Something is rotten in
America
Cape Times
War in iraq spawning moral decay
February 15, 2005
By Allister Sparks
If Lord Acton was right in warning that power corrupts, surely
the same can be said of war, which is the ultimate assertion of
power. The warrior ethos has been glorified through the ages and
continues today, as the chorus of praise one hears in the United
States for its troops fighting in Iraq amply testifies.
Yet war is in fact a grim and brutal business that eats into
the soul not only of the individuals engaged in it but of a whole
nation.
As evidence, I offer you the words of a senior American
general, Lieutenant-General James N Mattis, described as a
revered figure in the Marine Corps, in the course of a lecture he
gave the other day at a forum on strategies for America's "war on
terrorism".
An audio recording made by the Associated Press captured his
exact words.
"Actually it's a lot of fun to fight," Mattis told his
audience. "You know, it's a hell of a hoot. It's fun to shoot
some people. I'll be right upfront with you, I like brawling.
"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around
for five years because they didn't wear a veil. You know, guys
like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a
lot of fun to shoot them."
Mattis was not fired or demoted or even suspended for that
statement. But he was reprimanded.
In a front page report on the affair, The New York Times tells
us that General Michael W Hagee, Mattis's commanding officer at
the head of the Marine Corps, issued a statement "scolding" the
general.
"I have counselled him concerning his remarks," Hagee's
statement said, "and he agrees he should have chosen his words
more carefully." I just love that! So there is nothing wrong with
the sentiments Mattis expressed, it's just that he chose his
words a little clumsily.
A semantic slip, no more.
One is left wondering how those sentiments about the pleasures
of shooting people might have been expressed a little more, shall
we say, delicately.
Let's try this for size. "Ladies and gentlemen, I am sure you
all realise that in whatever career you follow, job satisfaction
is important. You must enjoy your work if you are to be
successful.
"Well, we in the military, and especially in the Marine Corps,
are no different. We like our work. We find it enjoyable to take
out people, especially those who have done things that make them
less manly than we are."
Any better? Hardly. If anything, the euphemistic language
makes it even more sickening. It's not the words but the
sentiment Mattis expressed that reveals the extent to which this
general who commanded forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq has
devalued human life.
And when those who hold even more senior positions in a
country that prides itself on its moral values cannot see that,
it is time to worry.
The real point about all this is that Mattis's repulsive
remarks, and his commanding officer's glossing over them, are not
isolated events. They are evidence of the extent to which
President George W Bush's so-called "war on terrorism" is leading
the US into a morass of moral perfidy that is doing it more harm
than the terrorists themselves ever could.
It started with the establishment of the prison camp at
Guantanamo Bay, which America uses as a naval base on a
100-year-old lease from Cuba, where thousands of suspected
terrorists have been held for upward of two years in wire
cages.
It is a site with a unique legal status that was deliberately
chosen to enable the US government to circumvent its own revered
constitution to hold these suspects indefinitely and to
interrogate and even torture them.
This pattern of behaviour reached a notorious climax with the
publication of those photographs taken at Abu Ghraib prison in
Iraq - the unforgettable image of that tiny female soldier in
baggy military pants standing over a nude Iraqi man who lay
cringing before her on a dog leash while she smiled and made
gestures mocking his genitalia.
She has been court martialled, as has her immediate superior
and lover who supervised the torturing and took the pictures.
But what of those above them, who knew and approved of the
humiliations and the torture methods that were used at Abu Ghraib
and Guantanamo Bay?
"Extreme interrogation" is the official term used and there is
evidence that it is still going on with tacit approval going
right to the top.
Now the point of ultimate condonement has been reached.
Recently, the US Senate confirmed the appointment of Alberto
Gonzales, the man who more than any other has come to represent
the administration's role in paving the way for the abuse and
torture of those prisoners, as attorney-general of the US.
Gonzales has had a long relationship with Bush. He was Bush's
legal adviser during his six years as governor of Texas, in the
course of which he routinely presented the governor with cursory
little memos advising him to reject pleas for clemency from
people facing the death sentence.
The result was that Bush presided over 152 executions in his
six years, more than any other governor in the recent history of
the US.
Bush took his legal adviser with him when he entered the White
House, and it was there that Gonzales proffered the advice that
made Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib possible. It was he who told
the president that because Guantanamo Bay was not American
territory, the US constitution would not apply to prisoners held
there.
It was he who told the president that if he categorised the
suspected terrorists as "illegal foreign combatants", the Geneva
Conventions covering the treatment of prisoners of war would not
apply to them.
It was he who proffered the legal opinion that the president,
in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the military, could
override the constitution and authorise the use of "extreme
interrogation" methods to extract information from imprisoned
suspects that he considered vital for the security of the
state.
In other words, that the president could declare himself above
the law.
And it was Gonzales who, in written responses to senators'
questions during his confirmation hearings, argued that
intelligence agents could "abuse" prisoners as long as they did
it to foreigners outside the US.
This is the man the president has appointed to the top legal
post in the US, and whose appointment the Senate has approved by
60 votes to 36.
With such an example at the top, is it any surprise that there
have been atrocities committed lower down, or that Mattis could
speak publicly of what fun it is to shoot people in a war that is
supposed to be liberating them from tyranny, or that his
commanding officer should feel that deserved no more than a mild
scolding?
As Shakespeare's Marcellus might have put it, something is
rotten in the state of America.
# Sparks is a veteran journalist and political commentator
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