lose.”

So much for over. So much for yesterday.

Maybe, just maybe, with this realization, the peace movement in this country — and in our community — can find its voice, once again.

Double Standard?

On Friday, April 17, an article appeared on the front page of the local Traverse City newspaper stating that “President Barack Obama absolved CIA officers from prosecution for harsh, painful interrogation of terror suspects,” which is to say, absolved them from prosecution for the acknowledged crime of committing torture. Contemporaneous with this announcement, the White House released four Bush-era legal memoranda graphically detailing — and authorizing — such tactics as slamming detainees against walls, slapping detainees, waterboarding them, and keeping them naked and cold for long periods. A couple of days later it was revealed that waterboarding, which now meets everyone’s definition of illegal torture, was used by the CIA 266 times on just two “key prisoners” alone. It goes without saying that where the tactics amount to torture, their use constitutes a war crime.

In issuing what in effect was a grant of immunity, the president said he wanted to move beyond “a dark and painful chapter in our history.” “Nothing will be gained,” he added, “by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past,” by which he meant the past seven years. Attorney General Eric Holder said, “It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department.” Holder, in fact, went a great deal further when he gave assurances that the CIA officials who were involved would be given free legal representation in any legal proceeding or congressional investigation related to the program and would repay any financial judgment reandered against them.

In legal parlance, the Obama Administration has, first, contrary to the precedents emanating from the Nuremberg Trials, recognized the defense of “following orders” as an absolute bar to criminal or civil legal action against those persons who committed torture. Second, it has undertaken not only to hold harmless those responsible for torturing detainees in our name, but will indemnify them for all judgments and costs, including attorneys fees, they may incur in the process of defending themselves for their criminal acts.

✧

Two days earlier, on Wednesday, April 15, the same Traverse City newspaper, this time on page 6A, reported that 89-year old John Demjanjuk, an accused Nazi death camp guard who now suffers from multiple serious health problems, had been removed in his suburban Cleveland home in his wheelchair by six immigration officers. Federal officials planned to place him on a stretcher, sedate him heavily, and, together with a physician, a nurse, and a guard, fly him to Germany. He was to be deported to Munich where he would stand trial for allegedly being an accessory to thousands of deaths committed during World War II at the Sobibor Prison Camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. As the van into which he was placed left his home, Vera, Demjanjuk’s wife, “sobbed and held her hand to her mouth. As the van moved down the street, Vera turned and waved, sobbing in the arms of a granddaughter.”

Later that day, a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay of the deportation order. Demjanjuk was returned to his home and, for the time being, that’s where he remains.

Ivan (John) Demjanjuk was born in 1920 in Kiev, Ukraine. In 1940, at the age of 20, he was recruited into the Soviet army and was captured by German troops in May 1942. While in a German prison camp Demjanjuk, allegedly in return for some measure of freedom and security, was either enticed or volunteered to become a German prison guard, for which he was trained in the Trawniki Concentration Camp in eastern Poland. It is alleged that he later spent time as a guard at Treblinka and Sobibor where the atrocities of which he was later charged were allegedly committed. Demjanjuk denied the charges, and asserted that he was imprisoned by the Germans until the end of the war when he was liberated by the Russian army.

After the war, Demjanjuk, his wife, and his daughter made their way to the United States, ultimately residing in Cleveland. He worked for the Ford Motor Company. The family obtained citizenship in the Untied States. But Demjanjuk’s alleged past caught up with him, and after much legal wrangling, he was deported to Israel to stand trial for war crimes. He was convicted in 1988 and sentenced to death by hanging. In 1993, however, his conviction was reversed by a unanimous Israeli tribunal largely on the basis of testimony of other prison guards and the conclusion that his identity as “Ivan the Terrible” had likely been mistaken. By then, Demjanjuk had spent six years on death row and eight years in solitary confinement. Israeli authorities decided not to retry him for the reason, among others, that to do so would constitute double jeopardy.

