Massive protests follow brief moment of truth
By
Deirdre Griswold
Published May 19, 2005 9:33 PM
The Bush administration is deliberately
missing the point if it thinks that an article in Newsweek magazine is what
caused massive anti-U.S. demonstrations across the Muslim world, from Gaza to
Indo ne sia, that peaked on Friday, May 13. Further more, no amount of bowing
down to White House pressure by Newsweek’s editors will undo the seething
anger at Washington for its brutal wars and occupations in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
The article in the issue of Newsweek dated May 9 had given
details about the abuse of Muslim prisoners at the U.S. naval base in
Guantanamo. For months and months, information has been leaking out about
torture, humiliation, sleep deprivation and routine insulting behavior and
language toward the prisoners.
Most of the detained are from Afghan
istan, and many were captured, tied, blindfolded and flown half-way across the
world three years ago when U.S. forces first invaded their country.
They
have existed in a limbo ever since. Interrogators have faced few restraints.
There is no outside monitoring, no public list of names of those detained, no
respect by the U.S. for international law regarding treatment of prisoners. In
fact, the Bush administration has created a new category—”enemy
combatants”—in order to circumvent such laws.
Last November,
there was much discussion in the media here about the role of the new U.S.
Attorney General, Alberto Gon zales, in writing a memo, approved by Bush, that
condoned the use of torture in the “war on terror.”
After the
gruesome testimony and photos that came out about the vile treatment of
prisoners at the Abu-Ghraib prison camp in Iraq, where U.S. soldiers forced
detainees to strip naked and simulate mas turbation while threatening them with
beatings and electric shock if they didn’t comply, it was clear to the
world that this regime, which sanctimoniously preaches “civility,”
“human rights,” “demo cracy” and “freedom”
to governments it wants to weaken or overthrow, has not the slightest regard for
any of that when it comes to its own conduct.
The White House has now
forced News week’s editors to apologize for their story, which reported
that an internal investigation showed that one technique used by the Guantanamo
interrogators to “soften up” detainees was to put the holiest book
in the Muslim religion, the Koran, on a toilet during interrogation, and, in at
least one case, to actually flush the book down.
The writer of the story,
Michael Isikoff, said the Pentagon had been allowed to read his account before
it ran and made no objection. Obviously, the commercial media in the U.S., who
constantly refer to themselves as the “free press,” are used to
submitting sensitive material to the military for approval before
publication.
Given that it is widely known that U.S. military personnel
routinely refer to Muslims with the most insulting of terms, and that part of
the psychological warfare of a racist, predatory imperialist army is to degrade
those it hopes to conquer, this story struck home and inflamed Muslims
everywhere.
In Afghanistan itself, anti-U.S. demonstrations went on for
days, even though they were put down with such brutality that at least 16
Afghans were killed and hundreds wounded.
There were passionate protests
in Egypt, Pakistan, Malaysia and many other countries.
Once this happened,
the Pentagon, White House and State Department jumped on Newsweek. Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice called the magazine’s report
“appalling” and said it created “a very major problem”
for the U.S. in the Muslim world.
White House spokesperson Scott McClel
lan said, “Our image abroad has been damaged.”
The deaths of
demonstrators were blamed on the magazine. Its editors humbly
apologized.
But this was not the first time that such an account had
appeared.
In August and October 2004, news reports based on a lawsuit and
a written report by British citizens who had been released from Guantanamo
claimed abuse by U.S. guards, including throwing their Korans into the toilet.
And in January, Kristine Huskey, a lawyer representing Kuwaitis detained at
Guantanamo, said they claimed to have been abused and one detainee saw a guard
throw a Koran into a toilet.
The abuse and the humiliation are real. No
amount of media manipulation and intimidation can change that. Newsweek has not
tarnished some super-clean U.S. “image.” It has lifted the lid just
a little—and then closed it again in great fear—on the cesspool of
U.S. imperialism’s criminal conduct in what used to be referred to as the
Third World, which has been going on for a long time but can no longer be
concealed by platitudes about peace and democracy.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
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