Saturday, August 28, 2004

Geneva Convention Anyone?

I just read an article the other day in Slate Magazine in which the writer asks "should the Geneva Conventions be scrapped?" I am wondering what is wrong with the Republican Right these days they seem to think they are smarter than both the founding fathers and the brilliant men who saw us through two world wars!

Do they understand that the Kaiser and later the Nazis and Japanese committed so many atrocities and hate crimes, so many tortures and murders that the world was forever changed? Do they understand that the reason the Geneva Conventions were put together by all civilized countries, and respected, was not to prevent these things but rather to PROSECUTE the criminals who had done such things? Now George W. Bush wants us the USA to be above all those old fogey conventions, so we can be allowed to torture and disappear people at will! All in the name of some new "War on Terrorism!" What crap!

Terrorism STARTED World War I and it was developed into a fine science in World War II. People hung for it. People have been prosecuted and jailed for years for it right here in the USA, everything from lynchings, pipe bombings and plane hijackings. We just killed a man involved in the Oklahoma City bombing. Do we really now have to sanction torture, psychologically debilitating interrogation techniques and holding prisoners of our new "war" without any trial, give them no rights to attorneys or hold them forever without even charging them of a crime? Do we need these "new techniques" to prosecute Mr. Bush's crazed War on Terrorism? Does acting like Nazis and terrorists ourselves actually help put fear and terror into those psychotic minds who perpetrated the 911 terror?

I say NO. I say the only way to meet terrorists is with CIVILIZED behavior. The moment we give in to acting like them, we become them and they see us as a true and deadly nemesis which must be destroyed. We will make more converts and double agents using honey than we will using vinegar. If the "combatants"captured in Afghanistan and Iraq are treated with dignity and grace, they will have nothing to hate, no one to tell how rotten we are. They have already been brainwashed with the lies of their Ayatollahs, Imams and men like Osama Bin Laden. If they come up against our countries laws and police and find it is full of psychos who want to torment them for "kicks" they will be able to have their cruel, Ignorant God back on their side. We have lost all moral high ground in this conflict since Iraq was invaded. So of course we are making new terrorists who will want us all dead since the whole of Fundementalist Islam's ideologies are based upon the Arab Vendetta and Feud mentality.

The real question never arose in anyone's mind involved in the Iraqi prisoner tortures that these things are ILLEGAL and no ORDER given by a superior officer that requires a man to torture a prisoner or threaten, beat or hurt them with out provocation need ever be followed! Our soldiers and police forces, guards and "prisoner watchdogs" were NEVER INFORMED of the rules of the Geneva Convention by their superiors, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. These men sent us to war and have turned our men and women into sick, twisted fascist torturers and no one is taking the leadership to task! Hitler's cronies and thugs were tried and hung. But the ones now who feel it is in our best interest to change the rules of engagement and warfare by disposing of the Geneva Conventions are held up as some sort of heroes with a plan!

Bush said it best himself: "Having a dictatorship would make things a lot easier." (See Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911). Well other men like Mussolini and Hitler and even Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and Mumar Quaddafhi believe the very same thing. So did the Taliban. Sure a dictatorship is always a lot easier. One can destroy lives indiscriminately for whatever reason one likes! Time to oust our wannabe dictator, G.W. Bush, the Texas Governor who put the most people ever on death row. This trip down fascist memory lane he has provided the US with has been most enlightening. OF Nazism it was once said in the US, "It can't happen here." Well it is happening, has happened and will continue to happen unless we, the People are ever vigilant against it.

I say we renew our dedication to the Geneva Conventions and scrap the Bush/Halliburton plan for World Conquest.

sincerely, David St. Albans