David Cook
In April 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis marching with striking garbage men. Back in Atlanta, at his home church, the bulletins for Sunday's worship would soon go to print, and King was asked to telephone in his sermon title for the approaching Sunday.
King never made it back to Atlanta; a bullet fired from a hotel balcony pierced his throat and head, and he died bleeding on the floor. Yet the sermon title does exist, and nearly forty years later, it is still haunting:
''Why America May Go to Hell.''
I have never heard or read an excerpt or rough draft of this sermon; I only know that the title exists. Yet I believe King, was he alive today to complete this sermon, would have included the story of Jose Padilla, and the hell that has surrounded him.
Padilla was born in Brooklyn, which makes him a U.S. citizen, and holder of constitutional rights. He had a troubled, gang-related past, yet also was mentored by a teacher of nonviolence. Somewhere along the way, Padilla became involved with Al-Qaeda and plotted to explode a dirty bomb on U.S. soil - according to the U.S. government as they arrested him in Chicago's O'Hare airport in 2002.
Padilla's descent begins here; he lost his citizenship when the current administration labeled him an ''enemy combatant.'' Padilla was taken to a naval prison in South Carolina; in its war on terrorism, the U.S. government and members of its military held Padilla there for more than three years. The practices in which Padilla was subject are unconstitutional, illegal under international law, and immoral under divine and natural law, according to human rights groups, psychiatrists, and international treaties.
These practices have a common name: torture.
The Guardian's George Monbiot writes about reports from The New York Times and The Detainee Abuse and Accountability Project that state the widespread use of torture in this war on terrorism. More than 450 prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay were subject to one or more of the following conditions: physical beatings, rape, stress positions, sleep deprivations, mock executions and even death itself. Reports state that prisoners were forced in standing positions, with hands chained to the wall above them, for nearly two weeks. They were naked. They were hooded. They did not sleep.
In Guantanamo Bay, Muslim prisoners have their religion used against them: while kneeling on top of a pentagram, they forced by their captors to bow down to Satan; while naked, they are subjected to sexual contact with females; their Koran is desecrated. This comes from James Yee, who was once a decorated Army Muslim chaplain, but became a prisoner of his own government when he began to speak out against such practices.
"The Washington Post alleges that prisoners… were 'commonly blindfolded and thrown into walls, bound in painful positions, subjected to loud noises and deprived of sleep' while kept, like Jose Padilla and the arrivals at Guantanamo Bay, 'in black hoods or spray-painted goggles','' writes Monbiot.
Padilla was kept in such an environment for more than three years. Doctors who recently examined Padilla before his Miami trial state that he has lost his sanity. It is as if his mind was completely destroyed, said Dr. Angela Haggerty to DemocracyNow!'s Amy Goodman. He was completely terrified.
Padilla has become a new form of terrorist. Instead of spreading it, he has been forced to swallow it whole. By his own government.
And this is why America is walking the road to hell.
Hell, in the traditional sense, is the realm of separation, of sin. Religions describe hell to be complete separation from God, and if this version is true, then the torture chambers in which Jose Padilla and the other hundreds of suspected terrorists are currently confined can be viewed as hell - for they are created out of such madness and damnable logic that the only outcome they produce is further separation, never reconciliation.
I am not advocating freedom for those intent on the destruction of the U.S.; if Padilla was plotting a dirty bomb attack, then he should be imprisoned. Yet not every prisoner is guilty, and we must remember, there is a clear difference between prison and hell.
Recall the nightmarish images leaked from Abu Ghraib. Soldiers leading naked Muslim prisoners around on all fours, like a dog. Naked piles of male prisoners. Camouflaged guards laughing, clutching at the prisoners like trophies, like they just won a football game. The hooded man (did we ever learn his name?) standing on the box with electrodes attached to his fingertips, believing that if he moves he will be shocked. Or killed. Or fall and never stop falling.