After his release, Demjanjuk returned to the United States where his citizenship was restored in 1998. However, the Justice Department again filed civil charges against him in 1999 and again in 2001, and, in 2004 the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals again ordered that he be stripped of his American citizenship. A year later, Demjanjuk was ordered deported to Ukraine, a decision which over a couple of years was upheld all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the summer of 2008, however, Germany’s top Holocaust crimes prosecutor filed extradition papers designed to bring Demjanjuk to Germany for trial, and in March of this year he was formally charged in Germany with being an accessory to the commission of 29,000 murders at the Sobibor extermination camp in eastern Poland in 1943. The United States was in the process of carrying out the German extradition order when the order staying Demjanjuk’s deportation was issued on April 14.

✧

One can only wonder why the United States has such an abiding interest in forcibly sending a seriously ill, 89-year old man, a citizen of the United States, 3,000 miles to another country for what must be about the tenth time he has faced trial for war crimes that were allegedly committed 67 years ago, and for which he has been tried and acquitted by the State of Israel, the nation of the people most affected.

One can only wonder why the United States has such an intense interest in granting immunity and indemnification to an unknown number of United States citizens, operatives of the CIA, for the acknowledged commission of war crimes, the details of which have been documented in detail, against at least 28 citizens of foreign countries, during a war that is still going on and which crimes were committed within the past seven years, for which the perpetrators have never even been charged.

This wouldn't amount to a double standard, now would it?

The Sermon at Mason Temple

On April 3, 1968, forty-one years ago this past Friday, a Baptist minister delivered a sermon at Mason Temple, the world headquarters of the Church of God in Christ. Mason Temple is located in Memphis, Tennessee. It was a rather long sermon. Here’s the last part of it —

“You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, "Are you Martin Luther King?" And I was looking down writing, and I said, "Yes." And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that's punctured, you drown in your own blood — that's the end of you.

“It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I've forgotten what those telegrams said. I'd received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I've forgotten what that letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I'll never forget it. It said simply,

“‘Dear Dr. King — I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School. . . . While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I'm a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze.’

“And I want to say tonight — I want to say tonight that I too am happy that I didn't sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. . . .

“If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1961, when we decided to take a ride for freedom and ended segregation in inter-state travel.

“If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent.

“If I had sneezed I wouldn't have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill.

“If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had.

“If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been down in Selma, Alabama, to see the great Movement there.

“If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been in Memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering.

“I'm so happy that I didn't sneeze.

“. . . . Now, it doesn't matter, now. It really doesn't matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us. The pilot said over the public address system, ‘We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with on the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we've had the plane protected and guarded all night.’

“And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

“Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.

“And I don't mind.

“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

“And so I'm happy tonight.

“I'm not worried about anything.

“I'm not fearing any man!

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”


At a minute past six the next evening, forty-one years ago yesterday, on the balcony in front of Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, a shot rang out. The bullet smashed into his face, shattered his jaw, drove to the back of his neck, down his spinal cord, and lodged in his shoulder.

Minutes later, Martin Luther King, Jr. was dead.

The School of Americas Bites Back

A recent issue of Parade Magazine (March 29, 2009) contains an article entitled “What’s Wrong With Our Prisons?” written by Senator Jim Webb (D. VA) which focuses on two consequences of the drug trade in Mexico and the United States. Curiously, however, just one of the consequences deals directly with our prisons, while the other concerns the enhanced danger to American citizens created by Mexican drug cartels.

First up, Senator Webb tells us that persons imprisoned for drug offenses rose from 10% of the inmate population to about 33% between 1984 and 2002. Moreover, 47.5% of all the drug arrests in our country in 2007 were for marijuana offenses, and nearly 60% of those serving time in state prisons had no history of violence or of any significant drug selling activity. On top of it all, there’s a well-known racial bias built into the system of prosecuting drug offenders in this country in that African-Americans, who comprise about 12% of the U.S. population, account for 37% of those arrested on drug charges, 59% of those convicted, and 74% of drug offenders put in prison.

