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TechnoratiAn Open Letter to the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, M.P.
Dear Mr Brown,
Standing in Afghanistan, you called the Iranian holding of fifteen British sailors who it is likely strayed in to Iranian waters: 'Cruel, callous, inhumane and unacceptable.' Breathtaking.Compared to the behavior of the UK and US troops, their treatment in Iran is seemingly a health spa.
'Cruel, callous, inhumane and unacceptable', is the total destruction of the country you were standing in. The boiling to death of several thousand prisoners, held in metal trucks in the sweltering summer, under the watch and very possibly at the hands of our American allies (complex accounts differ.) It is the bombing of village after village, of wedding parties and funerals, of goatherders, farmers, shepherds. It is reducing the country to a radioactive nightmare, where families bombed out of their homes have been found living in contaminated bomb craters - and suffering all the signs of radiation poisoning, according to the Uranium Metal Research Project, bleeding from all orifices with other accompanying appalling symptoms.
'Cruel, callous, inhumane and unacceptable', is the prison at Afghanistan's Bagram airbase, where people are 'rendered', disappeared, shackled, forced to wear diapers, their eyes covered, and flown to Guantanamo Bay 'the gulag of our time', as cited by Amnesty International. Uncharged and untried, with rare access to lawyers, they are left to rot, between bouts of torturing.
'Cruel, callous, inhumane and unacceptable', is Abu Ghraib and the dozens of other prisons across Iraq, which sprung up under 'liberation', where the disappeared also languish, between the odd bit of waterboarding (being held under till near the the point of drowning) being stripped naked, having dogs attack, having unspeakable items shoved into bodily orifices ('We need electricity in our homes, not up our asses', said one eventually released prisoner.)
'Cruel, callous, inhumane and unacceptable', is British troops in Basra pulling kids off the street and beating them up. It is hoisting some mother's son in netting on a forklift. It is beating a young hotel worker to death, over two days. Though as usual, the British Courts, find just one person guilty. Other deaths have led to no one being found guilty. Presumably Iraqis have taken to beating themselves to death.
'Cruel, callous, inhuman and unacceptable', is allied soldiers raping, pillaging, demolishing homes, driving over kids in the road, in case they are 'terrorist' kids and toddlers. It is the gang rape of a child called Aber who was then killed and set alight with the rest of her family. It is the reported hanging of bodies round tanks in Fallujah and the sickos who collect Iraqi brain matter as a 'trophy'. It is sending pictures of pathetic mutilated, dead, burned Iraqis, to porn sites in exchange for free access to shameful images of another kind.
'Cruel, callous, inhumane and unacceptable', is the abandonment of British residents in Guantanamo Bay and in Iraq, the recently aired fact that torture included chaining prisoners to bedsteads, bolted to walls (the US Army sure employs some impressive psychopaths.) It is the six hundred and fifty five thousand to nine hundred thousand excess Iraqi deaths at the hands of and under the watch of the 'liberators' (and that was last year's figure.) It is the four million known to have fled all that is familiar to them, or who are internally displaced. It is Iraqis and their Palestinian guests, not knowing from day to day whether they will be expelled from their host country.
'Cruel, callous, inhumane and unacceptable', is the destruction of an entire civil society, the lynching of its legitimate leaders, the destruction of Baghdad, the 'Paris of the ninth century', of humanity's history. It is the statement, last June, of Colleen Graffy, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, devoid of anything remotely connected to humanity, who said of three prisoners in Guantanamo who committed suicide, rather than live tortured and shackled, without hope, that their deaths were: ' a good PR move.'
'Cruel, callous, inhumane and unacceptable', were thirteen years of sanctions which cost maybe one and a half million lives, driven by the US and UK. Followed by an illegal invasion, a war of aggression and thus Nuremberg's 'supreme crime', for which there is a growing demand for those responsible to be tried. The sailors too and their colleagues could also be tried.
'Cruel, callous inhumane and unacceptable', on a personal note, is the Foreign and Commonwealth Office diplomats in Baghdad refusing to speak to the possible kidnappers of Margaret Hassan, who called her husband three times on her mobile 'phone. It is the refusal of Ken Bigley's brother's plea to search for Ken via satellite, since he had one leg almost rebuilt with titanium - which can be picked up by satellites, which are pretty abundant in Iraq's skies.
