Cowardice, American Style

[nightrain]

For OpEdNews: Sherwood Ross - Writer

Too little has been written about the cowardice of CIA and Pentagon torturers and even less about the stoic courage of their victims. Irrespective of what they might have done, there can be no question that those suffering illegal and criminal tortures are, in fact, more courageous than their tormentors. After all, how much courage does it take to pummel a man tied to a chair or chained to a wall? Answer: A lot less than is required by those who must endure the blows.

<<snip>>

According to one reliable published report, more than 100 prisoners have died in U.S. custody since President Bush launched his "War on Terror," yet this figure may be a pale shadow of the ugly reality, for there are repeated tales of prisoners dragged from their cells in the dead of night and "disappeared"---men whose murders may not appear in any Pentagon or CIA box score. The actual figure could be in the many hundreds or thousands. Bear in mind, too, that U.S. officials running the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are responsible for the crimes committed by any and all of their hired local hit men as well as for the horrendous conditions in the detention camps.

Put yourself for a moment in the shoes of a civilian suspect arrested in Afghanistan by U.S. or U.K. soldiers' who is innocent of any wrongdoing, as the vast majority of them have been said to be by impartial observers. Without being allowed to hire a lawyer or to go before a judge, you are imprisoned for months or years and tortured. Wouldn't being subjected to these criminal acts against the law of nations invest you with a sense of righteousness as well as defiance? As your martyrdom unfolds before your eyes and the frustration of your torturers increases as they try to extract information from you that you do not possess, wouldn't each thorn unjustly impressed into your brow confer upon you a sense of nobility? Conversely, wouldn't each cowardly slap by your torturers further demean them? Who is the nobler: the torturer shouting "god damn you!" or the victim crying out "god help me" or perhaps, even as Jesus once uttered, "father, forgive them"? How different is the CIA practice of banging prisoners' heads into a wall from the acts of the SS men sixty years ago who killed Jewish boys by slamming their heads into walls? It is said the Muslim victims today "only" get concussions, sort of like NFL quarterbacks, but what the CIA agents, like the Gestapo before them, share in common in every case, is cowardice---the powerful thrashing the defenseless.

This cowardice is not confined merely to those who torture. It pervades the White House and Congressional leadership that makes wars against smaller countries that cannot retaliate in kind. Cowardice was also the hallmark of the Office of Legal Counsel hacks who authorized punishments the usually reticent Red Cross felt obliged to describe as "tantamount to torture" that turned the civilized world against America as surely as the evidence of the Rape of Nanking and the Holocaust turned the civilized world against the Japanese and Germans during World War Two. Their cowardice has also spawned in our midst a generation of torturers who inflict ghastly punishments on human beings at no risk to themselves as the Obama regime, under the guise of "looking ahead," will not obey its constitutional obligation to enforce America's statutes against torture. This is not merely political cowardice. It is complicity in a nauseating scenario that degrades America before the world and shows us up for the cowards we are.

<<snip>>

Source--

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Cowardice-American-Style-by-Sherwood-Ross-100701-159.html

edited for spelling

[azul]

1. Imagine if these people being held without trial and being tortured

were Americans, by, say, China. What would America do? Act bravely?

[Angry Dragon]

2. The government would be outraged

and rattle their sabers and puff out their chests and say how dare you do that for we are
the one nation chosen by god to determine the fate of the world

[azul]

3. I think we would buy the US captives with a better US treasury interest rate.

Else we would be forced to drop the big one.

[Demeter]

5. They Wouldn't Do a Damn Thing--Not this bunch

They can't even extend charity to the long-termed unemployed. They aren't going to worry about some fools who ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. They are willing to hold Americans without trial and torture them, themselves.

We are ruled by monsters.

[hayrow]

4. There is alot more to this than the abetting of torture

There will never be an excuse in a "civilized" nation that could allow the criminals, especially the "professionals" and career military for not being required to face justice for their crimes. Equally, this country had 100 senators throughout the eight year junta that were too cowardly to demand an impeachment investigation. I know Senator Feingold is a good and decent person, and easily among the five best senators in the U.S. Senate, but even after it was proven beyond any reasonable doubt that Cheney's right hand outed an undercover C.I.A agent and the so called oppostion party took control of Congress in '06, could only muster up enough courage to call for a meaningless "censure" resolution.

The U.S. is on a one way tram to totalitarinism, primary because of the cowardice of our leaders, especially and including Democrats. Obama may slow the train down slightly, but with the continued non-enforcement of junta crimes, guarentees the worst has yet to come.

[Diclotican]

6. hayrow

hayrow

I think you are right here.. And im suprised that United States of America are not more able to defend itself against tyrans as they are?.. US have been a powerfull nation - and for most of us grown up in the cold war also looked upon as one of the beakon of democracy (even tho i grow up in the end of the cold war) and I and maybe most of us, who are grown now, and who might have children on our own, had allways belived that US was one of the last country to fall for the kind of crap Mr Bush and Co made up in 8 year.. And now a powerfull right wing agenda is pushing true in US regardness of what peopole might think about it..

It is like looking back to the early 1930s, and look at what happend in Germany from 1930 and onward to the war.. Germany was before the war one of the most advanced country in the known world, the peopole was educated, and in most country's german was often the second language to learn, english was not that important in prewar europe as many professions have had part, or whole parts of the education from germany.. Germany had after all, some of europes best universitys (still have, specailly in technical things) and many had either been educated in germany, or know peopole who had been educated there..

But after 1930, and specailly after 1932 when it was clear for most, that Hitler was on the verge of power, and that man was a danger to everyone and everything.. Many warned about Hitler, and also warned about his idelogy.. The regime of Hitler came into power, and the regime of Hitler ended in the ruins of Berlin in 1945... To many had not read Main Kampf, had not understand what Hitler was all about.. And he arrested everyone who would dear to confront him.. Last time Hitler was confronted, was in 1926, when he failed to answer Q%A to some party members.. That party member was arrested shortly after he got into power, and "disapered" to not known destintion.. Most surly killed, and disposed of by SA...

The same thing is happening now in US.. im not saying you would get your own Hitler, but that your country is looking more and more like Weimar Germany in the years going up to the regime of Hitler.. Its like falling down a endeless pithole.. You know you are falling, but you dosen't know how long the pit hole is. But you also know, that WHEN you hit the bottom, you wil be hurt - maybe even die.. And it dosen't look like most american know, or care of what become of US in the future.. And most tragically, it looks like many americans, is falling for the same demagouge trolls that the germans did when Hitler could smell power in 1932-33. Most germans dosen't care about who was in charge, as long as they could have food on their table, and a stable work, after the chaos of 1929 and forward, they was happy as long as they got food and work.. And first Hitler did that, got peopole working again, and got some feeling of normaly up and going again.. We know what happend after a while..

I hope US are not falling for the type of craps the old germans did.. I hope that US have enough educated people to stop this spears of dictatorship who is in the air, and have been that for a long time now.. We got the first tunders when GWB himselfs, say it would be far easy to rule US, as long as he had the power, and was the dictator.. Another person, with far more carisma - and more brain could easly use the Patriot Act, and other laws, to make US a dictartorship by defult..

And then, who should help US repair their democracy.. US is the biggest military power in the world - and they have nuclear weapon.. So that would not be easy to confront..

Diclotican