What this adds up to is that the United States now has the world’s highest incarceration rate, by far. With 5% of the world’s population, we house 25% of the world’s prisoners. We currently imprison 756 inmates per 100,000 residents, more than five times the average worldwide — resulting in the fact that one out of every 31 adults in the US is either in prison, in jail, or on supervised release.

This said, Senator Webb then segues into the second problem — the increase in crime along our southwestern border caused by the traffic in drugs masterminded by Mexican cartels, the profits of which are said to reach $25 billion annually. The cartels, which exert absolute control over certain parts of Mexico and took the lives of more than 6,000 Mexicans last year alone, are also said to be running operations in 230 American cities. With 370 kidnapings last year, they have turned Phoenix, Arizona, into the kidnaping capital of the country, second to Mexico City in the hemisphere. Moreover, according to Senator Webb, the cartels “are known to employ many elite former soldiers who were trained in some of America’s most sophisticated military programs.”

Senator Webb reaches two conclusions which, when combined, create a rather strange tandem. He declares, first, that “we are not protecting our citizens from the increasing danger of criminals who perpetrate violence and intimidation as a way of life,” and, second, that “we are locking up too many people who do not belong in jail.” The remedy for this? The best the Senator can do is: “American ingenuity can discover better ways to deal with the problem of drugs and nonviolent criminal behavior while still minimizing violent crime and large-scale gang activity.”

While I sort of admire Senator Webb, it seems to me that, like a lot of politicians, he’s long on problems and short on solutions. With all due respect, however, when it comes to solutions, partial or otherwise, here are two: First, regarding the drug trade and the high prison population in this country — legalize marijuana, then regulate it and tax it. Second, regarding the involvement of American-trained “elite former soldiers” now working for the Mexican drug cartels, stop training them, Senator — which means closing the School of the Americas where those “elite former soldiers” undoubtedly received their training.

The School of Americas was initially established in Panama in 1946, but was kicked out of that country in 1984 under the terms of the Panama Canal Treaty. In 1984 it was re-established at Fort Benning, Georgia, where, ever since, Latin American security personnel have been trained in combat, counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics tactics and strategies. The purpose of the School for the most part has been to train “elite” forces which would support American interests by supporting Latin American dictators.

By now it’s clear that graduates of the School of Americas are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America. Among the SOA's nearly 60,000 graduates are notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. Lower level graduates of the School were responsible for the Uraba massacre in Colombia, the El Mozote massacre of 900 civilians in El Salvador, the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the massacre of 14-year-old Celina Ramos, her mother Elba Ramos and six Jesuit priests in El Salvador and hundreds of other human rights abuses.

On November 16, 1989, a US Congressional Task Force issued findings that those responsible for the massacre in El Salvador of the six Jesuits, their co-worker and her teenage daughter were trained at the Army School of the Americas. In a tiny apartment in Fort Benning a year later, the SOA Watch designed to monitor the School of Americas was founded by Father Roy Bourgeois. Father Bourgeois is an American Maryknoll priest, former US Naval officer, and a veteran of the war in Vietnam where he was awarded a Purple Heart. He became a Catholic priest in 1972 and went on to work with the poor of Bolivia for five years before being arrested and forced to leave the country, then under the repressive rule of dictator and SOA graduate General Hugo Banzer. Father Bourgeois had become involved in the US policy in El Salvador years before he started SOA Watch after four US churchwomen — two of them Maryknoll sisters and friends of his — were raped and murdered by Salvadoran soldiers in 1980.

Former Panamanian President Jorge Illueca stated that the School of the Americas was the “biggest base for destabilization in Latin America.” Then Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II, a supporter of SOA Watch and a friend of Father Bourgeois, said, “the U.S. Army School of the Americas became a school that has run more dictators than any other school in the history of the world." Over the years, the School has produced at least eleven Latin American dictators. In 2001, the Pentagon renamed the SOA the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation” (WHISC) because of the bad publicity caused by the SOA Watch which, among other things, had effectively renamed it the “School of Assassins.”

