The Rag Blog

This week, Lt. Ehren Watada faces a court martial for his refusal to serve in Iraq. But the trial of Lt. Watada is one in which We The People will be judged.

Following World War Two the Neuremberg trials established the principle that following orders was NOT an excuse for war crimes. The correlary is that soldiers not only have a right, but a duty to refuse to obey orders they consider to be illegal or immoral. This right is a foundation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice under which Amerecan military troops operate.

And, given that officers issuing illegal or immoral orders are not likely to announce them as such, implicit in the right to refuse such orders is the right and obligation of the soldier receiving those orders to make a determination if the orders are legal.

This is the principle the US Government is trying to bury as it prepares for Lt. Watada’s Court Martial. The last thing the government wants is for the legality of the war in Iraq to be put on trial.

But there is another principle the US Government hope is also pretending does not exist. And that is that the military of the United States is subordinate to the civilian control of the nation. That is why the Commander in Chief is a civilian position. That is why Congress must vote on the top military honors and promotions. Congress is, in theory, subordinate to the will of the people. That is why it is called a representative government.

It therefore follows that the civilians of the United States, i.e. WE THE PEOPLE have an authority in principle to tell the military court martial of Ehren Watada that this case is indeed about the legality of the Iraq war.

With that right, comes responsibility. And the world will judge not Lt. Watada, not the court martial, not the White House, but WE THE PEOPLE based on what we do to avert what appears to be a serious abuse of military authority.

If we accept that a soldier has a right and a duty to refuse to obey an illegal order, it follows that We The Poeple have a similar right and duty to stand by that soldier. WE have to make noise. We have to call attention to the injustice. We must hold that injustice up to the world’s criticism.

If, on the other hand, we sit still and allow our government to establish a precedent that soldiers CAN be ordered to commit illegal acts, we are no better than those Germans who remained quiet while Hitler ordered their soldiers to commit war crimes.

So, how do you want history to remember you?

And what are you prepared to do about it.

Showing up for work!
1992-1993

At the crack of dawn one humid July morning, I mounted my trusty iron horse and pedaled off to La Julia in Batabano municipality, 50 kilometers south of my Havana residence. I was on my way to participate in what Che called that “special atmosphere” of collective volunteer labor.

“To build communism, you must build new man, as well as the economic base…the instrument for mobilizing the masses … must be moral in character … Work must cease being what it still is today, a compulsory social obligation, and be transformed into a social duty … Our goal is that the individual feels the need to perform voluntary labor out of internal motivation, as well as because of the special atmosphere that exists.” (1)

A “Special Period” was declared by the State soon after the collapse of European state socialism. Cubans lost 63% of their foodstuffs, previously imported from Comecon trade partners. They also lost 85% of export income including oil-for-sugar barter trade.

Cuba’s leaders designated plan alimentario (food plan) as priority number one, alongside tourism. The state emphasizes becoming self-sufficient in many areas. Everybody’s belt had to be tightened.

After cycling without stop for two hours, a sign marked GIA-2 appeared on the flat horizon saturated with banana plants and vegetable crops. The camp looked like others I had just passed: white-painted, one-story concrete dormitory buildings neatly arranged in rows. Shrubs, flowers and garden vegetables grew between the buildings. In the distance, I could just make out the sea where I had sailed past Batabano on petroleum runs.

GIA-2´s director, Oscar Geerken, a handsome man in his mid-40s, led me to his cubicle where I’d be staying. It had four, two-tiered bunk beds, thin foam rubber mattresses and pillows. Two ventilators whirled overhead to cool the room and chase away persistent mosquitoes—Cuba’s only dangerous animal, Fidel was fond of saying.

“We built this camp ourselves with help from local constructors,” proudly proclaimed the mustachioed Oscar, “and we did it in just 29 days.”

Geerken was a chemistry teacher and school administrator, who had come here with the original 120 founders, in November 1990. He, like the others, would get his job back following two years of volunteer work, or even before if he quit earlier.

