My own "Op-Ed" piece

Where do you think I should submit this? :)


Does sovereignty of the body only exist in the playground of the mind?

I like to believe that as an American citizen the laws will protect me from torture. Perhaps this is true because of my skin color and choice of religion. However, I am not so sure. I would like to think that as a woman the laws would protect my reproductive rights as well as my access to quality health care. With this administration no one can be sure.
What we have here, as has been eloquently pointed out by others, is a system of “rights” based on privileges not absolutes. Nothing proves this more to me than the torture of “detainees” at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. This administration has worked so hard at creating and sustaining a category of “official others” exempt from protection of international and domestic law. Calling these men “detainees” means that they are not officially “prisoners” and therefore fall in the area outside of the protection of the Geneva Convention on Torture. They are not even prisoners of war. They are simply being “detained” and while they are being detained they are also being tortured. As Lisa Hajjar explains,

"…neoconservatism may help explain much about American military and foreign policy after 9/11, it doesn't account for the legal reasoning that set the conditions for the torture scandal. For that, we need to look to the Federalist Society, an organization established by right-wing lawyers in the early 1980s to redress "liberal bias" in American law schools and the legal profession. The thinking and influence of Federalist Society types who dominate legal positions (and judicial appointments) in the Bush Administration are laid bare in the torture memos, which document the triumph of international law-averse officials in the Justice Department, the Pentagon and the White House over dissenting voices in the State Department and sectors of the professional military. The victors' most egregious mistake was to conflate international humanitarian law--the laws of war--with other bodies of international law, especially human rights law, which they loathe as constraints on US sovereignty (Hajjar, Lisa. The Nation, 1/28/05)."

This quote raises the bigger question regarding torture and sovereignty, namely, what is the difference between persecution and prosecution? Who gets to decide that your body is worth protecting or worth violating? If the responsibility of protection AND prosecution both lie in the hands of any State then who is the State responsible to? Some argue that this is the role and function of the United Nations and particularly the hope encased in the UNDHR. However, the U.N. has proven itself quite impotent in its ability to stand up to the United States, so who does that leave? NGO’s such as the Red Cross or Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International? The International War Crimes Tribunal? The World Court?

It worries me immensely that this administration is so very good at duping people into believing that torturing “detainees” is going to somehow make America and the world safer. It worries me even more that this administration is so very skillful at co-opting the rhetoric of human and civil rights in its call to war. As a feminist, I view the breaking of any body as an extreme violation that should not be excused or ignored. As a human rights activist, I question this war to win hearts and minds when I know that underneath the rhetoric human beings are starving and being bombed to death simply because they live between the borders of a land that America has the power and privilege and arrogance to try and occupy. As an American, I distrust the vocabulary of exemption being parroted out by every mainstream media outlet. As a citizen of this world, I expect war crimes to be prosecuted and acts such as torture, carpet bombing, illegal “detainment,” pre-emptive war and murder to be treated accordingly regardless of who wins and loses this “war.” If I am truly reflective on this, I know that these little labels are no more seperate than these issues. Abuse is abuse. Oppression is oppression. If the standards we choose for ourselves are not the same we expect others to adhere to, then we are choosing an even more dangerous world. If we do not protest the abuse of power then that same abuse can be used against us, regardless of our skin color or religion or even our status as citizens. If we cave to this idea that sovereignty over the body exists only in the “liberal” imagination then we make this a socially agreed-upon truth. Torture should not be excusable any more than genocide or Bush wearing a swastika and praising Hitler. People would not stand for one second of him acting in blatant racism or sexism and yet the fact is that torturing Muslim men and pummeling cities in Iraq and Afghanistan or sneaking into in Iran seems to be somehow less morally outrageous. Many enjoy comparing evil with evil and ranking every evil by comparison of Hitler and Nazi Germany. Above all else, the Nazis gave ample evidence of how dangerous power, excuses of sovereignty and disdain for human rights can be when left unquestioned and unchecked.

Links on abuse of power and torture:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/reports/2004/800-mp-bde.htm
http://electroniciraq.net/news/1782.shtml
http://hrw.org/wr2k5/anatomy/index.htm
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050207&s=hajjar
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050207&s=schell