I do not know who to mourn more: the loss of Jose Padilla's mind or the individuals who are able to do this to another human. Extreme isolation and sensory deprivation and torture do not only affect the tortured; they curse the torturer, for what we do to another human, we do to ourselves and to God.
"It's a no-brainer for me,'' said vice-president Dick Cheney in his infamous statement emphatically supporting the use of torture to prevent a terrorist attack. The vice-president and Jose Padilla now have something in common: they are both insane.
And the same system is responsible.
(David Cook is a former journalist for the Chattanooga Times-Free Press. He currently teaches American history at Girls Preparatory School and can be reached at dcook7@gmail.com)
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David, I am also against the torture that you describe in your column. However, I am curious as to why you did not mention the barbaric torture that hooded Islamic terrorists have subjected Americans and others to - rituals that end with their kidnapped and bound victims having their heads sawed off while they scream, regurgitating blood through their slit throats lying face down on a floor.
Some of the beheadings, captured on video by the Islamic terrorists, can be seen at the website of Michael savage.com. Take a look; you won’t forget it.
I guarantee you that if one of those hooded … had you lying face down on the floor with a sword at your throat, you would have a different view.
America on the road to hell? Only if we turn tail and run - down the road not taken.
Jim Ashley
Jashley41@comcast.net
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David, we used to execute people in this great country for treason. We still should.
The reasons that we don't now are what's got us down the "Road to Hell".
Jim Fann
Dayton
J.PHANN@HOTMAIL.COM
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David Cook is correct that torture is wrong.
Let's have a little contextual honesty here, though. We are talking about America, a nation that some people are trying to send to hell prematurely.
David did not address the torture committed in some Muslim countries on their girls as young as eight years old wherein they are "circumcised" in the most barbaric and horrific ways. This procedure takes place with unsterile primitive instruments in many cases with an almost sadistic manner. The girls are cut and sewn up, only to be ripped apart by their husbands. The deformity, the humiliation, the pain, the life-long physical and mental implications can only be imagined. What about women in general under those veils? What about in the Taliban-ruled countries where women cannot leave their homes without accompaniment of men. If they are seen out and about and so much as a little square of flesh is seen, any stranger can come up and beat the heck out of them.
David, how about a little proportionality in your "lectures". You are young, obvious in your picture, and idealistic. Consider the whole picture before you go throwing your "word bombs". You study history, so you should know life is more complex than you make it out to be. Don't be a naive American. As the great French historian Sempe said, "Rien n'est simple, Tout est complique."
Racie Miller
Signal Mountain
raciemom5@netzero.net
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Most of the French I know isn't suitable for polite company, but I do understand when someone is attempting to rewrite history to suit their agenda.
If Mr. Cook considers what Jose Padilla has endured - a few months in a Navy brig - torture, I'd like to see him, Mr. Cook, spend a vacation at any of our military basic training facilities...most especially Marine Corps boot camp. I'd like to see what he thinks of having a footlocker full of sand, dirt and water, stirred aggressively, then have to stand a Junk-On-The-Bunk (full uniform and 782 gear inspection, with spit-shined shoes and boots) the next morning because someone left their footlocker unlocked. I'd like to see what he thinks of having to dig a 6' by 6' by 6' hole to bury a sand flea, in the dark, because someone decided to scratch while at attention in formation, then having to dig it back up to be sure it was buried facing up (or down) rather than the opposite direction. I'd like to see him doing calisthenics until his drill instructor gets tired. I'd like to see him "watch TV" because someone got caught sneaking off to the head when they weren't supposed to...that's feet on a rack, head resting in hands, elbows on concrete floor...not too bad until it's time to change channels, without benefit of remote control. Holding a rifle on fingertips with arms fully extended? It happens. Rifle in hands while in the "up" pushup position? On asphalt? That happens too. Maybe it doesn't these days, but it certainly used to. But I guess three letters from home for free at mail call, and each one after that costing 25 pushups, would be torture too. I suppose marching back from chow in the "up" pushup position on toes and knuckles (across asphalt, sand and gravel) would be torture too. That's how we have young men who can run three miles in 18 or 19 minutes, do 100+ pushups in three minutes, 100+ sit-ups in the same amount of time, a bunch of pull-ups, and then go home and run their momma's dog to near exhaustion...the dog, that is. That's how we train men to ignore a little pain for a while.
