The Torture President

July 2004

It is horrific to learn that the Bush administration has engaged in the systematic torture of prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the concentration camps of Guantanamo, Cuba. It is also chilling to realize that the majority of those beaten (some to death), attacked by dogs, electro-shocked on their genitals, sodomized with large objects, and made to curse their religion on video are not combatants, but simply among the thousands rounded-up and imprisoned, held indefinitely, with no way to assert their innocence, no hope of a hearing, no date for release– just endless months, or years, of torment at the hands of sadistic captors.

As appalling as these revelations are, what is more frightening is that President Bush, Attorney General Ashcroft, and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, instead of repudiating such despicable behaviors, have dug in their heels and asserted their power to ignore the Geneva Conventions and international law prohibiting torture. The administration sees civil liberties, due process, and even the rule of law itself as niceties that cannot be indulged in times of war. Indeed, the Administration’s Patriot Act II has provisions to “de-citizenize” any American; anyone thus stripped of their citizenship would then be subject to whatever torture Bush, Ashcroft, and Rumsfeld desire. And as President Bush reminds us, his crusade is to be a “perpetual war”; thus, we are warned the Bill of Rights is put on hold indefinitely.

Would-be tyrants and real-life dictators have long touted the notion that civil liberties are for sissies, that respecting the human dignity of the accused is dangerous, that security demands treating alleged “evil doers” like monsters. And anyone who disagrees with such totalitarian measures risks being branded a fellow-traveler who merits the same fate.

But of course, civil rights– curbs on state authority and power– are the foundation of ordered liberty. Government derives its legitimate authority, according to the Declaration of Independence, from the consent of the governed, consent that can only be given freely if individuals are not fearful of despotic retribution. When government officials themselves become lawless, when political opponents can be “disappeared” or held without charges or tortured into “confessing” to secret tribunals, the government itself becomes illegitimate.

The Bush administration’s rationale for the invasion and occupation of Iraq has been repeatedly deceitful. The latest claim– that we are there to bestow upon the unfortunate Iraqi people the benefits of democratic freedom– is rendered an obscene travesty when Bush officials set up concentration camps away from world view, hide “ghost” prisoners from Red Cross observers, and engage in the torture and murder of the very people they claim to be helping. Such hypocritical, nefarious behavior lends credence to those who claim the real reason the US military is in Iraq is for economic reasons: to maintain access to Mid-East oil.

But there is another agenda to the “war on terror” that should alarm us: this administration is testing how far the courts– and political realities– will allow it to suspend the Bill of Rights and push the entire country further towards martial law.

As gay people, we understand how despotic measures are first aimed at the most despised– who has the courage to stand up for the rights of “terrorists” (or communists, or Jews, or witches… or “perverts”)? And, as Americans, we recognize whenever any government abuses its people by abrogating civil liberties, it becomes the people’s right and duty to resist such a government.

Injustice anywhere is indeed a threat to justice everywhere. When the “leader of the free world” embraces torture, self-interest as well as moral imperative compel our vigorous opposition.

Pasted from <http://guidemag.com/magcontent/invokemagcontent.cfm?ID=1EBA8856-41C7-418D-B4ACCD0AE6A19430>