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.