On September 20, 1996, after lying about their existence for years, the Pentagon was compelled to release seven training manuals prepared by the U.S. military and used in Latin America and in intelligence training courses at the SOA between 1987 and 1991. The manuals — one of which was entitled, “Terrorism and the Urban Guerrilla” — taught repressive techniques and promoted the violation of human rights throughout Latin America; they contain instructions in motivation by fear, bounties for enemy dead, false imprisonment, torture, execution, and kidnaping a target's family members. Joseph Kennedy said "These manuals taught tactics that come right out of a Soviet gulag and have no place in civilized society." The Pentagon admitted that they were a "mistake" and were merely the product of an unknown lower-level military operative’s excessive zeal. They had never been “officially cleared for publication” declared the Pentagon, so no one was to blame. Appeals to President Clinton, with the weirdest of logic, were referred back to the Pentagon. The SOA manuals were, in a sense, the moral equivalent of those that would later govern the treatment of prisoners at Abu Gahrib and Guantanamo, and their exposure was treated with similar denial and obfuscation by the military.

Protest demonstrations — which are actually peaceful, nonviolent vigils — are conducted every November by the SOA Watch. Over the years, they have grown considerably; a friend of mine who was there reports that 22,000 persons were at the gates of Fort Benning in 2006. As a result of arrests of SOA Watch protesters, usually for trespassing on a federal military installation or “disturbing the peace,” 237 human rights defenders have collectively spent over 98 years in prison, and more than 50 persons have served probation sentences. The protest held this past November resulted in six more arrests, six more convictions, and six more persons serving time in federal prisons.

To give you a flavor of who does the protesting, the “2008 SOA Six” included Father Luis Barrios, an episcopal priest and college professor who teaches courses on gangs, criminal justice, US-Latin American foreign policy, and Latin Studies at City College of New York; Theresa M. Cusimano, a lawyer and public interest advocate for twenty years from Colorado; Kristin Holm, 21, a first year student at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago; Sister Diane Therese Pinchot, of the Ursuline Sisters of Cleveland, a school teacher and sculptress; Al Simmons, 64-year-old retired pre-school teacher and Vietnam vet who has been involved in peace and social justice campaigns “for the past forty years;” and Louis Wolf, 69 years old, a conscientious objector, author, and third-world traveler.

From our area, Kay and Randy Bond have protested the SOA in Fort Benning twice (arrested once), and Sally Neal has been there and done that five times. There may be others. In 2007, Valerie Fillenwarth of Indianapolis, the wife (of 45 years) of a Notre Dame law school classmate of mine, a former Maryknoll sister, the mother of seven and grandmother of 17, served 100 days in the Danbury Correctional Center in Danbury, Connecticut, for trespassing at Fort Benning (a Class B Misdemeanor), though she’d never before received even a traffic ticket. And, of course, Father Bourgeois himself has been imprisoned many times for nonviolent protests at Fort Benning, just as he has been imprisoned many times in many countries throughout Central and South America.

It was only a matter of time, I suppose, that creating a facility like the School of Americas to train soldiers to do the dirty work of American-sponsored dictators south of our borders would result in a situation in which those very soldiers, or others like them, began performing the same kind dirty work for vicious criminal cartels that threaten our own national interests today. The saying may be trite, but it applies: What goes around, comes around.

In 2007, a bill in the US House of Representatives designed to close the School of Americas was defeated by just nine votes, 203 to 214. Representatives Bart Stupak and Dave Camp from northern Michigan voted in favor, and Peter Hoekstra voted against the measure. Overall, with just 76.6% of House Democrats and 11.4% of the Republicans voting in favor two years ago, it’s hoped that a similar bill will pass in the new Congress this year.

By the way, one of the consistent supporters of the effort to close the School of Americas in the United States Congress is Dennis Kucinich. However you may have voted in last year’s primary, Mr. Kucinich has to be the friend of every person in this country who calls him- or herself a liberal.