Something funny has been happening to the CCTV cameras in our neighbourhood. They have started growing ears. Not real ones – at least not yet – but audio functions enabling them to “hear” what is happening around them as well as see. At the moment the experiment is confined to six cameras operating in the Soho area of Westminster, London, which has a high concentration of clubs and bars. An advanced wireless network which the council is building relays the information to a monitoring centre. If it is successful, it will be expanded to other selected areas. Police in the UK are also thinking about installing new CCTV cameras sensitive enough to record conversations up to 100 yards away to thwart hooliganism but, wisely, are keen to have a national debate about it first.

Westminster council claims that the devices don’t eavesdrop since they monitor ambient noise, not actual voices. For instance, if the decibels emanating from clubs rise above acceptable levels late at night then the authorities are automatically informed so, instead of sending out noise monitoring officers they can ring the club’s owners to warn them or, if it is serious enough, take the appropriate action.

WASHINGTON — President Bush quietly has claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warrant.

Bush asserted the new authority Dec. 20 after signing legislation that overhauls some postal regulations. He then issued a “signing statement” that declared his right to open mail under emergency conditions, contrary to existing law and contradicting the bill he had just signed, according to experts who have reviewed it.

A White House spokeswoman disputed claims that the move gives Bush any new powers, saying the Constitution allows such searches.

Still, the move, one year after The New York Times’ disclosure of a secret program that allowed warrantless monitoring of Americans’ phone calls and e-mail, caught Capitol Hill by surprise.

“Despite the president’s statement that he may be able to circumvent a basic privacy protection, the new postal law continues to prohibit the government from snooping into people’s mail without a warrant,” said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the incoming House Government Reform Committee chairman, who co-sponsored the bill.

Experts said the new powers could be easily abused and used to vacuum up large amounts of mail.

“The [Bush] signing statement claims authority to open domestic mail without a warrant, and that would be new and quite alarming,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington.

“You have to be concerned,” a senior U.S. official agreed. “It takes executive-branch authority beyond anything we’ve ever known.”

A top Senate Intelligence Committee aide promised a review of Bush’s move.

“It’s something we’re going to look into,” the aide said.
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Most of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act deals with mundane changes. But the legislation also explicitly reinforces protections of first-class mail from searches without a court’s approval.

Yet, in his statement, Bush said he will “construe” an exception, “which provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection in a manner consistent … with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances.”

How many people who aren’t news junkies know that Madrid Airport was bombed on Saturday? Relatively few I would venture, and that’s because major western governments and their media mouthpieces don’t hype terror unless Muslims are behind it.

I personally only caught the story a couple of days after it happened on an obscure channel on UK digital satellite called Euro News. Operatives of the Basque separatist organization ETA packed 800kg of explosives in a car bomb that ripped apart the parking lot of Barajas Madrid Airport, killing two and injuring twenty people.

The American voters in November made it clear that it’s time to start withdrawing from Iraq. Political leaders from both parties and any number of experts are increasingly coming to the realization that American soldiers are dying, day in and day out, in pursuit of an unattainable goal.

So what is President Bush about to do? By all indications: escalate. His “new way forward” in Iraq appears to call for more troops — along with a series of other measures that might have helped if he’d taken them three years ago.

News reports suggest that Bush’s plan is not likely to win enthusiastic support, even from within his own party. But my question is: Where’s the outrage?

