Sunday, April 24, 2011

Dear Mr. President,

At last Pfc. Bradley Manning is out of the maximum security Marine brig in Quantico although no reports yet about the conditions under which he’s being held at Fort Leavenworth. His sudden transfer last week caught everyone by surprise; his attorney first learned of it by reading an AP dispatch which came from someone who leaked the information. I’m sure you’ll look into that since leaking is a criminal offense according to you. Thursday, in a fundraiser in San Francisco, you said, "If I was to release stuff, information that I'm not authorized to release, I'm breaking the law. We're a nation of laws. We don't individually make our own decisions about how the laws operate... He broke the law." Well, excuse me, Mr. President, but so did Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby and many others, but none of them spent a single night in prison and every one of them did far more harm than Bradley Manning. They started wars based on lies, sanctioned torture, were responsible for tens of thousands of deaths, for hundreds of thousands of broken lives and for hatred that will reverberate for generations. When someone at that fundraiser compared Manning to Daniel Ellsberg you said, "It wasn't the same thing, What Ellsberg released wasn't classified in the same way." Once again, I beg to differ. The Pentagon Papers were classified “Top Secret – Sensitive,” not an official designation, but one which means they could be very embarrassing if they were made public. I think you’re adhering to lawlerly distinctions here, the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law. Both Manning and Ellsberg acted out of moral conscience in the face of an immoral and unjustified war based on lies and deceit. And your statement that Manning is guilty sends a chill right through me. He hasn’t had a trial, hasn’t been convicted, hasn’t even had a pretrial hearing and you pronounced him guilty? If that’s your idea of justice and the rule of law, then we’re in deep trouble. Maybe under Qaddafi, Mubarek and Saleh that’s how it works, but the last I heard, not the way it’s supposed to work in a democracy. What did prompt the military to finally move Manning? Too much political pressure? Too much bad publicity? Judging from your statements and actions I doubt it came from you. And that’s a real shame Mr. President, for it shows a lack of integrity and compassion, a lack of common humanity and the ability to distinguish right from wrong. What I’ve come to expect from you.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Dear Mr. President,

I keep thinking about Bob Herbert’s last column for the New York Times, “Losing Our Way,” in which he points out the maldistribution of wealth in America and where we “…find it so easy to plunge into…war but almost impossible to find adequate work for [our] people or to properly educate [our] young…” Wealth and power have always skewed the scales of justice but it seems more blatant now than ever before. 14 million Americans are out of work and jobless benefits are being cut back in state after state while Wall Street bankers who caused the Great Recession continue to get multi-million dollar paychecks and bonuses thanks to the $700 billion bailout by U.S. taxpayers. Moreover, no one is held accountable. Example: Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of Countrywide, one of the biggest perpetrators of fraudulent loans, was “off-limits” according to investigators, as were, apparently, all the other fat cat financial executives who walked away with billions in ill-gotten gains; after two years and in spite of the evidence, there is still no collective government effort to build cases and no senior executives have been charged or imprisoned. This in stark contrast to the S&L scandal of the 80s where 1,100 cases were referred for prosecution and more than 800 bank officials were convicted and did time. We have indeed lost our way. No one is held accountable for any of this just as no one is held accountable for the lies that got us into Iraq and the torture and flagrant disregard for human rights and international law that followed. But if you’re an average Joe you better toe the line and do as you’re told ‘cause these laws are made for you. Example: Pfc. Bradley Manning who tried to report a military cover-up of war crimes but was told to shut up; when he blew the whistle by releasing classified documents that showed the murders of civilians by the military in Afghanistan and Iraq, he was thrown into the brig and there he remains 263 days later, held without trial under conditions so harsh as to be deemed torture and denied official visits by Congressman Kucinich and representatives from the UN and Amnesty International. “Government whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal,” you said. But you have done just the opposite, defended the military against Manning and as long as he remains in solitary confinement in a Marine brig, the abuse of power continues and justice is just another empty word.

Free Bradley Manning!

