'Terrorist In My Neighborhood'

Giving The Benefit Of The Doubt

I don't like David Hicks. I don't like what happened to him at Guantanamo Bay either, and I sure don't like the War on Terror that has informed the first part of this century, but in the scheme of things David Hicks is still eminently dislikable. I don't know being dislikable is enough to get you tortured in camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay, but I always suspected it couldn't have happened to a more deserving shit-head, and everybody wanting for him to return were misguided peaceniks, rallying around the worst shit-flag with the worst shit-cause.

Maybe another way of putting it is this: I don't like the death penalty either, but when applied to Shoko Asahara, it blunts my objections considerably. If they had the death penalty in Norway and applied it to Anders Brevik, I wouldn't mind. That they don't execute Brevik in Norway is a testament to Norway's level of civil progress, and maybe I'm too flexible in my beliefs about these things. They're clearly better people than I am.

Maybe David Hicks doesn't warrant being lined up with the likes of Asahara or Brevik, but to my mind there's no doubt he went to Afghanistan for some kind of military adventure and ended up paying for it heavily. His denials have always rung hollow, given everything else with which he was reported to have involved himself.

So at the barebones level of it, I found it really hard to argue against US torture in Guantanamo Bay leading with this white kid form South Australia. Other people? Sure. This guy? Puh-lease. It's a bit like arguing against the Death Penalty with  some C-Level Guard at a Nazi death Camp. How culpable were they? I dunno - but they sure meant to be there doing evil shit, that's why you'd stick them on trial. Hicks was culpable just by being there. how big that culpability was, I don't know, but he sure as fuck was up to no good.

Here's the crucial thing: Most civilian people on the planet that saw 9/11 unfold on TV did not think to themselves they needed to get to Afghanistan. He got exactly what he bargained for; he gets absolutely zero sympathy from me.

After the weird political deal that returned Hicks to Australia - god only knows who's face exactly was saved in all of it because nobody looked good - Hicks started living in my area. He was spotted shopping at the local supermarket. This prompted me to write this song.

I don't think he lives in the area any more. I believe he's back in South Australia, beating up on some other life partner. He's still a dick in my books.





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The Torture Never Stops - Part 1001

David Hicks, Fighting For His Name

Long time readers will know I can't stand David Hicks. It's the one sticking point that makes me part ways with my fellow progressives. The illegitimacy of the wars and the charges and the torture at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, are all things I agree that are terrible things. But every time Mary Kostakidis or some other progressive talking head gets on the TV and starts championing David Hicks' cause and claiming that what happened to him was unjust, I get cold feet and beset with the desire to run the other way with those cold feet.

The wave of sanctimonious gobbledegook that flowed in defence of the man was intolerable, at the time and even to this day. The only person who was in Hicks' corner that I could get behind was Major Mori who was the counsel assigned to defend David Hicks at the military tribunal. For him, I have an undying respect. David Hicks himself just leaves me cold. Now that his conviction has been overturned, there is talk of a government apology. Yet, much as I reviled the Howard government in its day and dislike this Abbott government even more, I can't help but agree with them when they say there won't be an apology coming from their government.

Have a quick look at this section of the article:

In a tense exchange with reporters at the end of the press conference, Mr Hicks hit out at his critics. 

"I think they're supporters of torture," Mr Hicks said. 

"The only thing that matters is what the US government has said." 

Asked what he was doing when he was picked up in Afghanistan, Mr Hicks replied: 

"Having a holiday." 

He said he wanted "to live a normal life and be a normal person".

Good Grief. 

I don't support torture, I'm against it. The "only thing that matters" to me is most definitely not what the US Government said or says. What he was doing in Afghanistan when he was picked up in the early days is contentious to this day. However we do know one thing. When the events of 9/11 were unfolding, we all went to work that day. We all went to school that day. We discharged our duties to society as was expected of us. Hicks chose to go fight with his mates in Afghanistan. That's how you get picked up by the US Marines. That's how you end up in Gitmo getting the iron sausage. I do think it was a travesty that kept him there, I think the military tribunal set up to try him was equally a travesty and I feel sorry for him he had to endure torture and the attendant legal circus. 

