Sitting in one’s ‘phew’

Trinidad & Tobago Express, Trinidad and Tobago
June 1 2004

Going back to one’s school days and scrolling through the circuitry
of the hippocampus I am sure that some will recall their first risqué
jokes. There were several “Confucius says” jokes, mostly unprintable,
but the one that comes to mind with the degrading and abusive Iraqi
torture scenes is-“Confucius says man who breaks wind in church must
sit in his own ‘phew'”.

Whatever the excuses and apologies, and the ultimate reality, there
is no doubt that Bush and his cronies have produced a really massive
silent and deadly. So much for freedom and democracy, human rights,
American values and un-American behaviour, as if humanity can ever
forget the various atrocities of past United States governments.
Slavery? Indian wars? Wounded Knee? Haiti? Tokyo? Hiroshima? My Lai?
Agent Orange? Hanoi? These are integral and defining aspects of
American history. But in all fairness to them there have been many
comparable atrocities elsewhere. The genocide of the Armenians? The
Holocaust? The Warsaw ghetto? Lidice? Oradour sur Glane? Cologne?
Dresden? The Gulag? Apartheid? Laos? Sabra? Shatila? Rwanda? And now
the Vatican condemns the torture in Iraq! Really! Kevin Baldeosingh
can thank his lucky stars that he lives today not then when the
Vatican prevailed.

The thing is that victors and the more powerful in conflicts or wars
supposedly never commit atrocities, only the conquered. But we should
not be too hard on the United States Ambassador. He is, after all,
only doing what his employer requires of him. The only possibility
of faulting him is that unlike all the other heads of missions who
are discrete in what they say publicly, he feels that he is free to
say anything to the public, hence my column “Sensitivity Americana”.
Possibly he thinks that as citizens of an American satellite client
state, most citizens will conform. Possibly also he considers us no
more than an energy source for the US economy. He of course has a
choice. Conform and he holds the job. Dissent and he is recalled. His
public utterances are what Washington directs. He could continue to
project “American values”. This however might have little influence
of the views of many thinking citizens who will remember the history
of the USA, its violence, its gun obsession, its drug culture, its
support of right wing dictators and interventions in many countries
in the western hemisphere.

My guess is that he will simply continue to conform as all our
Government Senator Ministers opt to do. It continues to perplex many
however that he did not focus on one of the towering strengths of
the American way-its vibrant media, a real fourth estate. It was a
pair of military personnel with consciences and the American media
that exposed the horror and butchery of My Lai, something that was
known about at the highest levels, even one holding office today,
and something that was pardoned by a Republican president. After all
the victims were merely gooks like the lynched blacks of Alabama or
slaughtered Indians at Wounded Knee.

Having written over 100 columns for the Express over the past two
years or so I have on occasion expressed comments that may have
been critical of both the Panday and Manning administrations and of
other parts of the state apparatus. The criticisms have been on the
nature of the policies of these administrations but I have tried
to be constructive. Does that make me anti-Trinidadian”? Anti-UNC?
Anti-PNM? Indeed if anyone reads this column at the High Commission
in London they may be reminded that a member of the Commission made
the observation about me to my brother at a function in far off
Aberdeen-“your brother is a great patriot”!

Possibly this was only being diplomatic but I do in fact care for the
citizens of this country and for future generations and in any thing
that I write I try to be constructive. If anything most columnists and
leader writers aim at following in the traditions of the independent
minds who have written over the decades in the quality press of the
United States of America and the United Kingdom, countries in whose
shadows we live. Columns may be anti-foreign policy without being
anti-people. If any thing it is simply being anti-imperialism and
pro-Trinidad and Tobago and its interests as a democratic sovereign
nation with constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression and
the press.

Much of what is wrong in the USA has come to light from a vibrant media
in that country. Indeed we would not have known of the photographs
of the tortured Iraqis except for the CBS, the New Yorker and the
Washington Post.

Torture and humiliation is not exactly new to human society as
there is an extensive written and pictorial record of its use in
conflicts between cultures, the word culture being used in its broad
not Trinidadian sense. It has been done in the name of God, revenge,
self-defence, manifest destiny, conquest, colonialism, lebensraum,
trade or whatever have you. And now we have torture and humiliation
of Iraqi prisoners. These by any interpretation are war crimes and
no amount of platitudes about American values, or the America I know,
or an isolated incident not reflecting all those brave, motivated and
highly trained military personnel serving their country “in harm’s way”
of which we are proud.

Much is now being made of the beheading of an unfortunate
American entrepreneur or contractor. Should the photographic
image of an atrocity be worse than an un-photographed un-recorded
atrocity? Does anyone really know of the numbers of un-photographed
torture incidents? But more important is the fact that the torture
has deflected attention from the greater abuse of the terminal
collateralisation of the uncounted hundreds or thousands of innocent
Iraqis. Are not the Iraqis in harm’s way? Especially the young and
innocent? More of them seem to have been killed. An eight-year old
girl disembowelled by a single bullet? And Rumsfeld is proud of his
occupying forces.

Again, we are dealing with a clash of cultures, and one that is
in essence no different from previous clashes over the past ten
millennia. Technologies may differ but in all there will be torture,
humiliation and death and destruction. The victors project themselves
as God fearing champions for freedom and democracy as opposed to
monsters, brutal terrorists and murderers. There are many dimensions to
the current ongoing war in Iraq. One of these is the imbalance between
the technologies available. The side with the weaker technology and
resources will do every thing to resist. But again while we decry the
American torture and abuse of their prisoners and while some praise
Amnesty International for blowing the gaff on them, perhaps we might
reflect on the torture that we inflict on the prison population in
Trinidad and Tobago. Torture by neglect can be as dehumanising as
torture with intent, in the same way that there is no difference
between being beheaded by a hand applied sword, a hand-triggered
rocket or artillery shell.

We like our American masters do not like to see reality. Does anyone
really believe that our media would ever be allowed freedom to film
the reality of the conditions in the Royal Jail described by an
officer of Amnesty International? We too are sitting in our own “phew”.