Hill Connections: Contemplation -Faith Reflections (Reflection on the Abuse of Iraqi Prisoners)

Handcuffed Sickened but Not Surprised
Like other people of faith and conscience, I have been disgusted and sickened by the reports and photos describing the systematic abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. military and intelligence personnel. I am, however, not surprised.

Having spent time as an inmate in U.S. jails and as a detainee in several military detention facilities, I know firsthand how easily corrupted these systems can be. I was protected to a large extent by being a civil disobedient, a Catholic priest, and an educated white professional. In addition, my arrests for the most part were within an environment of public peacemaking, sometimes extensively covered by press, and always reinforced by a close-knit support and advocacy group of family, friends, and peacemakers.

Personal Experience of Abusive Power
Despite this kind of protected status, I was threatened, bullied, denied legal recourse, lied to and about, told that I could be easily lost in “the system,” and put into solitary. When I was first arrested in 1977, the deputy put handcuffs on so tightly that I still experience numbness in my left thumb.

At one of my first court trials, I listened while two of the arresting deputies lied to the court about what my companion and I had done and falsified the evidence. The lying was truly gratuitous since neither one of us were denying what had occurred. In fact, we were happy to stipulate to the court that we had committed this action.... During one 30-day jail stint, the presiding judge told the four of us who were charged with civil contempt that he didn’t care what the law said, that in his courtroom he was the law. A sympathetic deputy told me on the way back to lockup that he had heard this same judge state in the courtroom that in this place he was God....

I could go on with other inglorious moments that I have experienced in the U.S. justice system. My instances are very small and cannot begin to compare with those that the abused Afghan and Iraqi prisoners suffered. It is critical, however, to recognize how fragile the law and its applications really are. If abusive power, intimidation, and dishonesty can distort the application of justice in high profile, civil disobedience situations, then it can do even deeper harm in the emotionally intense, secretive, and extra-judicial situations we find at Abu Ghraib Prison and Guantanamo Bay.

Person in jail Assault on Civil Rights
Whatever its intentions, the Bush Administration has plunged this country and the world into lawlessness. Whether it is the administration’s calls for revenge after 9/11, its systematic assault on civil rights in this country, its public contempt for the United Nations, or its public posture that the U.S. can unilaterally define for everyone what constitutes rule by law, this administration has provided moral license and cover for those who tortured, humiliated, abused, and even killed prisoners. Our government has created the environment and the rationale for a wide swath of human right abuses.

When the Bush Administration was mobilizing the country to go to war in Afghanistan and then in Iraq, I was e-mailing anyone who would listen about the immorality and political shortsightedness of these initiatives. After one e-mail, a friend wrote me, suggesting that I had become unduly cynical and that I couldn’t find anything positive to say about my own country. I have to admit, however, that for what this friend called cynicism and what I call realism, I did not foresee how perverse and corrupt these initiatives would actually be. I didn’t foresee the murder of detainees or the torture, ridicule, and abasement of the defenseless. I couldn’t imagine our military and intelligence services attempting to force Muslims to curse Islam. Cynical me couldn’t imagine forcible sodomy, urinating on prisoners, riding them like animals, and requiring them to retrieve their food from toilets.

One of our Republican senators during today’s (May 21, 2004) hearings reminded everyone that these prisoners were not in these facilities because of traffic violations. True. But what does the senator mean by this caution? Does he mean that because some of these men are suspected terrorists that they have no rights? Does he mean that they can be subject to any kind of physical, verbal, emotional or sexual abuse and intimidation? Maybe. Certainly this is what the Bush Administration is on record as implicitly advocating by attempting to make the case that because people are suspected terrorists or “unlawful combatants” that they are not protected by the Geneva Convention.

If not protected by these protocols, are they not at least protected or should they not be protected by the fact that they are human beings? Among the most defenseless are those who are imprisoned. One has only to gaze at the pictures of naked Iraqi men being set upon by dogs, being humiliated by men and women military personnel, being forced to pose in sexually compromising and humiliating poses, to know how truly defenseless these men are. The perpetrators of these despicable acts and their superiors who sanctioned this abusive environment have turned on its head one of the basic Corporal Works of Mercy.

I have begun to reflect on how transformational it would be if George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfield, and John Ashcroft along with every U.S. citizen, could spend a weekend, preferably a holiday weekend, in one of our U.S. jails or prisons. This is where you see up close and personal how democracy "works."

Moral Stance
In U.S. prisons and jails it is common to hear the slogan, "There's no just-ice. There's just-us!" “Just-us”! Isn’t this the message of Jesus of Nazareth. Isn’t this why Jesus was so consumed with the task of building the kingdom of God rather than waging wars, giving “payback,” or punishing.

When the Bush White House set its course to war, the president spoke about a crusade and being chosen by God. What God is this? Certainly not the God who emerges from the pages of the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, or the Book of Revelations. This Administration’s moral stance is bereft of Gospel ideals. Its morality is instead embedded in the pseudo-philosophy of Hollywood avengers: “Make my day!” “Hasta la vista, baby!” Dirty Harry, Rambo, The Terminator, and other cinematic heroes are prodigal in their violent vengeance. They are cop, prosecutor, judge, and executioner all rolled together. They have long ago abandoned law seeing it as corrupt, intrusive, or at the very least cumbersome. This same attitude emerges from too many politicians, whether Democrat or Republican.

It is an attitude that is costly to everyone who stands or appears to stand in the way of U.S. “strategic interests.” These people bear the brunt of the cost as their human rights and civil rights are stripped away. It comes at little cost, however, to most of the politicians.... Make Jesus Visible graphic

The Bush Administration campaigned in 2000 on the notion of restoring dignity and morality to the White House. There cannot be a restoration of either if human dignity is systematically assailed and despised as part of White House policy....

Dignity and morality will be restored when President Bush, the U.S. Congress, and the DOD commit to the rule of law everywhere for everyone. It will happen when we refuse as a nation to exempt ourselves from the laws and customs that enjoin other nations. It will happen especially when we commit to treating each person with dignity, compassion, and justice whether that person has been designated POW, unlawful combatant, or terrorist.

Make Visible this Jesus
If anyone is listening to the God of the New Testament, then s/he will know that dignity and morality are rooted in the life and example of the non-violent Jesus, a Jesus who appears to have completely disappeared from sight at Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay.

Our task is clear: Make visible this Jesus through our own lives and actions.