Afghanistan Abuses

From the BBC:
Mr Karzai told journalists afterwards that "we are sad" about the abuse of Afghans by US troops, but that it did not reflect on the American people - "these things happen everywhere," he said.

Full story at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4572657.stm

With this line, Karzai manages to simultaneously excuse America as a whole, pacifying his host, George Bush, while actually dissing America. Well, actually while telling the truth, a truth bound to bum out most Americans who care about it a little more deeply than Bush. "These things happen everywhere". "No!", my brain cries, "these things don't happen in America! They don't happen when Americans are in charge!"

But obviously, they do happen. I also yelled "No! - audibly that time - when I first heard about
the pictures from Abu Ghraib. I did the same thing driving my car back in '90, when I was delivering pizzas and I heard on the radio that Congress had voted to go to war with Iraq. I calmed down a bit when Clinton was President, but I remained uneasy when he bombed Kosovo, substituting one horror for another. At least he apparently brought the situation under control. There were not even rumors at that time, as far as I know, of Americans torturing prisoners. I'm sure there were other things I didn't see, awful deaths from bombs, because that is what bombs bring, no matter how carefully targeted. But nothing about willful torture by Americans -- or at least I retain a shred of hope that things really were better under Clinton, and that there are other leaders waiting in the wings who can help us to lift the curtain of darkness further, perhaps further than it has ever been lifted before. Hmm, now I'm quoting old disco songs.

Of course, under Johnson, Nixon, and Bush I, and probably under all the other recent Presidents whom I've left out because they were to some degree less obvious and perhaps less transfixed by power, there were always programs for meddling in international affairs, overthrowing governments, assassinating democratically elected leaders, training troops to brutally suppress insurgencies without regard for civilians. And there was napalm and God knows what else in Vietnam. Japan was also firebombed with napalm in World War II, as was Dresden -- mass torture and death from the air. It was argued that German and Japanese aggression could not be ended in any other way. I will give those who argued this credit for their sincerity. Whether it is true, I cannot say without seriously digressing, since I follow Gandhi in believing that 99.99% of violence is wrong and unnecessary even to counter other violence (although I admit that WWII makes the most interesting case to the contrary, which is another piece).

War. "The horror. The horror," wrote Conrad. America has long been involved in more than its share of this horror, though we were raised to believe we were the good guys most of the time. I can take some comfort from the fact that the Civil War emancipated the slaves.

But face to face torture. In a room, a lone victim with a lone interrogator, or surrounded by a bevy of thugs. Torture, inflicted intentionally, to wring out information, to create fear, occasionally just out of cruelty and a sick sense power. Perhaps other prisoners being brought in to witness the fate to which they could next fall. These are the things that we Americans were raised to believe we despised, because we lived in a land of freedom that was free from torture and did not torture people in other lands, either. Torture was what we read about in newspapers and magazines, and it happened in Nazi concentration camps, Chinese prisons, and Russian gulags. It was unthinkable to Americans. We did not do these things.

"These things happen everywhere." Like innocent people everywhere in the world, we can be horrified when we find out that they do happen, but not blame ourselves for what our government (or, if you insist on keeping one eye shut, a few rogue privates) perpetrates. Here in America, we feel still fairly safe discussing these things, that talking will not lead to our own torture, as we once knew it would for the dissident in the USSR or China. Of course, I feel a little safer speaking out being white and middle class. Being a member of the political party in power might help, too, but I can't claim this affiliation. I'd feel even a little better if I hadn't recently been "selected" for special frisking on BOTH my flight to Washington, DC and back for no reason that is apparent to me other than my interest in politics, which, as I noted earlier, leans heavily toward pacifism. Can this selection be random if they get you coming and going? Was some Homeland Security administrator thinking that I might hold a peace march on the plane, which, being fairly small, might be diverted off its course by the people all stomping their feet and bunching up towards the front? Or does this person like to send subtle hints that we should not be too secure about being outspoken in America?

Maybe I'm just being paranoid, and we should all go back to worrying about muddling through the world ourselves. We should all go shopping.

But no, wait just a cottonpickin' minute. No, no, no, N-O-O-O! Let's get back to the point. We're not supposed to torture anybody, of any ethnicity, on any soil. We're not supposed to train people in other lands to torture. We're not supposed to send our prisoners to these other lands to have our dirty work done for us. We're not supposed to use technicalities in the Geneva Convention and the U.S. Constitution to say that torture, mistreatment, and denial of basic rights are "OK" this time. This is America. We're not the ones that need documents to tell us that torture and mistreatment, even of guilty prisoners, are wrong, and that, by the way, every prisoner is innocent until proven guilty and therefore must get every benefit of the doubt, of openminded inquiry, of representation, of the right to confront one's accusers until proven guilty. Not because we are forced by some document, but because they're human beings and that's what we care about.

What has happened to our standards such that torture has even become subject to debate? How long must even middle aged and older adults continue to lose what innocence they still retained after losing the previous layer of the innocence of childhood, and find out that the world is an even scarier place, and that even America has no special claim to morality, that whatever claim was there before seems to be in rapid decline?

"These things happen everywhere." I have been excused as an American, yet I feel insulted. But the insult comes from the truth in the statement. "These things happen everywhere." Even here. I thought we were special. I keep holding on to childish innocence: "No! We're still special!" My God, give us a reason to keep holding on to the belief that somehow we are still special.