Anyway, with thanks for his article on the prison problem, as far as it goes, I do have some free advice for Senator Webb — Close the School of Americas, Senator. And have a talk with Dennis. Soon.

Quote of the Day. There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. — Elie Wiesel

Joke of the Day. How many watched the president’s news conference last Tuesday night? He got a little testy there, you know. When he was asked why he waited three days to speak out against the AIG bonuses, President Obama said he likes to know what he’s talking about before he speaks. So, yet another reversal of the Bush policies. — Jay Leno

"Malapropism" Defined

Former President George W. Bush recently gave his first address since leaving the presidency. He delivered it, not at a military installation in the United States, his favorite venue while in office, but in Calgary, Canada. There were no reporters, no TV, no radio coverage of the speech and, in fact, the whole deal seemed clothed in secrecy. Two things we do know, however: we know that Mr. Bush went to the auditorium from his hotel via an underground tunnel, thereby avoiding a mass of protesters outside wielding, you guessed it, shoes, shoes of the “throw these at George” variety; and we also know he charged his listeners, whoever they were, a ton of money. (George was quite candid about one of the things he planned to do upon leaving office: “refill the ol’ coffers,” he said on several occasions.)

Notwithstanding all the secrecy, there were the inevitable “leaks” regarding the big secret, that is, leaks about what it was he said. One of them is that in the speech he described a book he was writing, or intending to write, the subject of which is something like “the 12 toughest decisions” he made as president. Reportedly, Bush has no interest in (nor, it might be added, the ability for) writing a full-blown, detailed memoir like so many persons do after leaving high office. (Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld, among others, are said to be doing that right now. Can hardly wait, can you?) So, he’s content to regale us with a few high points (or, low points, as the case may be) he experienced as “The Decider” over the past eight years. The underlying reason for writing such a book, he went on to say, was that when the history of his presidency is written “at least there [will be] an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened.”

Whoa. As we must when listening to Mr. Bush for any length of time, in order to figure out what he was trying to say it's a good idea to turn to the dictionary. The word “authority” means “an accepted source of information or advice.” The word “authoritarian” is defined as “characterized by or favoring absolute obedience to authority, as against individual freedom.” And “malapropism” means “ludicrous use of a word, especially by confusion with one of similar sound.” It’s pretty evident that, if there were a Nobel Prize for malapropisms, Mr. Bush would be a shoo-in, after which the Nobel Committee would retire the prize altogether.

As Rachel Maddow, reflecting on Mr. Bush’s speech, remarked: “Not all Freudian slips are created equal.”


You Know It’s Bad When . . . . You know those junk-mail “come-ons” we receive on a regular basis from credit-card companies trying to entice us to join up? Well, American Express has a new spin on that undertaking. Rather than luring new customers with cash rewards as it once did, AmEx is now offering selected customers a $300 prepaid gift card if they pay off their balances and close their accounts. Yep, AmEx is now paying some customers not to do business with it anymore.

“The intention is to help cardholders lower their debt and encourage responsible management of their credit,” said an AmEx representative. “It’s being promoted as a means for customers to 'simplify their finances.'” Yea, right. I’ll bet this type of credit assistance wasn’t on the mind of AmEx when it signed people up in the good ol’ days, encouraging them to spend profligately at every conceivable opportunity and to reward them when they did. What AmEx is actually doing is giving some not-so-good customers 300 bucks as an incentive to "simplify" things by paying off AmEx. This recently adopted strategy is a “huge paradigm shift,” according to CardRatings.com, a credit-card review web site. They expect “other large companies to follow suit with offers to entice consumers to pay off their balances, as card issuers cope with increasing defaults.”

Quite rightly, consumer advocates don’t see it that way. “It’s a nice way of saying, ‘We want you out and we want to entice you financially to get out,” says CardRatings.com. “It’s not about them handing out $300 out of the kindness of their hearts.” Put it this way: say you have a $5,000 credit-card debt (a not unusually high amount). The $300 “gift card” amounts to a 6% discount if you pay it off and don’t come back. (If the credit-card debt is $10,000, the discount of course is only 3%.) In other words, it’s really a device to dump the folks the credit-card companies have decided are dead-beats.

