Torture The New American Holocaust

One day sometime in the future I can see several high level officials of the Bush administration before a international tribunal charged with war crimes. Something that most Americans would think of as an impossibility just a short time ago. It doesn’t seem that improbable anymore.

It seems that almost daily we learn some new shocking piece of news about the abuse of military and other detainees by American directed military personnel or operatives. Place like Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and CIA black sites in Afghanistan and elsewhere have become a nightmarish sidelight of the Bush Administration unfolding Iraq and terror war debacle. With each piece of news we begin to see the picture more clearly. The truth is that an American President and many of the highest members of his administration authorized and condoned and promoted a despicable course of subhuman treatment of other human beings. All done in the name of America an the ideologically driven misguided patriotic scheme they felt was justified as a prong of their so-called war on terror.

The problem here is that they took on the traits of, and became the very people that they supposedly were trying to destroy. Driven by their overzealousness and self-center fear they have now lowered our country’s standard and moral authority into a morally bankrupted and detestable sewer that we find ourselves in today. They have created more terrorists with more of a reason to want to destroy America and what they now think it represents. They have put our soldiers at risk of being tortured if captured or compromised.

Sure some of the people we have captured in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere are ruthless killers. But as Americans we MUST stand on the higher moral ground when it comes to dealing with them. No matter how long it takes or tedious it may seem to be. Only in this way can we maintain any moral authority as a nation amongst other free nations. Torture does not work, nor is it neccesary to win the war against terror. It is the course of action of fear filled men without imagination or vision.

Their banality and lack of vision and understanding of history only exceed their incompetence. They act like used car salesman at a car auction with the morality and traditions of this nation. Their hucksterism and phony posturing is as transparent as a phony preacher passing the collection basket at a Saturday night tent service.

If you believe that “a few bad apples on the night shift” are responsible for the entire mess at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq you should be certified as an idiot. The recent PBS Frontline report “The Torture Question” is shocking. The recent book by the former commander at Abu Ghraib Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who was forced into retirement and used as a scapegoat by the administration, attempts to set straight the facts.

As an American I am heartsick about these revelations of widespread torture and myhem. I imagine that most freethinking American people know in their hearts that this type of behavior by or leaders is un-American and just plain wrong. When the truth is fully known, and it will be known someday, those responsible should face their day in court and be punished accordingly and, must I say, humanly. That same day in court they did not allow to those they accused and tortured in the name of America.