The Last Best Hope

When I tell someone that I’m an American I am conveying not just where I’m from, but in a larger sense, who I am. Today, I’m no longer sure who that is.

I served in the United States Air Force from 1961 to 1981 and during that time I served in a number of different countries. Most people I met in these places invariably admired Americans. They always wanted to shake my hand. It may be that they idealized us. I know they thought everyone in America was rich. But more than that, I believe that they saw America as a model to which other countries could aspire; that “shining city on a hill” that former President Ronald Reagan spoke of when he said that we Americans are “the last best hope of man on earth.”

I was proud to be a person thought to reflect the grand idea of America. I knew that America was not perfect, nor was I -- we were never perfect -- but never have we been so imperfect.

At one time admired and respected for our sense of decency and fair play, we are today justifiably reviled for the abuses at Abu Ghraib, the abomination that is Guantanamo, the injustice of extraordinary rendition, and the evil and hypocrisy of enhanced interrogation.

Envied for the freedoms we enjoyed and admired for the physical and intellectual courage we demonstrated in earning those freedoms, we are looked upon today as a country, gripped by fear, meekly acquiescing to spying on our fellow citizens, and teetering on the edge of a police state.

And where so many other countries struggled valiantly to light the torch of democracy, and we were looked to as a beacon in the surrounding darkness, now that beacon flickers and dims as our elected representatives sell their votes, gerrymander congressional districts to favor their party, and deny the vote to minorities and the poor.

As for being rich, America, once the world’s biggest creditor nation is now the world’s biggest debtor nation. We have for more than 3 decades failed to address our energy future and now find ourselves held hostage to exponentially rising energy costs. We are spending borrowed money to pursue an ill-conceived and executed military strategy of preemptive war, and prioritizing military spending over education, healthcare, science, and economic opportunity programs for the growing proportion of Americans (some 13%) living in poverty – today, 37 million.

I want an America with a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and a people unwilling to permit the erosion of human rights that is a legacy of that government. I want an America that has faith in its leaders, its institutions and its self. And an America whose faith in a higher being is an individual choice that manifests itself in acts of compassion and generosity towards its citizens and its neighbors. I want an America that values not material wealth per se, but the wealth of talent, ingenuity, and spirit that create the quality of life that we all work to afford. I want an America that abrogates to no nation leadership in exploring the frontiers of knowledge. I want an America whose conquests are of hunger, disease, poverty, ignorance, deceit, and hate, at home and abroad.

I want my America back, my last best hope.

Enhanced Interrogation

Captain Schmerz watched from the observation room as Sergeant Phelps and Corporal Jackson dragged and pushed the prisoner into the interrogation room. The man was hooded, his hands were tied behind him, and he was hobbled, so that he shuffled, crab like between Phelps and Jackson. Once in the room, Phelps gave a slight push and the man lost his balance and fell heavily to the floor. Jackson placed his foot in the man’s back and kept him pinned there while Phelps knelt besides the prisoner, took a box cutter from his belt and began to cut and rip the man’s clothes from his body.

Jackson and Phelps took the prisoner by the feet and arms and carried him to a low, inclined stainless steel autopsy table. Captain Schmerz heard the man’s head clang on the table as Phelps and Jackson dropped him on his back. Schmerz had instructed his men to set favorable conditions for the prisoner’s interrogation and they seemed to be doing that with enthusiasm. Schmerz had acquired a well-deserved reputation among members of the EIT -- the enhanced interrogation team – for the deft way in which he administered the WB technique. It was simple really. Schmerz took a toothpick and poked a small hole in the cellophane that covered a WB subject’s nose and mouth. The subject invariably gasped for breath when a stream of water was poured over the cellophane – after all, the poor schmuck thought he was drowning – and as he did, fine droplets of water were taken into the subject’s nose and mouth, enhancing the exquisite sense of asphyxiation as the gag reflex kicked into hyper drive. Schmerz smiled as he opened the door to the interrogation room. It was rewarding to know that you were really good at something.

Read the full story. Click on Enhanced Interrogation under My Writings.

%%%%%

Torture Memo: Re: Standards of Conduct for Interrogation under 18 U.S.C. 2340-2340A from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel for Alberto R. Gonzales, counsel to President Bush.