Soapbox

Poor Dispatch. A lot of letters have appeared lately accusing the paper of having a pinko-liberal, do-gooder bias. I would just like to refute that. As evidence I offer two stories that you have NOT run in the Dispatch this week, but would have if it was indeed a liberal rag.

The first is the fact that Don Rumsfeld has decided to address the issue of prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib directly by…making sure there is no record next time.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/23/1085250873479.html

"Mobile phones fitted with digital cameras have been banned in US army installations in Iraq on orders from Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Britain's The Business newspaper reported yesterday.
Digital cameras, camcorders and cellphones with cameras have been prohibited in military compounds in Iraq," it said, adding that a "total ban throughout the US military" is in the works."

Another story the Dispatch didn't run is the revelation that the Bush re-election campaign out-sourced its calling center. Yes, in an era when thousands of Americans have been out of work for so long that even many Democrats would gladly take a job calling people to ask for donations for the president, 125 people in India were hired for this task, presumably because they were cheaper and didn't make any pesky demands for health insurance, etc.
Both Moveon.org and the Center for American Progress carried this story:

WASHINGTON – May 21 – The Bush Administration has taken its strong support for outsourcing even further than once thought, opting to move its key political operations offshore. Specifically, the Hindustan Times of India reports that over a 14 month period in 2002 and 2003 when the Republican Party was playing up patriotism, the fund-raising and vote-seeking campaign for the Republican Party was done, in part, by two call centers located in India.

I have also seen no mention of the story out of New Mexico on the school that has banned poetry as an un-patriotic, anti-American activity,

http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/Opinion/Editorials/03OpOPN62051504.htm

Nor have I seen any tables comparing the costs of past wars to this one. Our current estimates place the cost of Iraq II, the sequel at $152 bill. and climbing while the total cost of WW 1, adjusted for inflation, was only $190 bill.! (Business weekly online, DEc. 2003) or of Roger Morris's open letter to the diplomatic staff of the state department.
Morris, you may recall, was the Nixon staffer who resigned when the decision was made to invade Cambodia in violation of peace negotiations he was conducting. He urges all current staffers to realize that the Bush administration is clearly not going to listen to their opinions and that they, in good conscience, need to resign also.
Nope, not a word about that. If it weren't for the internet, Columbus would never know.

I am not trying to say that I feel the Dispatch should be a liberal paper, nor do I accuse the Dispatch of being a shameless shill for the conservative movement either. I actually think the Dispatch makes an effort to try to be more balanced than in years past, and I applaud this. I also understand that there is not enough space to run every story.
My point is only that the paper need not feel stung by silly conservative critics. You have a looong way to go before you become a liberal mouthpiece.

I am appalled by comments by Senator Inhofe, Rush Limbaugh and callers to my favorite local talk show who deride those of us concerned about torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib prison. They ask, “Where was the outrage of these whining leftist liberals and do-gooders when Sadaam was torturing people”? They suggest we tolerate this behavior because hey, it?s not as bad as Hussein was.

Have they never heard of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”? I personally hold myself and my country to a higher standard than “better than some other murders”. If that makes me a leftist liberal, OK. (I reject the word “whining” because I am waaay beyond whining by now!)
And I was outraged at Sadaam’s behavior. I was outraged by Pinochet’s murders in Chile, and Mobutu in Zaire, the Shah in Iran and Samosa in Nicaragua, but the conservative war machine was strangely silent then.

There is one kind of outrage I feel as a civilized person whenever a fellow human is wronged, and there’s another kind of outrage I feel when that wrong is being done in my name! Because don’t kid yourself; whether I approve or not, the offical acts of an agent of the U.S. government are done in my name, and in yours!

This is not an issue of Democrat versus Republican, or liberal versus conservative. Torture is not a conservative value and forced sodomy is not on the Republican party platform .
This is an issue of civilized versus barbarian behavior, and if Rush Limbaugh and Senator Inhofe and others want to come down on the side of the barbarians, so be it. I and people of conscience everywhere will continue to stand up say to this and all abuse:

“NOT IN MY NAME!!”

They just don’t get it.
The apologists for torture are out in force, I see. Like Cal Thomas in his column in today’s Dispatch, they start out saying that if any crimes were committed then the offenders should be punished and then proceed to excuse the inexcusable.

