Psyche, Science, and Society

Afghanistan: Forward to the past

Guardian reporter Natasha Walter revisited Afghanistan. What she reports about the situation of women is horrifying:

Malalai Joya is, at 28 years old, the youngest and most famous of all the women in the Afghan parliament. In a way her very presence in the parliament is a powerful symbol of change; a woman who had to work in secret in underground schools in Herat during the Taliban time is now able to speak out against her enemies in the parliament. She rose to fame at the end of 2003, when she made a speech attacking the warlords who still hold the balance of power in Afghanistan. On that occasion, one of the men she was attacking, Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, rose and told her that her speech was a crime, announced that “Jihad is the basis of this nation” and asked for her microphone to be disconnected. The then speaker of the house, Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, a former mujahideen leader, called her an infidel, and said that if she did not apologise she could not attend the next session of parliament.

Since her historic speech, Joya has survived assassination attempts and constant denunciations….

I have only just moved here,” Joya says. “I have to keep changing my house. I hate guns, but I have to have men with guns guarding me all the time. One day they will kill me. They kill women who struggle against them.” Although Joya hated wearing the burka during the Taliban years, she is still not able to take it off. “I wore it today,” she tells me, “while I was travelling, because I am not safe….”

“Here there is no democracy, no security, no women’s rights,” she says. “When I speak in parliament they threaten me. In May they beat me by throwing bottles of water at me and they shouted, ‘Take her and rape her.’ These men who are in power, never have they apologised for their crimes that they committed in the wars, and now, with the support of the US, they continue with their crimes in a different way. That is why there is no fundamental change in the situation of women.”

Read the entire article to find out what “liberation” meas.

The Taliban are returning. Imperial war only strengthens them. Yet surrendering the country back to the Taliban is a horrifying prospect.

What should be done? Hell if I know.

Add comment November 28th, 2006

Ed Kinane: On Torture

Ed Kinane, who spent ten months in federal prison for writing “SOA=Torture” on the entrance sign of Ft. Benning, the home of the U.S. Army’s notorious School of the Americas, has sent me the following article seeking to explain the Bush Administration’s attraction to torture:

On Torture
By Ed Kinane

It’s frightening that, at this time and in this nation, torture must be discussed as if it were a legitimate issue. What’s next — the pros and cons of child molestation?

Even hawkish old warriors like Sen. John McCain and retired General Colin Powell say torture is counterproductive.

Numerous are the reasons — both expedient and moral — for eliminating torture:

• ~ Tortu re degrades and dehumanizes the torturer. That may be his business, but that torturer comes home and becomes a husband, a father, a neighbor, a politician….
• Torture undermines the moral stature of those who condone it. Torture loses “hearts and minds” and allies — huge strategic mistakes.
• Torture embitters the tortured and those who care about them. Like invasion and bombing, torture recruits “terrorists.”
• If enemy soldiers face torture upon being captured, they are less likely to surrender. Their determined resistance causes more casualties on both sides.
• Torture is utterly inconsistent with New Testament Christianity. Jesus, who was himself tortured by invaders occupying his country, urged, “Love your enemy.”

The case against torture is massive and compelling. What more need be said? Why is the torture issue still alive?

The issue keeps coming up because torture keeps being exposed at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo or wherever. The issue keeps coming up because the Bush administration keeps pushing torture as a “legitimate” response to “terrorism” — a terrorism it’s doing its utmost to generate. Bush Inc.’s war on Iraq is just terrorism with a bigger budget and bigger bombs.

The Bush administration didn’t pioneer torture. Invaders, almost by definition, use torture. In the 20th and 21st centuries invaders favor air wars. Bombing cities — Baghdad and Fallujah for example — is mega-torture.

The U.S. Army used torture in Viet Nam. Those techniques were secretly taught at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas in Panama and then at Ft. Benning, Georgia years before Bush became Commander-in-Chief. The difference now is that Bush brazenly seeks to legalize and institutionalize torture.

The case against torture being unanswerable, why does the “Christian” George W. Bush jeopardize his soul? Why, despite broad condemnation and despite the strategic cost, does he openly promote torture?

I’m not yet ready to accept the recently suggested hypothesis that Bush is the devil. The likelier answer is more mundane. I suspect — but would welcome being proved wrong — that the Bush administration is seeking to establish precedent.

If US people and the US Congress can be conned or scared into tolerating the torture of “enemies,” this will help legitimize torture generally. On this slippery slope, we will be de-sensitized to torture wherever it occurs and regardless of the technicalities of jurisdiction.

Why would our Neo-con leaders want that? Tolerating torture abroad paves the way for torture at home. Not only will anyone designated a foreign enemy be liable to torture, but also those designated as domestic enemies. If you don’t support the you-are-either-with-us-or-against-us Bush administration, you just might end up on its enemy list.

Sound farfetched? Consider: Bush Inc., by promoting torture, puts our own soldiers at greater risk. If these war criminals dismiss the lives and rights of our own soldiers, why would they be any great respecter of non-soldier US citizens?

Already we have seen how Bush Inc., through illegal domestic spying and the so-called Patriot Acts and through extraordinary rendition and the suspension of habeas corpus, is no great respecter of the Constitution.

Domestic torture — or internal terrorism as it might be called — is business as usual for certain US allies and other authoritarian states seeking to squash dissent and intimidate opposition. Neo-cons here know they cannot succeed in conquering the world if they don’t first finish conquering the US.

In 1998/99 Kinane spent ten months in federal prison for writing “SOA=Torture” on the entrance sign of Ft. Benning, the home of the U.S. Army’s notorious School of the Americas. Contact him at edkinane@verizon.net.

Add comment November 28th, 2006