For pan-Arab writers like Abdulbari Atwan of Al-Quds al-Arabi, there was never any doubt about the nature of Bush-administration policy in Iraq and the whole region. It is anti-Arab and anti-Muslim. But “moderate” Arab writers have traditionally kept open the defence of incompetence or other extenuating circumstances. For one moderate writer, it seems as if something in his way of thinking snapped as a result of the Saddam lynching. Here’s Daoud Shiryan writing on the opinions page of the moderate newspaper Al-Hayat yesterday:

Today, after the boasts of Maliki about the execution of Saddam in this barbaric way, and the agreement of the American government to this hanging, in this grotesque way counter to all American and human values, we need to stop talking about the American policy mistakes in Iraq, because what they are doing in that country is in pursuance of an intentional and a filthy plan, [where] they dissolved the Iraqi army, and then it was up to us [Arabs] to find excuses for their policies, undertaken in deliberate ignorance of regional history and Iraqi social structure, and when they permitted the adoption of a constitution that ended the Arab nature of Iraq, we called that democracy, but then came the execution of Saddam, and [finally] it was made clear to us that Washington is acting according to a savagery that is unprecedented, and they are now supporting a gang of Shiites to take the place of the neo-cons in the project that they call the new Iraq…

If they help to propagate a war, heck yes.

One fact many of those who visit this blog do not know is that 35 of the 55 “deck of cards” were Shia.

Most of the Iraq military was Shia. Many of these Shia fought and died for Iraq. Not for Sistani, may god curse his bones, not for Ali, not for Sadr and not for Mohammed.

They fought for Iraq. They died for Iraq. They returned home in coffins, without eyes, and ears and burned and maimed. Those that were captured and interned in Iran were tortured by the Badr Brigade.

Many Shia who refused to side with Iran were executed.

Why is it these reports are never made in AP, AFP, Reuters, CNN, MSNBC? Why?

Why did they not interview Abu Abdullah, my neighbor in Baghdad, who was twice wounded on the battlefront. TWICE! He insisted on returning after taking shrapnel in his left thigh.

And the second time, he lost a kidney. He was always walking with a cane. Soft-spoken man who was decorated far more times than I remember.

He was revered by all in the neighborhood as the war hero among us.

AND HE WAS SHIA.

So, not surprising to read in the media today:

The spokesman for the Arab Baath Socialist Party, which ruled Iraq from 1968 to 2003, who asked to be identified as Abu Muhammad for security reasons, said: “Most Western media outlets have been helping the US occupation authorities to portray the Baath party as a Sunni party which suppressed the Shia and deprived them of their rights.

“Actually, sect was never an issue in Iraq. I am a Shia and I have been a senior Baath official … No Baath party official – no Iraqi official – ever asked me about my sect.

“When the US army occupied Iraq they issued a list of 55 wanted top Iraqi officials, starting with President Saddam Hussein; half of those senior officials were Shia.

“The Committee of Debaathification issued a list of 100,000 senior Iraqi Baathists who would not be allowed to enjoy governmental posts, 66,000 of them were Shia – so how is the Baath party a Sunni party.

The State of Israel calls it “fight for existence” or “fight against terror”. Its detractors call it “colonization”, “apartheid”, or “ethnic cleansing”. Baruch Kimmerling coined the term “politicide of Palestinians”. Edward Said spoke of slow bleeding. Recently, even words such as “genocide”[1] have been used. Let us try to define the Israeli policy, and then grapple with the question of proper naming.

It should be stated in advance, that by ףpolicyפ I mean consistent long term developments pursued by the different Israeli governments in the Occupied Territories . Its major element has been massive settlement construction in conjunction with land grab. By now the number of Israeli Jewish citizens residing beyond Israel עs 1967 border nears 0.44 million (including Jerusalem ). The built-up area of the settlements consists of less than 3% of the area of the West Bank , but the area which they officially dominate (municipal jurisdiction) constitutes over 40% [2].

Presently, more than 1/3 of the West Bank is out of reach for most Palestinians [3]. A second element has been confinement of West Bank Palestinians to disconnected enclaves, and attrition of the enclaves by military invasions and economic blockade [4].

On the other hand, I shall attach little significance to the recent Olmert-Abbas meeting, and to recent declarations by PM Olmert of forthcoming goodwill gestures towards Palestinians. Similar declarations by Israeli leaders were made periodically in the past, and have thus been an integral part of the Israeli policy.