Retribution or Justified Actions?
Well the above title poses a tricky question: can retribution ever be justified? I guess many Americans would say that retribution is justified after the shock of September 11th, a sleight to America's sense of self: but was it an attack on freedom? Maybe a freedom which involves freedom to torture and to hold people without trial on the basis of the said people being in the wrong place at the wrong time is a freedom which should not be protected in the first place. 85% of American soldiers in Iraq believe that the war was a retaliation for Saddam Hussein's role in the 9/11 attacks, but maybe Iraq really is just about the black gold. If so, to what end Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay? Are the Americans profiting from such 'acts of terror' or are they simply practicing retribution? And should a nation state be practicing retribution in the first place?Post mortems are now being carried out on two Saudi men who killed themselves while detained at Guantanamo Bay. According to a UN report 'the war on terror does not constitute an armed conflict for the purposes of the applicability of international humanitarian law.' Further, 'the persons held at Guantanamo Bay are entitled to challenge the legality of their detention before a judicial body...and to obtain release if detention is found to lack a proper legal basis. This right is currently being violated...' and finally, 'the excessive violence used in many cases during transportation, in operations by the Initial Reaction Forces and force-feeding of detainees on hunger strike must be assessed as amounting to torture.'
The UN report on Guantanamo Bay recommends that 'The U.S. Government should close the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities without further delay.' I suggest you read the full report here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/16_02_06_un_guantanamo.pdf
This is part of an interview with a Guantanamo Bay detainee given through a legal representative to the BBC:
"I loved America. It freed my country from Saddam Hussein. My father fought with America against Saddam. I respected America. It stood for human rights and fairness around the world. America was the country we all looked up to."
What is your view now?
"It has abandoned all of its own traditions and beliefs which were the cause of my respect for it. As someone who lived in the US, I cannot believe the American people know what is happening down here. This is wrong."
posted by pfarrad @ 05:56
2 Comments:
The word retribution per se has a definitive slant that you're somehow punishing someone above and over what was done in the first place.
To me the concern here isn't the redress, it's the reason it happened in the first place, which as you point out, fell into the memory-hole long ago.
Abu Ghraib/Guatanamo both ring of "just following orders" or what happens when you allow idiots power and remove accountability. It's also the patent reason why in order to believe the US is a positive force, you have to be willing to believe that such sorts of happenstances aren't out of the ordinary, even when your country is clearly insane.
If something is ok for us, it is ok for them and the converse is as true if not more applicable to what's a flat out war-crime. Period. It's "the supreme international crime": "a war of aggression". I just don't see how anyone can possibly get around that without silencing their basest moral sensation. Even a 10 year old could see what's happening, not what's being purported to occur or the what, like 5th supposed Iraqi constitution? Where the fuck did the others go? Do the have a ditto-machine?
Massive reparations, total withdrawal. You don't say, "oh, gasoline isn't working, how about some ether? maybe some propane?" Our presence is the problem, and to cite the departure of Hussein as a development is the exact characterization of this metaphor. We shoot off our pinky-toe, but the foot has still fallen and will continute to trod like mad. Say what you will about this renegade toe, the synecdoche remains.
I thought of this today as a proper analogy for what our not daft, not foolish, but perfectly and heinously sensible governmental leadership have done and I mean under bipartisan authority, and we'll see if it works as a suitable diatribe against the too soft to cheesecore-thriller American heart or any myopia at all:
Imagine someone breaks into your house, amid a freak nationwide rash of home invasions, and decides they're going to do as they wish, perhaps kill half your family, and blow up the family sedan, and shit in the gazebo, maybe make a dog-kebab out of fluffy while you watch. This is also the 3rd time this has happened in as many months to you or relations. Perhaps these intruders are the daft henchmen of a plan not devised themselves. Where do you demarcate this particular homeowner's right to "retribution" and the extent to which it may be carried out? Can any of us say our behavior (given the now ubiquity and repetitive nature of such invasive occurences) might stay rational? Might some of us strike out in a vigilant and haphazard way, probably killing our neighbors and anyone else in the way in the name of what our who-knows-how-deranged (and not by chance, by consequence) minds are supposing against a seemingly limitless crew of people who are themselves impoverished?
sleep calls, but i'll keep going if more occurs to me.
What I think is most intersting to me re: the ongoing discussion about the so-called war on terror is that religion, which i guess at the beginning didn't play a leading role, has begun to be the basis of people's hatred and fear of the people 'over there'. We can talk all day about how what we're doing in guantanimo is morally depraved and wrong, but i find it just as interesting to look at how completely and effectively the powers that be have instilled an absolute and complete fear of our enemies over there. Once again, this is not the first occurance (and one could argue it is a continuous occurance in the world) and is one of the hallmarks of a regime bent on maintaining its own position. The bottom line is that the administration (whether partisan, bipartisan, or whatever) is there not to uphold any moral code, but simply to maintain its position. The same goes for the other side, of course, which I think ultimately accounts for all the irrational action on both ends.
Kommentar veröffentlichen
<< Home