Do Justice, Love Mercy II
(The second in a series about the reasons for my vote on November 4th.)
“He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8
I’ve been thinking about this now for a while. What does it mean to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly in an election year? I think it means that we need to be careful and discerning when making the important choice of how to vote.
WAR IN IRAQ
Early on in this political season, the War in Iraq was the central debate of the year. Since then many things have transpired that pushed this issue to the back burner of the debate between candidates. On the Republican side McCain was the strongest possible voice in praise of this war, even ramping it up and calling for the surge, which by some opinions has been successful. On the other side was a rather uncongenial conversation between Democrats on who was right on this issue from the start, Clinton and Edwards both offered limited support initially while Obama condemned the Bush Administration’s choice.
The genesis of this war is of little consequence now, whether it was faulty intelligence, proclivity for paranoia, and/or manipulation of American media with outright lies, the fact is that the American people supported this President in this war at its inception. And so we find ourselves in this mess that has drawn on and on. And we share the blame, having been equally hoodwinked. How do we face the future in light of that stark reality?
Act Justly, Love Mercy
The attack on American soil on September 11 took 2974 lives plus an additional 24 people who are missing and presumed dead. Well over 100k of our own soldiers have been killed or wounded in the resulting war in Iraq. Iraqi deaths due to the war near 1.3 million. If we think of this in terms of the Old Testament “an eye for an eye” then we should all be blind as we are long past a Just or Merciful response to the events of 9-11. If we think of these events in terms of the New Testament “love your enemies and do good to those who persecute you” then this war is a grim atrocity. It is important to bring this battle to an expedient end, whether or not the conflict among Iraqi’s continues.
And walk humbly…
It is important that we recognize our nationalistic reticence to losing a battle, and that we know it for what it is – arrogance and pride. We have enthroned the golden calf of victory and lost the entire battle over pride. We have chosen the loss of human life, including our own soldiers, over the loss of face. This is to our shame. It is time to humble ourselves, bring our young men and women home and ask for God to have mercy on us and the messes we have made.
Unfortunately, the War in Iraq was not enough of a crime against humanity, the additional crimes have included torture, extraordinary rendition and the concentration camps of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. With the War in Iraq came the Bush Administration’s unwillingness to uphold international law in the form of the Geneva Convention on torture.
President George Washington refused torture in the Revolutionary War against the British who treated American prisoners with great cruelty, starvation and torture. Lincoln drafted the first formal code of conduct for the humane treatment of prisoners in 1863 that became the basis for the Geneva Convention. Eisenhower guaranteed honorable treatment of German POWs in WW2 in the war against Hitler. Even in the Korean War and the Vietnam War the United States supported the Geneva Convention. (Source)
And yet, this Administration saw September 11th as a reason to throw our honorable heritage out the window. The Bush Administration cited the fact that the enemy does it to our soldiers. “They” have always done it to our soldiers, a reason that has never been good enough, and still isn’t. And in engaging in this cruelty, and defending its use, we have become no better than the ones we disdain.
Many would like to believe that the torture at Abu Ghraib that brought those shocking photographs to the public was the work of a few rogue soldiers. And while some individuals may have indeed shown a special knack for hurting other humans, the use of torture was not limited to a few isolated events. It was systematic. It was enabled by changes in legal terminology from the Bush Administration that made things like water boarding, hypothermia and stress positions sound mildly uncomfortable instead of life threatening. This legal redefining of terminology to sound less objectionable is familiar. It was exactly the same path the Nazis followed.
The BBC reports that torture is now worse than it was under Sadam Hussein.
Torture is widespread and continues.
The Bush Administration took on Amnesty International on charges of human rights abuses by the US in Iraq.
There is more, but that seems like so much already...
Listening to the Republican National Convention showed the remarkable absence of this issue, except in relation to John McCain’s personal experience. To their credit John McCain and Ron Paul are the only Republican candidates that have spoken out against torture. Senator McCain insists that the US “may not torture, engage in cruel treatment or engage in conduct that shocks the conscience.” He has clearly stated that he is against water boarding and has called the Bush Administrations legal analysis of the use of torture dishonest and flatly wrong. He’s right, this shameful chapter in American history needs to come to a close.
Unfortunately, McCain voted against the Feinstein Amendment that would have accomplished those goals. The debate apparently centers on the application of the Army Field Manual to branches of the military and questions as to what degree the CIA is allowed to use severe and life threatening treatment to extract information from prisoners. It’s a sad state of affairs when politicians wrangle over what degree of abuse of prisoners is expectable, while half a world way prisoners are being tortured and killed.
In McCain’s own words: “The laws and values that have built our nation are a source of strength, not weakness, and we will win the war on terror not in spite of devotion to our cherished values, but because we have held fast to them.” It’s an honorable statement and a marked evaluation of the actions (and silence) of his own party. But in an election year where the candidates are separated by more than shades of grey on this issue – saying you are against torture and yet voting against the Feinstein Amendment is just not a consistant anti-torture stance.
Senator Barack Obama is against torture. In a statement on October 5th, these are Obama’s words: "The secret authorization of brutal interrogations is an outrageous betrayal of our core values, and a grave danger to our security. We must do whatever it takes to track down and capture or kill terrorists, but torture is not a part of the answer - it is a fundamental part of the problem with this administration's approach. Torture is how you create enemies, not how you defeat them. Torture is how you get bad information, not good intelligence. Torture is how you set back America's standing in the world, not how you strengthen it. It's time to tell the world that America rejects torture without exception or equivocation. It's time to stop telling the American people one thing in public while doing something else in the shadows. No more secret authorization of methods like simulated drowning. When I am president America will once again be the country that stands up to these deplorable tactics. When I am president we won't work in secret to avoid honoring our laws and Constitution, we will be straight with the American people and true to our values."
In addition, here is a link to the full text of Senator Barack Obama’s speech on the floor of the US Senate in reaction to S. 3930, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which approved US torture of detainees and strips Constitutional rights away from detainees.
The war in Iraq, torture, extraordinary rendition and the concentration camps at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba will perhaps be one of the saddest legacies of the Bush Administration. And it’s sadder still for the soldiers who were faced with these unconscionable acts in the course of their service. (One soldier’s story: “I blame myself for our downfall in Iraq.”) And it’s even sadder still for the Iraqi people who had nothing whatsoever to do with 9-11.
In the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, while on a bed of straw as a prisoner in the Russian Gulag: “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart - and through all human hearts.”
I would like to see that line between good and evil move toward the Light in this country. And on the issue of the Iraq War and the atrocities that came with it, I prefer John McCain to George W. Bush. And I prefer Barack Obama to John McCain. Because we can and should appeal to our better selves to bring about change in our own hearts, in our country and in the world.
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