But I just can't think of a way to couch what happened to him other than he had it coming. It's exactly as John Lennon quipped, "nobody ever gets what they deserve, they only get what's coming to them". He walked right into it - it was his choice - and landed in hell. And now he wants an apology for his trouble? Please count me out, and please, not in my name. 

David Hicks should grow the fuck up and accept that what happened to him has to do with his own actions.  Somebody was going to pay for 9/11. The fact that he put himself into that picture is his own  stupid bloody fault, and it was no bloody accident. 

The CIA And Its Torture Record

Where Does The Buck Stop With Torture? 

It's always bothered me that the Abu Ghraib prison mess ended up with Lynndie England going to prison and the CIA handlers of the torture got away scot free. If you can't remember, Lynndie England was the poor sod left holding the leash in the photo of some Iraqi prisoner being tortured in Abu Ghraib prison. The way the trial concluded, it essentially placed all the culpability on a PFC with  less than average intelligence. As if it was all her idea.

The hypocrisy of the US Army and government satisfying itself with this outcome and shoving the whole issue under the carpet was one of the horrible little spectacles of the 2000s. Now we're finding out that the US government is atlas willing to form a commission to say the truth - that the CIA regularly tortured people, that the torture did not yield significant information and people responsible for these crimes against humanity have essentially walked free. Rank Hath Its Privileges and all that operating from top to bottom, which dovetails with the way PFC England's trial went.

Even the legal loophole that placed the Guantanamo Bay prisoners out of reach of US civilian courts, or the way 'renditions' were carried out so that the torture took place on foreign soil where torture was accepted indicates a a kind of ethical vacuum where hypocrisy played fast and loose papered over scrutiny and objection. Even now, republican politicians are saying the 'enhanced interrogations' were fruitful and necessary, and that the report is 'hooey'. Is 'hooey' even a proper refutation of anything?

"I declare your augment 'hooey'"
"Well good sir, I guess you got me a good one. Your call of 'hooey' renders all the facts and evidence presented before us meaningless now."
I don't think so Dick.

In light of all that, it's refreshing to see people want those in the highest offices be held accountable for those acts. It would be hard to see the likes of GW Bush, Dick Cheney, Condy Rice and Donald Rumsfeld brought to account for their part in this horrifying chapter in the War Against Terror. The problem is that it is aways so hard to wage a War Against Error. If there were any justice in any of this, the Bush Administration cabal of politicians would land in the dock for their part in presiding over this stuff. The cynic in me doubts it would happen. President Obama is speaking in a neutral tone trying to douse that flame. I guess he's got drone strikes on his record to worry about.

The Euphemisms Suck

Speaking of which... 'Enhanced Interrogation' is one of these euphemisms that make you wonder how much people are willing to screw with words in order to hide meaning. Calling torture 'Enhanced Interrogation' is like describing rape as 'Enhanced Seduction'. The impulse to substitute Latinate words over old Anglo-Saxon ones goes a long way towards making things sound more official and legitimate.

They do this in Asia too, whereby if you want something to sound more official, you dig up ever more obscure Chinese characters to describe things. So it's not a phenomenon unique to English. As a writer of some experience, it's easy to spot that the same trick is being used exactly to enhance authority and enhance legitimacy on something that is at its deepest core dodgy and suspect.

David Hicks Rears His Ugly Head

It didn't take long before the Guantanamo Bay returnee piped up and made himself visible as the victim of torture at Gitmo. After all these years I still find it difficult to be sympathetic, but I do take his point that if they wanted to know if people got tortured by the CIA, they need not have looked too much further than the inmates at Guantanamo Bay base. I didn't believe him when he said he was an accidental bystander, but I did believe him when he said they tortured him and others down in Gitmo.

I've been pondering from where this belief came, and I have to say it seemed obvious that the US Marines might not take too kindly to enemy captives who were suspected terrorists, in the wake of 9/11. It seemed far more unbelievable that such captives wouldn't be tortured in Gitmo. I would even posit and say the least surprising thing is to find confirmation that the CIA used renditions to torture prisoners in third-party nations, during the years straight after 9/11.

All the same I have mixed emotions about David Hicks turning up to confront the world with his experience of torture. Yes torture is bad and never justified, so I'm not going to say he deserved the torture he got but there's still a cloud over how and why Hicks ended up in a war zone with the Taliban to begin with. Most of us who witnessed the Twin Towers come down that day still went to work and we did our thing, discharged our duties and lived proper civilised lives. He - feeling inspired - went to fight with the Taliban (a fact he has tried to downplay since his return).