There was a time in this nation when we weren't always wrong, weren't always the bad guys. There was a time that we wore the white hats...but there was also a time when we looked up to heroes, true heroes, not some Hollywood pretty boy (or girl). Some of us grew up with such as The Lone Ranger and his Creed, John Wayne, Audie Murphy, Dan Daly, Cisco and Pancho, Hoss and Little Joe and Pa and Adam, The Rifleman, Rowdy Yates, Elvis, and Roy Orbison. What do we have now...Michael Vick and Tupack Whoozis.
There was a time that we had to learn about the history of this nation, this American experiment, and memorize historical documents. There was a time when we had to learn about the adversity our forebears experienced in order to provide, then defend, this great nation we have today. There was a time that we understood what our Constitution was all about, what the Geneva Conventions were, and that those who would willingly become an enemy combatant willing to attack his own countrymen, to become a traitor to his nation, was subject to being summarily executed on the spot. There was a time when history teachers taught history and not their personal philosophy or agenda.
There was a time when the citizens of this great nation understood, as Sammy Davis Jr. once sang, if you can't do the time, don't do the crime. But there was also a time when we insisted we each accept responsibility for our own action or inaction without making excuses for why someone else behaved badly, often to the detriment of others and sometimes costing the lives of those others.
But there was also a time when we wouldn't defend a person who took bribes while serving in public office or who didn't live by the laws he and she had sworn to uphold.
One can only hope we don't see a time when Mr. Cook's children or grandchildren, perhaps even himself or his wife, become the victims of one of those "dirty bombs" Jose Padilla was trying to arrange. I had friends in Japan who were survivors of Hiroshima. I've often wondered if they were the fortunate ones. Radiation poisoning isn't pretty, but neither is the sight of someone having his head sawn off.
I'm going to go study why we only hear about the hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic and not the one over the Arctic any more.
Royce E. Burrage, Jr.
Royce@OfficiallyChapped.org
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I am sure Mr. Cook gets his students juices going, but I know that as a high school student I tended to trust my teachers' view as they should have more experience than I in viewing history. I hope his students look beyond his bad America view of life.
I have seen several of his long opinions and he shows a good sense of writing and making his cases. But his view of life in America past and present is so unlike my reading of history and the present that it is scary that he teaches his brand of history.
Everything he sees is negative when he views this country's history (at least in his writings) - just as he made the point on torture he sees only the bad things from our past.
History teaching can be that way or you can see promise from out of our past like the promise of Martin Luther King. He changed the country for the better and his killing was a bad time, but not a time of torture. He is using something like that in history to support his point that we are people who condone torture and we are not.
Padilla is a terrorist and he got better treatment in this country than in any other country in the world. After 9-11, why should we have not isolated a man like him? He was convicted in court and he got more rights than he should have in my opinion. But for a history teacher to throw around the word torture is in itself dangerous concerning this person. It is just like Rep. Murtha calling the Marines murderers or killers of women and children. He has been proven a liar and yet he is still in Congress.
As others have responded to Mr. Cook he doesn't know what real torture is and he is labeling good men and women who are fighting this war with his words. He is also labeling this country with this word when the real torture is carried out all the time by the enemy we are fighting. We are not torturing someone when we keep them awake, play loud music, or even make them think they are drowning. It may be harsh treatment, but that is not torture.
Opinion is just a bunch of words and I support his use of it just as I give you my bunch of words. I believe most people understand that this is the greatest country in the world today and that with all our problems we are a country where justice can be found most of the time. It is just a shame that a teacher in this city and country sees our country and its history in such a way. Then he distorts the history to fit his view, and I hope his students don't end up seeing the country in that manner.
Bruce Caldwell