Friday, April 15, 2011

Dear Mr. President,

Hendrik Hertzberg has written an unflattering piece in this week’s New Yorker about your cave-in on Guantanamo Bay prison. He mentions four of your campaign promises–close Guantanamo; prosecute accused terrorists in civilian courts rather than by military commissions; end indefinite detention without indictment or trial; and put a definitive end to the use of torture–and goes on to say that you kept only the last one, the first three, through fecklessness, ineptitude and political cowardice, still exist. Not all your fault, plenty of blame to go around–Democrats, Republicans and your Administration alike–but I believe he is mistaken in giving you a pass on the torture promise. While not waterboarded like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed nor beaten or held in stressful positions for extended periods of time or threatened with imminent death or physical violence, Pfc. Bradley Manning has been held in solitary confinement for 260 days under Maximum Custody and POI conditions, humiliated and psychologically abused. All that’s missing is a black hood and electrical wires attached to his genitals. Manning is a political prisoner being punished for blowing the whistle on atrocities and war crimes by the military and leaking diplomatic cables detailing the duplicity and corruption of governments around the world. The conditions under which he is held have been defined as torture by psychologist and lawyer groups; even military psychiatrists call his treatment unnecessary. And yet, there you stand excusing it, blowing it off, saying the Pentagon assured you that Manning’s treatment is “appropriate and meets our basic standards.” Whose standards are these, Mr. President? The military’s stonewalling, denying Kucinich and UN and Amnesty International representatives an official visit to Manning is outrageous. The collapse of your efforts to close Guantanamo, Hertzberg calls a failure and a shame. I would put your treatment of Manning in the same category. Hertzberg contrasts the humane treatment of 400,000 German prisoners held on American soil during World War II with the shameful treatment of 172 Guantanamo prisoners, the hysteria and fear, the cowardice of politicians who imposed a ban on civilian trials for terrorists or even transporting them to U.S. prisons. The present generation, in contrast to the Greatest Generation, I call the Least Generation, a Generation of Moral Cowards, and you, Mr. President, are its symbolic leader.

Free Bradley Manning!

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Dear Mr. President,

Yesterday you did again what you do so well, give speeches. “There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. There’s nothing courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill.” Right on, Mr. President, this is a powerful rebuttal to the Republican take-from-the-poor give-to-the-rich tax plan. I want to believe you meant those words but I’m waiting to see if you’re willing to lay it on the line to defend them. You’ve reneged on so many things it’s hard to believe you. Like how you were going to end the Bush tax cuts and didn’t, how you were going to bring an end to unjust wars and didn’t, how you supported the “aspirations” of people for democracy and justice while continuing to support the brutal dictators who suppressed them, how you were going to shut Guantanamo and end torture but didn’t–at least not the torture of Pfc. Bradley Manning, which you dismissed by saying the Pentagon assured you that Manning’s treatment was “appropriate and meets our basic standards”–and that, Mr. President, was a bald-faced lie. You know the conditions under which he is being held are inhumane, unjustified and unwarranted. You’ve received many letters of protest regarding this, the most recent three days ago from the German parliament’s Human Rights Committee stating that the conditions under which Manning is being held are in violation of Article 10 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights–which we signed–that states, “all persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity.” Manning has been held without trial or a pre-trial hearing in solitary confinement for 259 days under inhumane conditions: deprived of sleep, clothing and exercise, forced to stand inspections in the nude, denied official visits by Congressman Kucinich, Amnesty International and the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. Pfc. Bradley Manning is a political prisoner being punished for giving WikiLeaks classified information that should have been public in the first place, for exposing atrocities and war crimes covered up by the military and releasing diplomatic cables detailing the duplicity and corruption of governments that were common knowledge. How long will you let this injustice continue? When you stop it I may start believing you again, but until then I remain, 
a Doubting Thomas.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Dear Mr. President,

Over the past few weeks–since we started bombing and strafing Qaddafi’s forces in Libya–I’ve begun to suspect that the democracy movements in the Middle East were goners. What began as promising non-violent demonstrations for the removal of U.S.-supported tyrants and dictators and a new era of justice and freedom suddenly turned ugly as one after another autocratic regime fell back on violence to protect the status quo. The high-minded rhetoric of protecting civilians from imminent massacre by Qaddafi loyalists was just a thin mask to protect European and U.S. investment and access to Libyan oil: Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland and the U.S. account for approximately 75% of Libyan oil exports; Libya has the highest oil reserves in Africa; Amerada Hess and Conoco Phillips (U.S.), Total (France), Lasmo (UK), ENI (Italy), are all major partners in Libya’s oil fields; and the No-Fly zone has expanded into ongoing air strikes against ground forces–an average of 62 bombing runs a day, raising British and French concern that they’ll run out of precision-guided bombs–and it’s getting harder and harder to tell the good guys from the bad guys–violence has a way of doing that. Meanwhile, Bahrain’s security forces are brutally cracking down on protesters; in the paper this morning, an article described how even the main hospital there, Salmaniya, has become, “an apparatus of state terrorism,” where the injured along with the doctors and nurses who treat them, are hauled off to face torture or death. (Thanks to Saudi Arabia’s intervention, the Bahraini dictator’s police and “security forces” have been freed up to crack down on the protesters, and since both Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are U.S. Allies, we say nothing–like the three monkeys who “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”) In Egypt, the euphoria of revolution has been replaced by the hard reality of the military once again doing what all militaries do, taking control. Protesters can no longer gather in Tahrir Square, the voices for democracy are ignored, bloggers arrested, dissent stifled. Yemen, Syria, Saudi Arabia, even Tunisia, are reverting back to the way they were. Everywhere, it seems, the people lose, as does freedom, democracy and justice. Machiavelli was right: “Money to get power, power to protect money,” and democracy is an illusion. Maybe it always was. All around the world–and here at home–it’s business as usual. And if you’re not Business, there’s little to cheer.