18 March 2008
Chris Arendt on U.S. torture and Guantanamo
If you haven't seen it yet, you should definitely watch Chris Arendt's video (posted on Alternet) at the Winter Soldier Hearings in Washington, D.C., on March 15. Arendt, out of options, joined the military at age 17 and soon found himself guarding detainees at the U.S. contentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
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Chris Arendt should have been a candy striper. As someone who is truly an american soldier it makes me nauseaus to read something like this. I hope it made his girlfriend feel better. I can think of no other reason he was unable to man up and do his job. I do not give a shit if these prisoners where mistreated or not. I would not have and if I saw someone else doing something which bothered me I would stopped them. If he did not have nerve to stick up for another human being and only has the ability to write about it afterwards, oh well, hopefully god will sort it out and send him to hell.
This is all pretty callous. Many of the prisoners, it's now known, were picked by Afghanis for money. Basically anyone who had a grudge could have picked someone up and brought them to Americans for some cash. As for being "truly an American soldier," give me a break. Many of us were "truly American soldiers." Some people did the right thing. Chris Arendt is brave for stepping forward and following the dictations of his conscience. Anyone can be a good German and follow orders.
Here is the annoying thing. Arendt was in my unit and I went with him to Guantanamo. He got stressed out from the very beginning and they didn't even have him work on the blocks. He was a computer guy in the DOC so he had no idea what was going on in the blocks. There was no torture. Of course, his definition of torture was "being away from home". I used to like this guy, but not after he betrayed us and lied just to get attention.
Thanks for the comment. Do you agree with Mr. Anonymous above that torture doesn't matter? Do you think we should have a government that picks up people anywhere in the world and holds them incognito without a trial?
I believe that once a nation commits to war (specifically our nation), they should do anything within their power to win and protect American lives. If that means torture or establishing intelligence gathering missions in GTMO, then so be it. It may not feel right to those of us that are not asked to commit these acts, but the US faired better in wars before the Geneva Conventions and wars being governed by politicians rather than military leaders.
Whether Americans agree with the war, they should at least look out for our best interest and the safety of our soldiers. There is nothing worse than being sent to fight in a war with your hands tied behind your back. And that is exactly what our government does to us. And that is about 20% of why I oppose the war in the first place.
I'd be more inclined to agree with you if we lived in some tiny nation threatened by massive militaries, if we were Armenians or Liberians. Of course, the opposite is the case. No country would dare take the U.S. on. There are terrorists with cans of mace and oversized scissors and these people certainly need to be tracked down, but the notion that some Iraqi commandos are going to be storming California beaches sometime soon (or sometime in the remote future) strikes me as completely implausible. This being the case, we need to balance the threat coming from an overzealous executive branch with its massive agencies, financing, and intelligence, and the threat of scissor-wielding fanatics. I think there's plenty of reason to be concerned about what our government might do do US. I personally don't want some yahoos sitting in some government office deciding whether I pose too much of a threat due to ideological reasons and therefore need to be quietly whisked away for the public good. People say it can't happen here, but I'm not so optimistic.
And that is exactly why I am not a liberal or a conservative. I am a libertarian because I fear my own government and their "good intentions" far more than I do terrorists.
A good point to start with might be in clarifying the term "war". Bush keeps repeating the mantra, "we're at war," but the truth is that the U.S. is generally involved in all sorts of low-level conflicts all over the globe that are being fought directly or through proxies. I wonder if Romans considered themselves "at war" as their troops chased after petty barbarian chieftans in far-flung regions of the empire. Were they told that they were living in "special times" that required tremendous sacrifice (always in the form of a blank check)? Would the citizens of Rome have bought it if Rome had had a fleet of nuclear submarines?
I hope to God that when the enemy comes knocking on your door you don't have to depend on a maggot like chris arendt to protect your family.
It's much more likely that the enemy knocking on my door will be part of the U.S. government empowered by people like yourself. The one thing that all the genocidal regimes of history have had in common is unfounded trust in government along with deep patriotism and emphasis on discipline. Thanks goodness there are still people who are willing to break ranks.
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