I flat out don't have time to post to this as much as I used to, obviously, but I also don't have as much time as I want to to post either. I am going to do quick things from now on I guess, and maybe on weekends or whatever I'll have more time. Or when I am watching Celtics games.
I read this article about backwards/wacky justice in Iraq. My first thought, in combination with the news out of Afghanistan that the elections were completely fixed, was to think back on an interview with Hilary who proudly boasted that we are going to stay out of it in Afghanistan, as far as the election - then we'll get back to killing a mixture of civilians and terrorists haphazardly, like we have basically perfected.
So we are mixed up completely in Iraq and Afghanistan, with no end in sight to either, for completely nonsensical goals of leaving the countries better off than we found them, and the "better" means completely, and almost exclusively, "Free, Democratic elections." We know, without question, both countries are incapable of doing this, at least right now. So we will stay there til when? Til the next election cycle, I guess. What is our choice? I mean, our idiotic political choice, not the logical, get-the-hell-out-of-dodge, choice.
But I am straying from my initial point of writing this, and that was to compare what is going on in Iraq and how the Times treated it, as compared to one of our major political snafu's and horrendous abuses of Prisoner's of War, which is Abu Ghraib. This line: "In this case, the henchmen will be hanged. But the suspected ringleaders, with well-known ties to the Shiite political elite, have escaped," reminded me of Erroll Morris' amazing documentary, Standard Operating Procedure.
It struck me so clearly that the Times writer, and all of us reading this, look at the article and think, amongst other things, "what a joke of a country - even the most basic elements are justice are corrupted and corruptable, and nothing can be done to change that, ever."
Well, guess what, our country operates on that same process on a minute-by-minute basis, with literally the most powerful and most in-charge actively taking place on a daily basis. This is from an article I found regarding the sentencing of only low-ranking officials in the US Army for the atrocities of Abu Ghraib.
I should say this, and I feel like I have wanted to say it forever, but I can't stand when people downplay what went on there. You hear so frequently, "oh who cares, so what we made a guy get naked, he was trying to kill Americans!" There are a few responses to that, but mainly a lot of guys abused at Abu Ghraib weren't ever terrorists, and 100% of them were not convicted as terrorists - the people who defend the horrors of that prison are the same ones who think our actions in Iraq are justified because they don't have axioms like "Innocent Until Proven Guilty" in place. We fight for things we don't believe in. Our soldiers go to jail, and die for, things they don't really believe in. It's so baffling.
But back to the article I read regarding the sentencing of low-ranking officers getting all the blame, I found this excerpt I loved. This is old, so "yesterday" doesn't mean early September '09.
"Also yesterday, an Army officer who has told members of Congress and a human rights group that vague policies from military leaders fomented abuse spoke publicly for the first time. Capt. Ian Fishback, 26, said in an interview that he believes the Army is examining his claims of command failures and unclear treatment guidelines mainly to punish low-ranking soldiers and not to explore whether top commanders bear responsibility.
Fishback, assigned to Fort Bragg, N.C., expressed frustration that Army investigators who have talked to him in the past week have focused almost entirely on identifying soldiers who spoke anonymously to Human Rights Watch. Fishback and two unidentified soldiers spoke of detainee abuse at bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, including instances in which detainees were severely beaten, pushed to exhaustion or humiliated.
"The way we have been treating detainees is immoral," Fishback said. "We had a serious command climate problem, across the board. One of the things that infuriates me is that the leaders are not accepting responsibility."
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at a news briefing yesterday that the Army is taking the allegations seriously. "And to the extent somebody's done something that they shouldn't have done, they'll be punished for it," Rumsfeld said. "And in any event, we'll know the truth."
Rumsfeld is as much of a criminal as those assholes who executed Prison Guards in cold blood in Iraq. We laugh at Iraq as a country the way the British laughed at us when we fought for our freedom, as Iraq is doing as well. We are, in all respects and all historical contexts, a completely dying and declining Empire. The end in only near, it is in plain view, and I really didn't think it was going to be in my lifetime when I'd see 'the collapse', but I'm starting to change my World View.
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