politics

Where is the outrage?

Where is the outrage? Where is the indignation? Where is our soul?

The United States proclaims freedom, liberty and justice for all like a self-delusional mantra. But, our callous reality keeps creeping into our idealistic hallucination.

Arrest of a Sunni Muslim party leader—Mohsen Abdul-Hamid along with his three sons and four guards—is just the latest in a distressing stream of embarrassing and disgraceful incidents and scandals. Pictures of Saddam Hussein in his underwear, abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, British intelligence documents implicating the White House in the extrapolation of questionable evidence to justify the attack on Iraq, individuals held without charges filed, contentions that guards beat prisoners indicating they did so because the sentinels were Christians, allegations of U.S. soldiers desecrating the Qaran. Why is this happening in the beacon of freedom and democracy, the supposed defender of human rights?

Of course, President George W. Bush doesn’t view the photos of Hussein, published by the British tabloid, the Sun, as part of a wider, more troublesome pattern.

“I don't think a photo inspires murders," Bush said. The president indicated that Iraq's insurgents are "inspired by an ideology that is so barbaric and backwards that it's hard for many in the Western world to comprehend how they think."

Compiled by historian William Blum, here is a list of the countries the United States has bombed since the end of World War II: China 1945-46, Korea 1950-53, China 1950-53, Guatemala 1954, Indonesia 1958, Guatemala 1960,,Cuba 1959-60, Congo 1964, Peru 1965, Laos 1964-73, Vietnam 1961-73, Cambodia 1969-70, Guatemala 1967-69, Grenada 1983, Libya 1986, El Salvador 1980s, Nicaragua 1980s, Panama 1989, Iraq 1991-99, Bosnia 1995 (Republic of Srpska), Sudan 1998, Afghanistan 1998, Yugoslavia 1999 and Iraq (2003 to present).

According to many historians, disease brought by colonizing Europeans and the violent fulfillment of manifest destiny—the debatable vision that the United States was designed to extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean—resulted in the death of millions of Native Americans and the forced abdication of their lands. Many have labeled the occurrence as genocide.

Although the reasons in context might have been the most pragmatic of a menu of horrendous choices, the United States is still the only country to deploy a nuclear bomb (Hiroshima and Nagasaki). And, the Bush administration has indicated an intention to explore ways to develop “bunker-busting” nuclear devices.

The United States military budget is eight times larger than China, the world’s second largest spender on the military. The United States expected 2005 expenditure of $420.7 is 46% higher than in 2000 ($288 billion). The US budget is nearly the equivalent of the rest of the world’s spending on military combined ($950 billion expected in 2005).

Estimates published by Lancet, a medical journal, citing a study led by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, place the number of dead Iraqi civilians at more than 100,000 since the start of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, primarily due to United States bombing.

Bush claims that the continued insurgency in Iraq “is a desire to stop the march of freedom."

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world with more than 1.7 million people in prison. Our per capita incarceration rate is nearly 5 times higher than China, the country with the second highest number of prisoners.

The United States has held suspects at Guantanemo Bay in Cuba without formal charges or right to due process for more than three years, in direct violation of the Fifth Amendment.

The Patriot Act, a liberty-curbing series of laws passed in the knee-jerk atmosphere following 9/11, allows the government to snoop into citizen’s private affairs without their knowledge. And, discussions are being conducted now to not only make the provisions permanent but to grant the government greater ability to peer into our personal affairs without our knowledge or consent.

We may fancy ourselves as the beacon of liberty, the bastion of freedom. But, when we look at the reality, we must ask ourselves: Where is the outrage? Where is the indignation? Where is our soul?

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posted by dq @ 2:25 PM