The disquiet I've always felt with David Hicks is that he won't come clean about that bit, so it's really hard for me to give him a whole lot of moral high ground just because he got captured, sent to Guantanamo Bay and got tortured. Sure torture is a terrible thing and it sucks that it happened to him. Be that as it may, there's a very good reason the vast majority of humanity didn't end up in Camp X-Ray with him - what ever it was that he did that led him to Gitmo, it was an asshole thing to do; and I am a cynic, doing my best not to get fooled again.

Ask Questions... Never

Shoot To Kill

I found this in the economist. It's an interesting insight into the contradictory demands placed upon a commander in chief.

After more than a year in power, Mr Obama has still not figured out what to do with terrorist suspects captured on foreign soil. He has not yet fulfilled his promise to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay because he does not know what to do with the remaining inmates. Some are deemed too dangerous to release, but cannot easily be prosecuted. In some cases, evidence was obtained by coercion; in others, through intelligence sources that the administration does not want revealed in court. Mr Obama will not rule out holding them indefinitely without charge, but he knows this makes America look bad. He does not want to add to the problem by bringing more foreign jihadists into American custody. Instead, American forces are either killing them or letting less squeamish allies detain them.

In September, for example, America tracked down a much-wanted terrorist in Somalia. Saleh Ali Nabhan was accused of helping to blow up the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and was thought to have been the main liaison between al-Qaeda and its Somali ally, al-Shabab. Had he been captured and questioned, he could have been a mine of useful intelligence. But there is no functioning Somali government to hand him over to, so American helicopters vaporised him. This seems to be the rule, not the exception. A recent Washington Post investigation of Mr Obama’s war against al-Qaeda leaders abroad found “dozens of targeted killings and no reports of high-value detentions” by American forces.

Suspected terrorists caught on American soil are of course taken into American custody. But those caught in Iraq are swiftly handed over to the Iraqis. Those spotted in Pakistan are detained by the Pakistanis—as several senior Taliban commanders were in recent weeks, thanks in part to American intelligence. America maintains a prison at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, but this will be turned over to the Afghans by the end of the year. None of these countries has a reputation for comfortable cells and polite jailers. In short, it is far from clear that Mr Obama’s policies have led to gentler treatment for terrorist suspects abroad. The opposite may be true. Hence the howls of anguish from human-rights activists who once thought Mr Obama was their man. Hence, also, the urgent need for a coherent detainee policy.

Yeah, that would be a problem. Just what do you do with people who are not in the enemy regular army, who are motivated an skilled to do guerrilla warfare or suicide bombing, and are capable of organising cells to do this stuff? You can't try them in a civil court, they're not technically POWs, they're a danger and menace to the civilised world and you have people screaming human rights at you back home. Best to just blow them away and let God sort them all out - which is essentially us, devolving to the level they're on, because that's about the ethical and moral sophistication they're coming with as they attack the western world.

But it's that Nietszchean problem of staring into the darkness until the darkness stares back at you. If you traffic in the assassinations of these leaders, then how long before they start using assassinations as their modus operandii? This isn't just a problem for Obama alone (or his predecessor GW Bush for that matter), this is a problem for the entire civilised world in dealing with those who would choose such a tactic to weaken us through the binding agents of our very civilisation.

When camp X-Ray was created in Guantanamo back in the early part of this decade, it struck me as almost fiendishly funny how the Bush administration created a sort of legal lacuna into which they bracketed the whole problem and tried to keep it out of civillian courts in the USA. Was this right? I didn't and still don' t think so - but you had to hand it to Rummy and Wolfy for coming up with such a unique *space*, just to deal with the unique problem.

The quick answer I guess, is that fighting such a foe is going to demand that we adapt ourselves either ethically, - that is to say developing a proper legal frame work to tackle such *suspects*/*perpetrators - or compromise ourselves from our moral frame work by doing a deal with the metaphorical devil. So far, the latter option has won over the former, and it doesn't say anything good about our civilisation.

The states dealing with the problem need a sort of Geneva Convention to cover guerrilla combatants and Terror cell combatants, on which they can all agree, rather than trying to reach for the higher moral ground. After all the water is rising way too fast.