Lastly, it is worth looking at the website of your former Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray (www.craigmurray.co.uk) also former Maritime Head of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. 'The Iran-Iraq maritime boundary shown on the British government map does not exist. It has been drawn up by the British government.... (it is) a fake map.' Good Lord, surely not another 'dodgy dossier'?
Oh and 'cruel, callous, inhumane and unacceptable behavior', is, if British arrogance and intransigence ends up with their sailors being banged up for a long time. Iran offered the release of Faye Turney and British government intemperate language has seemingly scuppered that. A diplomatic disgrace of enormity. Yet again, a government 'not fit for purpose' - any purpose.
Felicity Arbuthnot is a London-based writer.
18 Comments so far
Show AllJH - Not simple minded at ALL! Your point is well taken and very valid!
Two examples: the Ghost Dance of 1890 among the Plains Indians of North America and the Paliau movement in the Admiralty Islands of Melanesia following World War II. Both show how people use religious principles to cope with a cultural crisis. Heterodoxy can get you killed.
What, pray tell, is so hard about saying, "Oops, our mistake, sorry about that." "Now, can we have our soldiers back?"
Had the US, upon discovering no WMDs, immediately, said "Oops, our mistake, our bad. Please accept our apologies and here's some $ to pay for what we broke." Then backed slowly out the figurative door, most of the death and destruction of the last four years would have been avoided.
Sorry for the simple-minded fantasy.
Great article Felicity! It cuts right through to the heart of the matter. The outrage in London and Washington is nothing more than outrageous hypocrisy.
Thank you Felicity. Well said. There are many, not near enough, on US soil who have believed from day one that Bush and regime should be tried for war crimes. Keep up the good work. Jeremiad
Rumsfeld set the dogs of TORTURE free and now we are criticizing the treatment of British prisoners -- !!! How ironic.
Actually, I've wondered if Blair was trying to do a favor for Bush in creating a new warmongering situation with prisoners???
I hope the British prisoners get back home safely, but I also hope that those many tens of thousands whose lives we interrupted and tortured also get home safely -- and live to tell the tale.
Americans need to hear their stories.
And there are 655,000 dead Iraqi civilians whose stories will never be told because of our brutality.
Wonderful article !
The above comments are consistent in rejecting the hypocrisy of US/UK treatment of people in the Mideast.
What is called for here is to oppose the current rejection of the Nuremberg ideals (The Charter, the Tribunal and the Judgment) that require all nations to be held accountable for the crimes of their leaders. What is called for is to adopt the Nuremberg ideals.
In the minutes of the conference session of July 23, 1945, when the Nuremberg ideals were created, Justice Robert Jackson said this:
"If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us. . . . If it is a good rule of law, it should bind us all, and if not, we should not invoke it at this trial."
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/jackson/jack44.htm
What was invoked at the trial were Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity--all of which have been committed in the Mideast over the last few years as the above article so aptly summarizes.
Will the citizens of the US and the UK decide they want the rule of law embodied in the Nuremberg ideals and the UN Charter? Or will they be "good citizens" of empire and reject Jackson's principle of universality?
Don't you just want to die laughing in a sick sort of way when anyone in the US or UK tries to claim the moral high ground when commenting on this incident. This is extremely mild compared to what could happen.
Great article for perspective. Every aspect of this neocon administation as been "Cruel, callous, inhumane and unacceptable" and every minute longer they are in power and out of prison is unacceptable as well.
I'm in agreement with most of the above statements. To go in and decimate a country based on no good legal grounds is criminal. In what court was this country ever convicted of the crimes it has been punished for. Our military acts like one of a bunch of lawless thugs or warlords running around bombing and murdering people with impunity.
We have contaminated the place with depleted uranium. The gift that keeps on giving for a billion years.
The rise in the heroin industry has spiked from the moment the Americans entered the scene. Is this just a coincidence or part of someones evil intentions? I have read a lot about our own CIA being involved in drug trafficing. And our banks in money laundering. Exactly to what extent I would like to know. But at least some of it has been well documented.
Firstly great article, thanks for your rational views.
Our leaders are the real criminals, and their crimes are going to be even greater if we allow them continue "ruling" over us.
