The label "Unlawful Combatant" or any other label does not turn a human being into a goat. But that is what Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and the Bush Administration believe. If you are not granted basic universal human rights, no matter your national origin, race, religion, etc. and no matter the circumstances of your apprehension and containment, you may as well be a goat.
As a goat, the US Government and US military are free to dress you up in the latest fashion in hooded prison garb, take you on an endless Caribbean vacation, milk you dry, strip you naked, parade you around, inspect your genitalia, and maybe even have a goat roast. And who would ever know? Without the right to due process, the right to an attorney, and the right to have Red Cross visits, you may as well be a nameless, cloned goat--even if you were an innocent Quaker goat caught up in the fog of warring goat herdsmen.
If the despicable excuses for US soldiers had been aware that the human beings they were torturing in Iraq were, at the very least, being regularly visited by their attorneys and the Redcross, their criminal tendencies may have been curbed. More incidents like this will come unless that Bush Administration reverses its myopic view on human rights. This is true because as human beings and not goats, no matter our religion, color or country, without checks on our power, our self righteous arrogance will not prevent us from being corrupted and becoming tyrannical goat herdsmen in charge of what we'll view as goats--only fit for slaughter.
Hence, the abuse of the Iraqi prisoners is not just a failure of these sorry, disgusting soldiers, it is a failure of leadership all the way up to the top. We have lost the moral high ground. We will not recover. I fear this incident will lead to more deaths than any other incident in this war. It is time for our leadership to leave. It is time to for us to leave.
Loren M. Lambert © May 7, 2004
