J'Accuse: Abu Ghraib and Peoples of Conscience

J'Accuse: Abu Ghraib and Peoples of Conscience


The International Red Cross and other agencies have repeatedly warned us about War Crimes at Abu Ghraib. We now know some of the details, and we have seen the pictures. Words cannot describe the horror in the faces of the men, for they are all men, who our troops have tortured and degraded. The not so distant voices from our own past are demanding to know what happened to our country. How could we go from having a moral compass that led the world, to having no compass? Where did this start? Why the lack of accountability at the highest levels?

While the President and the President’s men make excuses to Americans and the World, we the people avoid facing the ugly reality: This is the reflection in the mirror which is us. We have allowed this to happen by our inaction every step of the way. Since September Eleven the country has turned into a vindictive hell against the Other. The war on terror is over, and the enemy won. One objective of Terror is to change the country under attack into something that it is not. We are no longer the America we all grew up in, or came to as immigrants.

After September 11 we cancelled the Constitution. We have allowed those in charge to arrest and hold American Citizens without Trial, or a jury. This is the true horror of the Patriot Act, and its sequel, still in the wings: The Hamdi \ Padilla cases are not isolated from what has happened at Camp X-Ray and Abu Ghraib. They are just part of the same horrible continuum. Our cancellation of the Geneva Convention because it is quaint is also part of the problem. Lawlessness now pervades our nation, and the end justifies the means. Our humanity be damned in the process.

The collective moral compass is so much out of kilter that those few men and women who have questioned every step of the way the actions of an immoral government have been called the worst of names: Traitor.

They have been marginalized and they have not been listened to. We are told they are the crazy ones among us. They are part of a fringe. On the contrary, they are the ones among us who have held to their humanity and can empathize with those across the world, as fellow human beings.

Marginalization has gone to the extent of destroying the intellectual work of those who have taken a stand. Clear Media Channel’s destruction of the Dixie Chicks CDs makes me wonder if Albert Einstein was right. He once said that those who burn books are not far from burning people, he was refereeing to 1930s Germany. The silence in the main stream media and lack of condemnation was incredible. But it is not only the media that deserves condemnation. In fact, by our collective silence we enabled it. This led to a further degradation of American Values, such as freedom of speech and freedom of dissent.

I charge all those who have supported this without question enablers of the worst horrors any nation can ever commit.


I charge those who think this is only about politics with amorality. This is not about a Presidential election, but the future of the Nation not only before God but before our collective self.

Our collective future is at risk, but they are only concerned about image. They are partially right, it is about image. Gone is the G.I giving candy to a child at Paris in 1944, and replaced by a hooded man with electrical wires. That is the new image of the United States in the World. We are now moral people living in the midst of an amoral society.

What has happened requires only one reaction from our elected officials regardless of political party as this is no longer about Party. The President of the United States must be impeached, with his whole administration, under Article II, Section IV of the US Constitution. I charge the President and the President’s men with High Crimes and Misdemeanors. Let the Articles go forth into the floor of the House. This is but the first step. As the President and the President’s men have to be convicted by the Senate. This will only start the cleansing of our Spirit.

Then the President and the President’s men must face charges for War Crimes, as they are ultimately responsible for the torture that has occurred at Abu Ghraib, and Camp X-Ray. It is then that the Word will believe we are indeed willing to expiate our Crimes, and the stain on our National Honor. And those will be only the first steps for us to re-join the world.

Evil only flourishes when good men and women of conscience refuse to speak out.

someone is to blame.

The angst that those who never did let go of their conscience, demands that someone right it.

Quite a few did not lend their name to this debacle, because they recogized it for what it was. We had failed to harness the power necessary to stop a belligerant, stupid man and his foreign policies in spite of doing all we could as the common man to stop it.

Our conscience is somewhat more eased than those who fully, with all indignation and sense of revenge, supported this ill conceived mission of George Bush.

I am not sure that we as a nation have been all that rigteous and outstanding either. This turmoil that we find ourselves in today, is I think , leading to a lot of research into the histor of our nation, and we have NOT always been so fine and upstanding as we have been taught and as we have believed



Nevertheless, it has never seemed to be such a blatant, fascist arrogance as under this stupid man, who is responsible for the unjustified deaths of tens of thousands because of his stupidity and lack of expertise as well as his lack of world understanding. Further adding to the insult of this ignorant man professing to lead us, who actually went AWOL himself in time of war, is his continuance to be arrogant and insistence in following his ill advised course out of pure ignorance and stubborness to policies that will bring us further down into the snake pit.

what you were taught was American Exceptionalism. It is time to put
that one in the dustbin of history as well, together with manifest destiny.

Nobody taught you about 1800 and the Second American Revolution. Today we are in the midst of a third revolution, or a second civil war. It is that simple