Letter From Bahrain

“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”
- Pete Townshend

Thanks to the video and digital photography of soldiers from the 372nd Military Police Company at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, the old American Republic is a shadow of itself. We now find ourselves stretched out in the mud and looking eye to eye with those who we condemned not so long ago.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld bears personal responsibility for the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal and must resign his cabinet position. General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, should also take a fall on this, as well.

Since these abuses have taken place at Abu Ghraib prison where some of the worst abuses of the Saddam Hussein regime took place, the symbolism is devastating. War is society’s heart of darkness and the full circle of its obscenity should be evenly appalling.

While it’s trite to say war is hell, the inevitable suspension of morality invites the glorification of violence. It’s not possible to let loose the animal in man and then expect to be able to cage it up again at a moment's notice. Relative to World War Two, George S. Patton acknowledged that some of his soldiers would likely commit rape after battle. Never concerned with political correctness, Patton was always painfully honest.

Yet the ideal of America is a freedom based on human dignity.

What is disturbing about the 1,000-plus visual images of Iraqis incarcerated at the Abu Ghraib prison is how the infliction of pain is eroticized. The staged image of Army Reserve Pfc. Lynndie England holding a naked Iraqi man like a dog on a lead seems like a bad porno flick.

This is disturbing. It’s all disturbing.

On April 24, two U.S. Navy Sailors and one Coast Guardsmen were killed during coordinated suicide attacks against the Khawr Al Amaya (KAAOT) and Al Basrah (ABOT) oil terminals, located roughly 19 miles from Iraq's main port of Basrah.

The three victims were deployed from the U.S. Fifth Fleet, which makes them connected to the American presence in Bahrain. One of the sailors had his head blown off.

When the Arab world sees images of Iraqis humiliated in prison, they are outraged. When the Arab world sees images of American and British soldiers killed by insurgents, they praise Allah.

Yesterday, a senior aide of the radical Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr offered worshippers a £100 reward to any Iraqi who captured a female British for use as a sex slave. With a Kalashnikov assault rifle by his side, the aide, Sheik Abdul-Sattar al-Bahadli, made the statement before an estimated 3,000 worshippers at the al-Hawi mosque in Basrah.

What kind of religion advocates the compassion of a God, while spiritual leaders brandish guns and urge followers to kill and degrade people?

This is sickening. It’s all sickening.

Of course what is most appalling is that the U.S. military has no business in Iraq. The current president is one of the dimmest men ever to occupy the White House, and there's a lot of competition for that title.

War is the usual sport of a ruling dictator, and serial warfare is what we have – especially when the American Empire has a supine Congress, the best that corporate money can buy. The Supreme Court surrendered its moral authority when it bulldozed its way through the Constitution in order to select as its President the loser in the election of that year.

Now America is the "wife beater" who is well respected about town until he thoughtlessly brings his battered spouse to a public gathering. We all knew the dirty secret, but the reality leaves us shaken.

Yet it's puzzling that many Americans are "shocked" by this transparent reality.

Behind the facade of respectability and commitment to human rights the practice of torture has gone on for decades, almost in full view of us. Counterinsurgency and assassination have all become essential parts of maintaining a global system that functions in the interests of American industry.

Right after Richard Nixon resigned as president, no respectable American newspaper said what was articulated by Claude Julien, editor of Le Monde Diplomatique in September 1974.

“The elimination of Nixon leaves intact all the mechanisms and all the false values which permitted the Watergate scandal. This is to say that Washington will continue to support General Pinochet in Chile, General Geisel in Brazil, General Stroessner in Paraguay.”

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Since 9/11, the current American president has created a gulag that stretches from prisons in Afghanistan to Iraq, from Guantánamo to secret CIA prisons around the world. The nature of such a detention system makes the imprisonment and abuse of innocent people all but certain.