Speaking of dead-beats . . . . AmEx is one of several credit-card issuers that have closed accounts and increased late fees and interest rates for cash advances in recent months. More significantly, AmEx, that model of financial responsibility, after converting into a bank-holding company in late 2008, received $3.4 billion from the U.S. Treasury in Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds in exchange for a government stake in the company. Okay, TARP was a remedy for the great big dead-beats, but where, we might ask, is the bailout for the little guys — the little dead-beats? Oh, that’s right: they don’t get one because they got themselves into that jam all by themselves. And the big guys didn't. Right.

By the way, you know those ubiquitous credit-card solicitations we receive in the mail I mentioned at the outset? (In the last couple of weeks, I’ve received three just from Capital One.) Harper’s Index says that 5.2 billion such solicitations were sent to Americans in 2008. That means the credit-card people sent out about 20 million each business day, enough to provide every man, woman, and child in the country with 17 solicitations over the period of the year.

And that, folks, on top of the other issues, is a lot of trees.

The Republicans' Man of Steele

I can hardly be called a fan of the Republican Party and normally would relish any form of misfortune that might be visited upon it. But the present state of the Grand Old Party is, well, not so grand; in fact, it’s in such a deplorable condition that it’s embarrassing even for Democrats.

Take a look at the leading major figures in the GOP at this time. They are: Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader who, according to Gail Collins of the Times, has “the natural charisma of an oyster” and often looks like he just swallowed a bad one; John Boehner, the Republican leader in the House, who, best known for his prowess around the tanning salon and his perennial tan, apparently aspires become the congressional version of George Hamilton; Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana, who was given the impossible job of following President Obama’s speech to Congress and whose hapless retort proved beyond doubt that, at least for him, it was impossible; Rush Limbaugh, whose persona is about as ugly as that of Jeffrey Dahmer and who actually claims to be the “defacto” Party head; and, finally, Michael Steele, Chairman of the Republican Party.

Ah, Michael Steele. Now here’s a guy you could really feel sorry for — if he weren’t such an insufferable jerk. Let’s put it this way: Michael Steele is one of just a handful of black persons in the Republican Party, he’s tall and handsome, he dresses well, and his elocution is good — which is to say that, though what most of what he says is bullshit, he says it distinctly. As an example of the latter, Steele, who like most Republicans thinks the President’s stimulus package spends too much money (itself a non-sequitur), claims, rather loudly, that it’s impossible for government spending to create even a single job. “No, Sir,” he has said, “government spending may create work, but it cannot create jobs.” Excuse me? (He actually said this, many times.) And by the way, Michael’s also the guy who, in his speech at the Republican convention last summer gave us that mind-altering slogan, “Drill, baby, drill!” — As Rachel Maddow pointed out recently, Michael loves to use the word, “baby.”)

But poor Michael has other problems. Like paying his sister’s catering business, Brown Sugar Unlimited, $37,262 for services supposedly rendered during Steele’s unsuccessful run for the Senate in 2007; since his sister, once married to the former boxer Mike Tyson, dissolved her company before the payment, some think it’s doubtful the services were ever performed. Or paying more money ($64,000) to a friend’s firm for “political consulting” when the firm turned out to be in the business of trading commodities. Or transferring more than $500,000 in campaign funds without authorization, a claim made by Alan B. Fabian, Steele’s former finance chairman who, incidentally, was sentenced in October to nine years in prison for involvement in a $40 million fraud scheme, unrelated to his work on the Steele senatorial campaign. (These matters are currently being investigated by criminal prosecutors.)

But once on the job at Republican headquarters, Michael did his best to initiate a “change.” Yesssiree, he worked a change alright. Michael, it seems, fired everyone in the office, except for one guy who, apparently finding no one around the water cooler, quit. True. Rachel Maddow reported on March 6 that, except for Michael himself, there is no one working at the Republican Party Headquarters in Washington. It has no political director, no finance director, no communications director, no chief of staff. Just Michael.