They are all overcome by greed, hatred and cause divisions all the time between us to maintain their control over us. Democracy is a sham, never was anything but chicken feed but now it is obvious that it is a tool of the elite to keep their interests in place whilst creating an even tighter grip of control over us. The so-called pillars of society, governance, religion, education are all tools of the elite to brainwash us and make us live in fear so that it is easier for them to control us, these so-called pillars have to be taken down if we have a chance of making the world a better and more peaceful place.
We have to reach out to the people our leaders and their masters are destroying by sending them the message that we are with them and that we are all one. We have to show them that we are not responsible by removing our so-called leaders from power along with their masters and corporate henchmen and religious bigots and charging them for the crimes they have committed. If we don't the crimes they have committed up until now will seem minor compared to the crimes they will commit if allowed to continue abusing their fake positions.
There is no need for governance over us, we just have to use our own mind and our own common sense reject the brainwashing we have been indoctrinated with since the time of our births and understand that we are all one and any harm we do to others is manifest upon ourselves too. It doesn't matter where we are born on this world we are all the same, we should not be divided by people who have embraced hate and greed and use our own minds to decide our fate, we can either live in peace and harmony together or follow blindly to the destruction of our world by these sick perverts who rule for their own purposes.
The choice is ours, it is in an easy one in my view, it's time to take control of our own destiny and look after the world and everyone and everything that lives with us on this planet.
How long Rebel Farmer? as long as they are allowed to conduct "business as usual". What scares me is what tedy are going to do with all those abandoned military reservations scattered all over teh US. Can you spell concentration camps? Maybe it's time to stick some monkey wrenches into the engines of this runaway locomotive before total anarchy breaks out and total martial law is introduced. Tat feels like it will be the next 911.
This is so true, but politicians of U.K. (and U.S.A) will never believe they are the evil pervayers of the present mess. They are responsible,along with their multinatial friends, who make squiilions out of conflict. Meanwhile, the world burns.
I can't stand it anymore!
How long are the people, the real flesh and blood people, on both sides of the pond going to wake up and stop the atrocities done in their name!!
Tnx, Felicity, for saying it loud, true and simple.
For too long has the US/UK++ been allowed to talk of the splinters in other countries' image while ignoring the logs in their own.
Only the notion that US/UK++ represent "good" and others "bad" has made it possible for this hypocracy to prevail. ('Hypocracy' makes a good misspelling, indicating we're ruled by hypocrisy. Or even 'hypocrazy': we're living in hypocrazy).
Now it is abundantly clear that the greatest sinners against fair ethics in the world are exactly these western countries (mine included). Murderous inconsistencies of ethics abound in the behaviour of US/UK and countries allied with them.
Too sad and depressing how the states previously representing the humanistic tradition of ethics - in world perception and part reality at least - are now revealed as acting nothing of the kind. To hear western officials still speak as if from a high horse can only add insult to the grave injuries.
Pardon my language: We have become a whole culture of de facto demented psychopaths. I'm ashamed to be a western native. I'm ashamed to be me. I'm ashamed to live in comfort while my country supports the rivers of blood being poured to sustain the claims of legitimacy for that comfort.
The inequities of world-trade kill an average of 40.000 people from starvation every day, year in and out. That amounts to forty million every three years - equalling the total number of dead in WWII, in only three years. That's how bad we are, on an everyday basis. Then wars and the one thousand killed globally every day by handguns deviced - and mostly produced - by the West is in addition. Not a nice picture.
And now we're off to Easter-vacation – to forget about the bad news for a while and enjoy the loot, in our oil-fuled economy that's wrecking the world, but for the poorest first. So we don't mind much: literally, we don't use our mind about it. Hooray, we're happy. Remote control killing is our greatest success.
No wonder we have this great tradition of celebrating Easter – a pagan tradition tuning in to and celebrating spring equinox, twisted into a celebration of torture and execution of a fellow human. No wonder we're confused about right and wrong. We officially worship the cross, a torture-tool.
We're all April fools today, from the hoaxes put over on us by our rulers.
Impeachment, procesution for crimes, and a nice long stay in jail, even if it is Camp Fed, may enlighten them.
Off with their heads! Off with their heads! cried the Queeen.....
The capture of fifteen British sailors is unsurprising blowback. As Chalmers Johnson puts it in his book "Blowback. The Costs and Consequences of American Empire" (2000), "...blowback is simply another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows" (p. 17). Britain is reaping what it has been sowing since it partook in the savaging of Afghanistan and Iraq. What surprises me is how measured and moderate the blowback has been so far.