According to Sidney Blumenthal, of The Guardian, there are perhaps 10,000 people being held in Iraq, 1,000 in Afghanistan and almost 700 in Guantánamo, but no one knows the exact numbers. The law as it applies to them is whatever the Executive Branch deems necessary. There has been nothing like this system since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Under the Bush-Cheney junta, the U.S. now has a system beyond the law to defend the rule of law against terrorism; America now defends democracy by inhibiting democracy. Law is there to constrain "evildoers." Who doubts our love of freedom?

Predictably, both Bush and Rumsfeld are now calling for an independent investigation of the Iraqi prison abuse scandal. As always, this will involve hand-picked loyalists who will conceal the facts and spread the administration's message that they never knew what was going on.

However, Bush cannot claim to be the commander in chief when things are going well for him, and then sidestep responsibility when he is embarrassed. Hopefully, American voters will deny him election again in November and this time the Supreme Court will avoid validating him as a dictator.

Bahrain cannot jail its way to democracy anymore than the United States cannot torture its way to democracy in Iraq.

According to the Gulf Daily News: Allegedly, five more people were arrested Thursday, bringing to 20 the number detained for petitioning for changes to Bahrain's constitution. More than 100 family members and supporters staged a protest over the arrests outside the Justice Ministry, in the Diplomatic Area of Manama.

Some of those arrested earlier are reportedly staging a hunger strike in their cells.

The latest to be arrested were Sadiq Abdul Redha Al Gawas, Tawfeeq Al Rayash, Jaffer Salman Soail, Abdul Hadi Al Hawaj and Jamil Hassan Al Shuwaikh.

Al Rayash, Soail, and Al Shuwaikh are all members of the Al Wefaq Islamic Society, but no other information is available about the other two detainees.

According to Abdul Hadi Al Khawajeh, vice-chairman of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR), some homes of the detainees were also searched by authorities.

Fourteen people were arrested on April 30 and one on Tuesday, and all are allegedly being kept in custody for 45 days for further investigation.

The BCHR expects more arrests, as a large number of people have been collecting signatures for the petitions.

The arrests are the result of petitions launched by four political societies, which call for major changes to Bahrain's constitution.

The societies are the National Democratic Action Society, National Democratic Society, Al Wefaq National Islamic Society and Islamic Action Society.

Since Wednesday evening, the prisoners in custody for 45 days have been on a hunger strike, according to the BCHR.

Al Khawajeh said relatives visiting some of the detainees were informed Wednesday that they would start a hunger strike that evening to campaign for their release.

A campaign for the release of the detainees is also being stepped up by a committee of seven people comprising four relatives of the detainees and three BCHR members.

The committee held a demonstration yesterday outside the Justice Ministry.

More than 100 relatives, friends and members of the public attended the demonstration, which called for the release of the detainees. They have been accused of attempting to overthrow the system, distributing falseness and rumor, encouraging hatred for the state and using illegal means to try to petition His Majesty King Hamad, according to the BCHR.

Committee member Abdulla Al Sabaa, who was at the demonstration, said the allegations were far too serious for simply collecting signatures.

"It's a hard task they are trying to achieve and we are proud of them. We are very disappointed with the system here," he said.

Al Sabaa's brother Hussain, aged 25, and uncle Ali Al Sabaa, aged 40, were among those arrested on April 30.

"We visited my brother and uncle and they seem happy because they feel that what they are doing is right," he said.

"They were only taking signatures to send to the King. We are not dangerous people, we are doing this in a peaceful way to support a democratic society in Bahrain."

Sabaa said he hoped that people from around the world would support their campaign by writing letters, giving speeches and campaigning to the public prosecution.

Committee member Essam Ayyad, of Hamad Town, was also at the protest to help campaign for the release of his brother Mohammed.

"The people are supposed to make the rules in a democratic society, but the government is not letting this happen," said Ayyad.

"Democracy in Bahrain is a big lie. In democracy there are two parts, the government and the people. If they charge them that means they charge democracy."

He said that none of the detainees were guilty, since they were only collecting signatures, which the constitution of Bahrain says is legal.

