Saturday, March 5, 2011

Dear Mr. President,

Marine thugs are increasing the pressure on Private Manning. Not only has he been locked up for ten months under extremely harsh conditions, but Wednesday night he was stripped naked, his clothes taken away. Thursday morning he was forced to stand naked for inspection and told his clothes would be taken from him again Thursday night. What’s next, a black hood and electric wires attached to his genitals? What more degrading things can your goons come up with? This is not my America. This is a country I no longer recognize. This is an alien land. The Marine spokesman said the action was “not punitive,” but could not explain the justification for it because it would “violate the defendant’s privacy.” Total bullshit! The power of the State against the powerless individual sickens me. You could end this nightmare with a simple order to Holder and Gates to stop it. But you won’t, just as you wouldn’t acknowledge the slaughter of those nine young boys cut down by helicopter gunships in Afghanistan on Tuesday. Senseless brutality, one outrage after another, it’s what war does to us, the unintended consequences. “Why do they hate us?” The answer’s right in front of us and it’s your job to answer that question but you won’t do that either. Bush went for the simplistic – and wrong – answer: “Because they hate freedom” – and that stuck in people’s minds. Politicians use fear and easy answers to grab power and when they do, there’s an erosion of liberty and justice and human rights. While the citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan suffer unspeakable horror and violence because of our misguided wars, we are not immune from the consequences either. War degrades and debases both perpetrator and victim and that is shown graphically in the treatment of Private Manning. I thought we had reached the nadir during the Bush years with their disregard for human rights and the rule of law, their hubris and arrogance, their sense of manifest destiny, but you continue their policies of rendition, torture, illegal wiretaps, suspension of habeas corpus, suppression of information, and not only do you continue their wars but you expand them. Nothing changes – Guantanamo’s still open for business, Iraq, Afghanistan, incursions into Pakistan, Yemen and how many other countries? The immorality of war and violence continues. No Hope, no Change, no Transformation. You, Mr. President, are a fraud and a liar, a war-monger with no more principle or morality than your predecessor.