HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- Love It or Screw You - Ivins
Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - Working for Change http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemId=12710 Love it or screw you by Molly Ivins -Creators Syndicate 01.25.02 - AUSTIN -- Why do they hate us? Well, scope out the deal
at Guantanamo, and see what you
think.
We go along for months having a war -- the war in Afghanistan, the war on terrorism, the war to get
Osama bin Laden dead or
alive, troops on the ground, bombs in
the air ... in other words,
war. Those of us who suggested that maybe war was not the
right rhetoric for this situation were booed down for being
insufficiently bloodthirsty, and the caissons went
rolling along.
Now we've won the war. It's not clear what we've won, but we've definitely won, which is better
than losing. So we
take the prisoners we've captured off to our base at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and suddenly announce
that they
are not prisoners of war after all, because this isn't really a
war we've been fighting. Therefore the prisoners are "illegal
combatants," and we don't have to treat them in accord with
the Geneva Convention on POWs.
This is why a lot of people hate us. For the sheer bloody arrogance of having it both ways all the
time. For thinking
that we are above the rules, that we can
laugh at treaties,
that we can do whatever we want -- we
don't have to keep
our word or behave like other
civilized nations, and we can
just tell people to bugger off when they
raise questions.
Now, among thoughtful world citizens, this is not why they hate us, but why they consider us stupid. Did
you ever see a deal
that makes us look worse? We claim we
don't have to allow the
International Red Cross in to inspect
the conditions at
Guantanamo, but you
know perfectly well if Americans were
being held as POWs
(or even semi-POWs) anywhere in the
world we would raise
holy hell if the Red Cross weren't
allowed
to see them.
Nobody has any idea if, when or how these prisoners are going to be tried. And the insanely ironic
part is this is all happening
in Cuba, where Fidel Castro has been
listening to lectures from
us on human rights and the correct
treatment of prisoners for 45
years. Bet Fee-Dell is a laughin' like a
sewer over this.
What's even dumber is that we already have allowed the Red Cross to inspect the quarters at Gitmo,
so we're losing a
disastrous battle on the public
relations front for no reason at
all. When Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld was
questioned about the photographs of the prisoners -- bound
and gagged hand and foot, blindfolded,
ears covered, forced
to kneel -- he reacted as though it were
presumptuous to even
raise questions about it.
Retired Gen. Bernard Trainor said, "Well, they like to spend a lot of time on their knees anyway."
That'll sound good on Arab
TV. Just stop a minute and think what
your reaction would be
if that that been said of American
Christian prisoners being
forced to kneel in, say, China.
In fact, these prisoners are anomalous and do not meet the convention's standards for prisoners of war -- but we're the ones who keep claiming this is a
war.
And there, it seems to me, is the nub of the problem simple fairness, -- or the appearance of simple
fairness. To at least
be seen to respect other people's opinions is so much to our advantage and costs us so little, we're nuts not to do it. The questions about the photographs were raised by the European allies, who, let it not be forgotten,
swung to our support after
Sept. 11 even though they were most
unhappy with President
Bush.
The Bushies, we often found in Texas, have a tendency to think their own stuff don't stink. Sorry to see they took that to Washington with them. Look at the reaction to the ruling by the World Trade Organization Monday saying the United States has to change its tax code or the European Union can load up to $4 billion on U.S. exports as punishment. Turns out the WTO doesn't think much of the 1971 law allowing corporations to exempt as much as 30 percent of their income from taxation by setting up offshore
companies. It'd be wonderfully
ironic for all the WTO protesters if we
actually got a fairer tax
system through the WTO. But, of course, the
bidness interests --
Kodak, Boeing, Microsoft, etc. -- are
unhappy. Other WTO decisions
have gone against laws in other nations, and the United States has
pretty much said, "Lump it." It'll be interesting to see how we
respond
to this
decision.
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