The government is arresting people as a scare tactic against political societies, said Ayyad.

"In Bahrain we have big publicity for democracy, but it's not what we have, even the government can't decide if it's a democracy,” he said. "If we keep pushing maybe in years to come we will achieve a real democracy."

The committee is holding another demonstration at 4:30 p.m. today, at the Seef roundabout.

At this stage of life, I love biographies and travel literature. Recently I finished Michael Asher’s: T.E. Lawrence, the Uncrowned King of Arabia. Quite good. However, my most sincere recommendation is What Am I Doing Here (1989), by Bruce Chatwin. If you’re unfamiliar with this name, Chatwin was a truly singular voice in British travel writing. He died of AIDS in 1990.

A central thread that joins much of Chatwin's work is his passion for nomadic life. Chatwin claims he suffered from 'Horreur du domicile', and never wished to remain in one spot too long. I understand what it’s like to suffer from wanderlust.

Another travel writer of fine repute is Robert Byron, a distant relative of Lord Byron. In 1933-34, Byron spent ten months traveling around Persia and Afghanistan; The Road to Oxiana is his account of that trip. It’s great stuff.

A contemporary travel writer and essayist is P.J. O’Rourke, an American. Currently, I’m reading Holidays from Hell. The other day, I had the book with me to read during intervals in an athletic meet between an American school and the Rugby Club – a team comprised of students from two private British schools on the island. Several times I nearly fell out of my chair, trying to conceal my laughter from O’Rourke’s book; not very good manners on my part, surrounded by members of the former British Empire.

Although I consider myself educated – a master’s degree, it’s been quite a while since I’ve been introspective and attempted an expression of social principles and civic duties. To be honest, I’m not certain where I stand on abortion rights, school vouchers, a free market economy and other meaningful concerns. All in all, I’m really not the most responsible citizen.

The other day I made my way to a British-based website known as Political Compass: www.politicalcompass.com

A modest survey is offered to determine fixture on a quadrant divided horizontally left-right to the extreme, and vertically authoritarian-libertarian top-to-bottom as the center line. The left is defined as communist [state planned economy], and the right as neo-liberal [an extreme de-regulated economy]. To the extreme, authoritarian is defined as fascist and libertarian is considered liberal socialism or anarchism.

Who knows about the validity of the survey techniques? As for me, I’ve taken the test twice – on separate days, and the results are the same. On economics, I’m seven points left of center, and for a social dimension, I’m about two points below the left-to-right axis.

For labels, I guess this means I’m mildly a leftist libertarian. To be in the same quarter of the political field as Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama is a great encouragement compared with many of the alternatives.

I’ve never paid any serious attention to libertarian philosophy, or what the American Libertarian party represents. The great thing about life is there’s always a reason to wake up the next day and learn something new.

I greatly admire the mind and thinking of Gore Vidal. His essays are nonpareil in postwar American letters. It is always the voice of an artist like Vidal who can inspire the love of truth and freedom. To me, truth and freedom are intertwined. I don't think it’s possible to have one without the other.

In America, we are free to utter all kinds of absurdities, profanities, and obscenities and outright lies. However, there is a problem when we attempt to tell the truth.

Look at how Noam Chomsky is barred from all major media, a most revered voice in American policies and politics and how it affects the citizen. Yet, all stations carry Paul Harvey. As a result, we have become a nation of flag waving nitwits, incapable of distinguishing fact from fiction.

Freedom of speech is the corner stone of our Republic. Yet, Bush, capitalizing on 9-11 continues to trash the constitution. Soon you may be detained for speaking the truth, if that truth happens to disapprove of Bush's activities, such as his illegal war in Iraq. (Homeland, Patriot I and II)

America ceased to be a Republic in 1898. We had promised to give the Filipinos their independence from Spain. Then we changed our mind, killing some 200,000 people in the process of introducing them to American democracy.