Cal Thomas would have us believe that the abuses are probably not as bad as they look. Maybe, he says, the people being sodomized had important information. Also, our soldiers are under terrible stress. War is hell. Sadaam committed torture worse than this and where was the world outrage? Arabs hate us anyway, so what difference does it make? Muslims shamed themselves when they created bad societies. Etc and ad nauseum; literally.

Forget for a moment that the US (including George Bush Sr. and Don Rumsfeld) aided and abetted Sadaam in filling his mass graves. Forget that the US itself once had a society that permitted slavery. And forget that we should probably strive to hold ourselves to a slightly higher standard than simply “not as bad as Sadaam Hussein”. There is something here that Thomas has conveniently forgotten. It has to do with a document we signed?in a city in Switzerland?

Yes, war is hell, and under the stress of combat it’s easy to do hellish things. That is why the Geneva Convention was written. Signatories can not promise never to have a war, but they do promise not to behave like barbarians during wartime.

How can we ever demand decent treatment of our prisoners unless we hold ourselves to the same standards? Rumsfeld was spitting mad a year ago when American soldiers were taken prisoner and the Iraqi’s dared to show their faces on Arab TV. “That violates the Geneva Convention” he declaimed, and was right. Now, instead of really addressing the issue, he wants to debate whether the treatment was technically torture or was merely “abuse”.

There will always be fanatics who hate the U.S. no matter how humanely we behave. But the battle being fought now isn’t one to convert the fanatics: it is for the hearts and minds of the average, moderate Iraqi citizens. And when we rail about the abuses of Sadaam and make excuses for our abuse of defenseless prisoners, that war can never be won.

We cannot claim to be “liberating” and democratizing Iraq when we’re holding electrodes. Thomas doesn’t get it. Neither does Rush Limbaugh, whose morally repugnant excuse for torture is that it is “no different than a fraternity hazing”. (Remind me to find out what fraternity he was in, so I can tell my son to avoid pledging there!) Their attitudes mystify me, because I know that torture is not a conservative value, and sadism is not on the Republican platform. Decent human beings of all political stripes know that there is a huge difference between what happens voluntarily and what occurs under force and violence.

If we really want to support our troops, the American public will rise up and demand an accounting of this entire situation. We must not allow the prison guards to be the fall-guys for this pass-the-buck administration, but must investigate the entire system, and the orders from above that allowed this situation to occur.

There is no excuse for prisoner abuse, and no room in rational discussion for flag-waving apologists who think there is.

I know there are a lot of people out there who listen to Rush Limbaugh, either out of simple curiosity or because they believe in what he says. I would never try to argue politics with the latter group, as we wouldn’t change each other’s minds and we are entitled to our own opinions.

But Rush Limbaugh has gone over the line of disagreement into total disbelief.
Today I heard a recording of (I believe) Tuesday’s show wherein a caller was talking about the photographs from the Iraqi prison that are outraging people world wide, including our own president. Mr. Limbaugh cut him off and said,

“What was done there is NO worse than fraternity hazing, and people’s lives shouldn’t be ruined for it! ” He went on to say that hey, the soldiers are just red-blooded guys “blowing off steam”, and anyway, “These people were the enemy, folks! I mean, come on!” So what’s the big deal?

I’m paraphrasing, but I am not distorting what he said.

In addition to being repulsive, that is just plain stupid. People with a functioning heart know that there is no comparison between what is done voluntarily and what is done by force and violence!

To follow his logic:
” Rape is not a crime that a person should be punished for, because nothing is done to a woman that her husband doesn’t do anyway. So what’s the big deal?”
Would Mr. Limbaugh endorse that statement?

Also, even the US military admits that 60% of the people that were in that prison at one time or another turned out to be innocent of any crime and were later let go. Which sounds to me like there’s a good chance that many of the people being abused in those photos are the people President Bush keeps saying we’re there to liberate!!

Here’s what really gets me: Howard Stern got yanked off the air (and I hate Howard Stern, so don’t get me wrong) for using “potty” words. Rush Limbaugh makes barbaric and inflamatory statements like this and you watch: he’ll receive not so much as a reprimand.

This isn’t about being against him because he is conservative: torture is not a conservative value! And correct me if I’m wrong, but sadism is not on the Republicans platform, right?

People need to get mad about this. The man is becoming an apologist for torture! We need to speak up and say that this is not the kind of stuff we want on the airwaves and encourage our local channels not to carry him until he apologizes for statements like that.