Everything Ancien is Nouveau Again

How do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?
--Maria, Sound of Music

My soul has dwelt too long
With one who hates peace.
I am for peace;
But when I speak, they are for war
--Psalm 120

Sergeant: If they kill more Russians, they win.
If we kill more Frenchmen, we win.
Boris Gruschenko: What do we win?
--Love and Death (1975)
__________

The French Revolution followed on the heels of the American Revolution, and both were based upon the concept that individuals had rights and were entitled to legalities that superseded and were more fundamental than the right of kings and governments to impose arbitrary rules upon the citizenry.

The blatant barbarism of imprisoning citizens at the Bastille without legal justification was the match that ignited their revolution, and the storming and destruction of that prison was the symbol for the French Revolution. Fast-forward 210 years and 23,000 Iraqi citizens are now imprisoned by a U.S. Army of occupation within Iraqi borders, sans trials. Reliable figures are not available from Afghanistan, but undoubtedly there are large-scale prisons operated by U.S. forces in that country as well.

Similarly, prisoners at Gitmo are also held indefinitely, denied Geneva Convention (G.C.) protections or judicial processes. A recent WaPo piece on the Supreme Court case of Omar and Munif, two American citizens held in a U.S. prison for over three years without access to lawyers or judges, said U.S. courts have struggled in the past to "determine whether indefinite detention is lawful" (A Day in Court Denied.)

Indefinite detention ≠ legality. Indefinite detention is barbarous and hearkens back to the Bastille. One doesn't need recourse to John Yoo's legalistic contortions to figure that out. Only if one wants to sleep better at night.

President Bush's focus and therefore that of most of the U.S. public has been on the several hundred personnel held in the legal hell hole that is Gitmo. But what about the 23,000 held in Iraq, and the untold thousands in Afghanistan? What about any other secret prisons run by the U.S. that we have yet to hear about?

What is the legal basis for the U.S holding prisoners within sovereign borders of foreign nations? The host nations should have the legal jurisdiction to arrest and adjudicate criminal behavior. Assuredly this is the rule of law to which U.S. leaders pay lip service.

What are U.S. plans for these 23,000 Iraqi prisoners? Turn them over to a government that may torture or execute them? Release them? What do you do with people whom you've detained and imprisoned without a trial?

It is safe to say they will not become poster boys for the American justice system. What about their families and loved ones? How many enemies have our actions created through the ripple effect?

The United Nations has bought into this scenario by designating the U.S. an occupying power in Iraq and as such, the U.S. may imprison Iraqis. The problem with this is the only justification for the arrests and imprisonments are based upon the requirement for the occupying power to maintain law and order, and this requires accepting the legal framework outlined in the G.C. (section: responsibilities of the occupying powers), a document we have already eviscerated.

This is a might hypocritical. Legal treaties are documents accepted wholesale. It is not like entering a salvage yard where one may pick and pull what one needs with a crowbar.

Where do these detentions lead? To democracy, as Mr. Bush contends, or to another totalitarian regime?

Secret Suffering

"That explains it, then," Sam said disgustedly. "That's what
you were doing in Vietnam. That explains what the whole
country was doing over there.
The least little threat and America's got to put on its cowboy
boots and stomp around and show somebody a thing or two."
--In Country, Bobbie Ann Mason


Don't let the past remind us of what we are not now
--Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers
in politics as well as morals
--William Penn
__________

The marginalized character Emmett says of himself, "There's something wrong with me. I'm damaged. It's like something in the center of my heart is gone and I can't get it back." This dumbstruck sense of loss and damage is a feeling shared by many in our country now.

There are layers of misery this Ranger has witnessed, as everyone has, and one of them was the Republic of Vietnam. As a participant my perspective was much too personal and immature to fully realize the lie that was the war.

Ranger's life was dedicated to that lie, as that is what professional soldiers do. They ignore the lies and focus on words like duty, honor, sacrifice, country, and courage.

But nowhere in the Vietnam lie were there secret prisons, U.S. government-sponsored torture, murdered prisoners and secret dark sites in far-flung places.

Jane Mayer's piece in this week's New Yorker magazine, "The Black Sites," is a must-read. It won't make you happy, but it will make you informed. Not necessarily one and the same in this America.

Vietnam was still a lie and a circle of misery for the people of Vietnam, and of course, the wounded and killed on both sides bore that misery. But my Army and my war did not embrace such antithetical practices. It is all just part of a new lie.

But where is the protest? I remember protest. Where is the moral indignation? Where are our leaders? Why do we as a supposed beacon of freedom accept that our taxes support "secret sites" and presidentially-sanctioned torture at these sites?

Sending a dozen lowly enlisted men to prison on torture charges does not staunch the bleeding from the gaping wound that has been inflicted these six years on America's democratic principles, nor does it change the fact that American "democracy" is now a cruelly perpetrated hoax and a joke to all who have served and suffered in previous wars.

America never was lily pure, but only the fringes were questionable; now the center is corrupt and the fringes are silent.

Ranger's America is fast-disappearing -- like a mirage. America is not, was not and shall not be synonymous with words like "walking the dark side," secret sites, prisons and aggressive questioning.

Why is America silent? This is how it always starts.

This silence is another level of misery. Like Emmett, America's heart is damaged and the center is gone.

We must get it back, or America is a thing of the past.