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution says that only Congress can declare war. But Congress surrendered that great power to the President in 1950 for the mad war of imperial vanity—Korea, and has never taken it back. This was followed by an even madder war of imperial vanity —Vietnam.

These two wars were bitter for us, not to mention for the so-called enemy. Next we were enrolled in a perpetual war against what seemed to be the enemy-of-the-month club. This war kept major revenues going to military procurement and secret police, while withholding money from us, the taxpayers, with our petty concerns for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Now, even harder to admit is that the American Empire operates as a fascist corporate state.

American historian Charles Beard wrote in 1939:

"The destiny of Europe and Asia has not been committed, under God, to the keeping of the United States; and only conceit, dreams of grandeur, vain imaginings, lust for power, or a desire to escape from our domestic perils and obligations could possibly make us suppose that Providence has appointed us his chosen people for the pacification of the earth.

Those Americans who refuse to plunge blindly into the maelstrom of European and Asiatic politics are not defeatist or neurotic. They are giving evidence of sanity, not cowardice, of adult thinking as distinguished from infantilism. They intend to preserve and defend the Republic. America is not to be Rome or Britain. It is to be America."

When Americans hold National Elections this November, we should realize that the only regime change that needs concern our spirit is in Washington.

For now, I’m glad to live outside my country. I am an American by birth, and an American in spirit, which to me means being an optimist, like Thomas Jefferson, rather than a pessimist like Thomas Hobbes. In my lifetime, the growing loss of liberties and our government’s decimation of the Bill of Rights is cause to think Hobbes' view of mankind is in the ascent. I like the ideal of America, but not the fact. It’s time to step away for a while. Clarity often comes from distance.

I am not a political pundit. If asked to articulate a position on important social issues, I’m not sure I can offer consistent statements. Sometimes it’s easy enough to settle for one-liners: I’m for this, or I’m against that. Sometimes the liberal label applies, other times I’m a conservative. And there are many times, also, when I can think of no particular label for definition.

Of course producing a journal exposes the writer’s passions and prejudices, contradictions and imperfections. Like everyone, I possess all these traits – plus perhaps more. I’m not interested in being politically correct. I’m not interested in an elegant chronicle of wasted time. I don't wish to be categorized. Every state tries to categorize its citizens in order to assert control of them.

It is very easy to discuss what has gone wrong with humanity. It is not so easy to discuss what should be done to correct what has gone wrong.

Sometimes one must hold a razor to reality, not a mirror.

As expected, graphic pictures showing the apparent abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. and British soldiers in Iraq have angered Arabs in the Middle East and people across the world.

Images of smiling U.S. military police humiliating Iraqi prisoners were first broadcast Wednesday by U.S. TV network CBS and then by Al-Arabiya network, based in the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar-based Al-Jazeera on Friday. Newspapers across the Arab world ran the photographs of U.S. soldiers humiliating hooded, naked detainees at Abu Ghraib prison on their front pages. Newspapers in Iraq did not carry the photos.

Allegedly, the U.S. military charged six soldiers with criminal offenses for abusing inmates at Abu Ghraib prison, which was infamous under Saddam Hussein's reign.

A year ago, the Americans went to Iraq to rescue the Iraqis, and now stand in need of being rescued.

A truism is that all republics that acquire supremacy over other nations, rule them oppressively. There is no exception to this in either ancient or modern times. Carthage, Rome, Venice, Genoa, Florence, Pisa, Holland, and Republican France, the British Empire, all tyrannized over every province and subject state where they gained authority.

During times of war, modern civilized societies attempt to follow a code of ethics for both civilians and prisoners. Yet this is difficult since war is really state-sanctioned murder.

One tactic used by both the Americans and the British in the European Theatre of World War Two was the creation of firestorms. This was achieved by dropping incendiary bombs, filled with highly combustible chemicals such as magnesium, phosphorus or napalm, in clusters over a specific target. After the area caught fire, the air above the bombed area, become extremely hot and rose rapidly. Cold air then rushed in at ground level from the outside and people were sucked into the fire.

