The Depths of Depravity

By Faheem Hussain
The Post, Pakistan

Faheem Hussain is an Italian based Pakistani theoretical physicist who has written for Counterpunch magazine.

In this piece for the Pakistani newspaper POST, Hussain appeals to the American people
saying, Americans "are responsible for their elected leaders and, if they want to save civilisation in the United States, they have to get rid of this terrorist cabal which has taken over the reins of power in the White House before they do any more damage to the world. The criminal gang in the White House should be impeached and tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Only in this way can there be any hope of resurrecting the image of the United States in the world." Hussain suggests the US is rapidly descending into a "barbarity" that shows something "deeply pathological" about the country.

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June 14, 2006 — The depths of depravity —

It seems that there are no limits to the barbarity towards which the United States is rapidly descending. I am not racist but I have come to the conclusion that there is something deeply pathological about the United States. I say this deliberately because the people of the United States are as much responsible for the actions of their government as the leaders themselves because being a so-called "democracy", they elected them.

What has got me so angry? Several things have come together in the last few days to demonstrate that the United States is descending into the dark night of barbarism. The first was the news that a new United States Army manual on interrogation techniques explicitly removes mention of the Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners of war. Despite protests by Condoleeza Rice that the United States does not do torture, this news is a clear indication that torture continues to be practiced by United States
forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and is sanctioned by the highest authorities. What happened in Abu Ghraib continues to happen in many secret interrogation centres run by the United States and its unholy allies around the world. One even suspects that there are such centres in Pakistan. And the European governments have also been complicit in the practice of "extreme rendition", i.e. kidnapping suspects and transporting them to interrogation centres where they are tortured. The European Union’s investigator published a report last week clearly indicting many Western and Eastern European nations’ complicity in this practice and also indicated that Poland and Romania house interrogation centres where torture is practised.

The second was the aftermath of the killing of Al-Zarqawi in Iraq. The United States authorities in Iraq presented a photograph of his cleaned up face to the press and gloated about it. They might as well have cut off his head as in the old days and sent it to Bush and Condi as a present. But what
is really shocking is the news about what happened when United States forces got to the place which they had bombed, hoping to kill Zarqawi. They found that local people, not knowing who he was, had pulled him out injured and had put him in an ambulance. The Americans dragged him out of the ambulance and started to kick and punch him and interrogate him until he died. No Geneva conventions about unarmed and injured prisoners here.

We should not be surprised at what happened in Haditha. Much worse was done in the assault on Fallujah, where innumerable war crimes were committed. The number of dead has never been released ("We don’t do body counts") and is believed to be above 6,000. Just one such incident of a war crime was recorded on video, showing a Marine deliberately killing an injured man lying on the floor of a mosque. But the Marine responsible was not punished. The training of US marines is done to convert them into killers and to expect them to behave in any other way is naïve.

And what finally blew my top were the reactions of a United States spokesperson and a United States general about the suicide of three prisoners at Guantanamo. Let me quote from the BBC’s website (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5069230.stm):

"A top US official has described the suicides of three detainees at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a ‘good PR move to draw attention’. Colleen Graffy told the BBC the deaths were part of a strategy and ‘a tactic to further the jihadi cause’, but taking their own lives was unnecessary. Speaking to the BBC’s Newshour programme, Ms Graffy, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, said the three men did not value their lives nor the lives of those around them. Detainees had access to lawyers, received mail and had the ability to write to families, so had other means of making protests, she said, and it was hard to see why the men had not protested about their situation."

BBC further goes on to say:

The camp commander, Rear Admiral Harris said he did not believe the men had killed themselves out of despair. "They are smart. They are creative, they are committed," he said. "They have no regard for life, either ours or their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged
against us."

Wow, the depths of depravity are amazing. How sick can you get? Suicide as a good PR move! First you drive people to despair, lock them up without legal recourse and without hope of ever being released and then you have the gall to say that they took their lives to ‘further the jihadi cause’, to ‘wage asymmetrical warfare’. If this is the civilised West, God help us. So from now on suicides of desperate people anywhere are not to be considered as acts of desperation but as ‘asymmetrical warfare’ against society, against their unloving parents, etc.

Ms. Graffy expresses surprise at the men not having protested by other means. What other means is Ms. Graffy talking about? Has she not heard about the hunger strikes, the protests by lawyers and human rights organisation? What could they write to their families? That they were having a wonderful vacation in Cuba? As if she does not know that all mail from the prisoners is censored.

The people of the United States are responsible for their elected leaders and, if they want to save civilisation in the United States, they have to get rid of this terrorist cabal which has taken over the reins of power in the White House before they do any more damage to the world. The criminal gang in the White House should be impeached and tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Only in this way can there be any hope of resurrecting the image of the United States in the world.