So, how does Michael Steele keep busy? Well, for one thing, he’s been trying to do a Republican Party make-over by making it “cool” — that’s right, “cool.” To this end, claiming that “I’m always open to everything, baby, absolutely,” he promised the conservative Washington Times that under his tutelage the Party would come to stand for conservative principles applied “to urban-suburban hip-hop settings.” I don’t know about you, but here in Leelanau County, Michigan, where I’m from, though the citizenry usually votes overwhelmingly Republican (the recent presidential election being a notable exception), “hip-hop settings” are just damn hard to come by. The Republican Party is in dire need of a lot of things, but acquiring a “cool” image is rather far down the list. Maybe they can get Michael off the subject for a while by having the Party regulars all wear Republican baseball caps — with the bills turned backwards.

Michael’s also been busy recently getting into pissing matches with Rush Limbaugh over who’s heading up the Republican Party. In the course of this heady debate, Michael accused Rush of being “ugly and incendiary,” a “smear” for which he was forced to apologize and for which, in fact, he did apologize. Yep, he apologized to Rush for saying something nasty about him! Contrite as an altar boy, Michael said he didn’t mean to question the “leadership” of Rush, for whom he has “enormous respect,” but he’d just been a “bit inarticulate.” Classy guy, this Michael.

Finally, in the weird world of Republican politics, Michael Steele has been trying his best to be an enforcer of the idea that it’s bad for the country for states to accept stimulus funds. This is the reason that the Republican big guns in Congress have uniformly endorsed a “spending freeze,” saying there should be no spending through September, the end of the government’s fiscal year. Now you don’t have to be an expert in Keynesian fiscal policy to know that in a recession or a depression it’s critically necessary to stimulate demand, and that means that somebody out there has to begin buying stuff. We’ve got plenty of supply, as we know: just take a drive by your friendly auto dealer’s lot. But when average folks aren’t buying, then it’s only natural, and necessary, to look to the government to, well, spend; like get involved in public works projects. This is especially helpful when the country is also in need of public works — i.e., new and newly refurbished infrastructure. Need a new bridge, Minneapolis? In passing it should also be noted that in a recent survey 7,500 truckers were asked what they thought were the worst roads in America; they came up with a list of specific highways in six states and “all roads in Michigan, especially I-75 into Detroit.” Need better roads, Michigan?

Anyway, you’ll remember that President Obama was able to garner the necessary sixty votes in the Senate to pass his stimulus package with the help of three Republicans: Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, all of whom are very highly respected members of the Senate. Well, Michael recently went on record saying that as Party head he would not underwrite any of the re-election campaigns of any Republican member of Congress who voted against the Republican position on this issue. This prompted Senator Snowe to ask, “You don’t really mean that, do you, Mr. Steele?” Michael was quick to back down, and replied to the Senator that no he didn’t. But then, characteristically, the next day Michael repeated his threat to disenfranchise such insubordinate congresspersons. This bright move might just have been the proverbial last nail in the coffin for Michael.

Oh, there’s one Republican “leader” I forgot to mention: Newt Gingrich. Good ol’ Newt. Remember “Contract for America,” which was discreetly placed in the trash bin of history back in the mid-90s? Newt recently sent one of those trial balloons aloft saying something about running for president in 2012. (Just think of the Republican primary in three years: Newt v. Huck v. Milt v. Bobby J., etc., all orchestrated by Michael Steele. — Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?) In a sit-down interview before a speech the other night, Newt, in an unusually familial mood, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch: "Callista and I will look seriously and we'll probably get our family totally engaged, including our two grandchildren, probably in January, 2011." He added, “I see the Party heading for a wholly new generation” (whatever that meant).

I don’t know about Callista, who Newt married in 2000, but his grandchildren are surely part of a new generation. As for Newt himself, sounds like the old generation to me.