In 1945, British Air Marshall Arthur Harris decided to create a firestorm in the medieval city of Dresden. He considered it a good target as it had not been attacked during the war and was virtually undefended by anti-aircraft guns. The population of the city was far greater than the normal 650,000 due to the large numbers of refugees fleeing from the advancing Russian Army.

On February 13, 1945, 773 British airplanes bombed Dresden. During the next two days, the U.S. Air Force sent 527 heavy bombers to follow up the Royal Air Force attack. Dresden was virtually destroyed. As a result of the firestorm, it was afterwards impossible to count the number of victims. Research suggests that a minimum 35,000 were killed; yet, some German sources have argued that it was over 100,000.

These examples are always hideous and beyond comprehension. Yet it’s impossible to conduct a humane war, when the activities are based upon an arrogant suspension of morality.

As Greg Weiher eloquently says, America styles herself the City on the Hill, the indispensable nation. But there is nothing here that rises above cliché. Germany celebrated its future as the Thousand Year Reich, too. It boils down to nothing newer than armies marching across the corpses of hapless victims. It recalls nothing so strongly as Arendt’s “banality of evil.”

Weiher reminds us this is such a worn and tawdry story.

Perhaps in response to the outrage over Iraqi prisoners - perhaps simply in response to the banality of evil, Saudi Arabian attackers sprayed gunfire inside an oil contractor's office Saturday, killing six Westerners - including two Americans and two Brits - and wounding 25 people before leading police on a bloody chase through the Red Sea industrial town of Yanbu on the Prophet’s Birthday.

According to London-based The Guardian, the militants stormed an oil refinery co-owned by Exxon Mobil Corp. and Saudi Basic Industries Corp., shooting five dead, fired randomly at a McDonald's restaurant and other Western shops, then tied the body of an American to a car bumper and dragged it past pupils sitting in class, firing into the air to attract their attention.

The militants told the students to go to Iraq and fight Americans.

According to one of the school's teachers they shouted: "God is great! God is great! Come join your brothers in Falluja."

Pointing to the bloodied corpse, his clothes shredded, they screamed in Arabic: "This is the president of America. Look how we are dragging this American. Go and inform the government about what you have just seen."

The Saudi Interior Ministry said its security forces killed three of the gunmen and wounded the other.

Allegedly, Crown Prince Abdullah said on Saudi state-run television that “Zionists” are behind the current terrorist attacks in his country. Abdullah and other Saudi officials have consistently blamed al Qaeda for attacks on Saudi soil, and the terrorist network has claimed responsibility for several.

However, the Crown Prince did not suggest that Israelis or Israel supporters actually plotted or carried out any of the attacks. But he said, “I am 95 percent sure that Zionism is behind the attacks, for I believe that [Zionists] play in the minds of those who are committing the attacks.”

The Crown Prince did not spell out precisely how he believes Zionists influence those launching the acts of terrorism in his kingdom.

Blaming Mossad, Israel's shadowy spy agency, is another convenient scapegoat, but not likely. There’s enough discontent with the corrupt rule of the bloated and degenerate House of Saud to create a mounting revolution.

For Saudis to avoid falling into the hellish circle of violence and extremism, perhaps the ruling elite should go easier on political activist Mohammad Saeed Tayeb. The arrest of Tayeb, along with about a dozen other pro-democracy activists on March 16, has stalled the reform movement in Saudi Arabia.

The reform-minded Prince Abdullah has been silent since these arrests, leading many to suspect that his powerful half-brothers, Interior Minister Prince Nayef and Defense Minister Prince Sultan, engineered the arrests without his approval.

For his troubles, Tayeb has been jailed five times, spent a total of six years behind bars, including 88 days in solitary confinement. While heading one of the country's largest publishing houses, he studied law in his spare time, and got his degree the year he turned 60, hoping to work in human rights when the time was right.

The time is always right for human dignity.