[Peace-discuss] In other crimes...

[C. G. ESTABROOK]

[The organization "The World Can't Wait" has published the
following ad in the New York Review of Books and the Nation. Signers
include Cindy Sheehan, Cornel West, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hedges, Daniel
Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky, Ray McGovern, Carl Dix, Bill Quigley, William
Blum, Joyce Kozloff, Ann Messner, David Swanson, Sunsara Taylor, Stephen
Rohde, Fr. Bob Bossie, Peter Phillips, Jed Stone, Tomás Olmos, Peter
McLaren, Jodie Evans, Margaret Lawrence, Matthis Chiroux, Larry Everest,
Andy Worthington, Blasé Bonpane, William Ayers, Dahr Jamail, Kathy
Kelly, Mike Gravel, Rev. Dr. George F. Regas, Donald Freed, Frank
Summers, Rocky Anderson, Tom Morello, Ann Wright, Edward Asner, Sarah
Kunstler, Emily Kunstler, Michael Ratner, James Cromwell, M. Cherif
Bassiouni, Rosalyn Baxandall, Ann Fagan Ginger, Stephen Hays, Uzma Khan,
Dennis Loo, Larry Pinkney Robert Sevin, David Zeiger and Debra Sweet.]

	Crimes Are Crimes - No Matter Who Does Them

In the past few weeks, it has become common knowledge that Barack Obama
has openly ordered the assassination of an American citizen, Anwar
al-Awlaki, because he is suspected of participating in plots by Al
Qaeda. Al-Awlaki denies these charges. No matter. Without trial or other
judicial proceeding, the administration has simply put him on the
to-be-killed list.

During this same period, a video leaked by whistleblowers in the
military showing U.S. troops firing on an unarmed party of Iraqis in
2007, including two journalists, and then firing on those who attempted
to rescue them -- including two children -- became public. As ugly as
this video of the killing of 12 Iraqis was, the chatter recorded from
the helicopter cockpit was even more chilling and monstrous. Yet the
Pentagon said that there would be no charges against these soldiers; and
the media focused on absolving them of blame -- "they were under
stress," the story went, "and after all our brave men and women must be
supported." Meanwhile, those who leaked and publicized the video came
under government surveillance and are targeted as "national security"
threats.

Also during this period, the Pentagon acknowledged, after denials, a
massacre near the city of Gardez, Afghanistan, on February 12, 2010, in
which 5 people were killed, including two pregnant women, leaving 16
children motherless.  The U.S. military first said the two men killed
were insurgents, and the women, victims of a family "honor killing."
The Afghan government has accepted the eyewitness reports that U.S.
Special Forces killed the men, (a police officer and lawyer) and the
women, and then dug their own bullets out of the women’s bodies to
destroy evidence. Top U.S. military officials have now admitted that
U.S. soldiers killed the family in their house.

Just weeks earlier, a story broken in Harper’s by Scott Horton carried
news that three supposed suicides of detainees in Guantánamo in 2006
were not actual suicides, but homicides carried out by American
personnel. This passed almost without comment.

In some respects, this is worse than Bush. First, because Obama has
claimed the right to assassinate American citizens whom he suspects of
"terrorism," merely on the grounds of his own suspicion or that of the
CIA, something Bush never claimed publicly. Second, Obama says that the
government can detain you indefinitely, even if you have been exonerated
in a trial, and he has publicly floated the idea of "preventive
detention." Third, the Obama administration, in expanding the use of
unmanned drone attacks, argues that the U.S. has the authority under
international law to use such lethal force and extrajudicial killing in
sovereign countries with which it is not at war.

Such measures by Bush were widely considered by liberals and
progressives to be outrages and were roundly, and correctly, protested.

But those acts which may have been construed (wishfully or not) as
anomalies under the Bush regime, have now been consecrated into
"standard operating procedure" by Obama, who claims, as did Bush,
executive privilege and state secrecy in defending the crime of
aggressive war.

Unsurprisingly, the Obama administration has refused to prosecute any
members of the Bush regime who are responsible for war crimes, including
some who admitted to waterboarding and other forms of torture, thereby
making their actions acceptable for him or any future president,
Democrat or Republican.

We must end the complicity of silence and say loud and clear:

The things that were crimes under Bush are crimes under Obama.

Outrages under Bush are outrages under Obama.

All this MUST STOP.

And all this MUST BE RESISTED by anyone who claims a shred of conscience
or integrity.

	###


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