Rally to Restore Peace by Marjorie Cohn

Let’s Rally to Restore Peace
By Marjorie Cohn
Huffington Post

October 31, 2010
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marjorie-cohn/lets-rally-to-restore-pea_b_776759.html

In their Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, Jon Stewart and Stephen
Colbert effectively demonstrated how the media hypes fear. They
brought out Kareem Abdul Jabbar to show that not all Muslims are
terrorists. A couple of musical numbers dealt with the wars we are
fighting. But neither Stewart nor Colbert mentioned Iraq or
Afghanistan and how they are allowed to continue by the hyping of
fear.
Like his predecessor, President Obama also hypes fear - by connecting
his war in Afghanistan to keeping us safe, even though CIA director
Leon Panetta recently admitted that only 50 to 100 al Qaeda fighters
are there. Hoping to put the unpopular Iraq war behind him, Obama
declared combat operations over, although 50,000 U.S. troops and some
100,000 mercenaries remain.
Tragically, both wars have largely disappeared from the national
discourse. On October 22, Wikileaks released nearly 400,000
previously classified U.S. military documents about the Iraq war.
They contain startling evidence of more than 1,300 incidents of
torture, rape, abuse and murder by Iraqi security forces while the
U.S. government looked the other way. During this time the Bush
administration issued a “fragmentary order” called “Frago 242” not to
investigate detainee abuse unless coalition troops were directly
involved. U.S. authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports
of torture, rape, abuse and murder by Iraqi soldiers and police.
Manfred Nowak, the United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on Torture,
called on Obama to order a complete investigation of U.S. forces’
involvement in human rights abuses.
Many reports of abuse are supported by medical evidence. Prisoners
were shackled, blindfolded, and hung by their wrists and ankles. Some
were whipped with cables, chains, wire and pistols. Some were burned
with acid and cigarettes. Electric shocks were applied to genitals,
fingernails were ripped off, and fingers cut off. Some were sodomized
with hoses and bottles. Six died from their torture.
And there are reports of widespread killing of civilians by U.S. and
other coalition forces. But after a couple of days of reporting about
the largest incident of whistle blowing in our history, news of the
Wikileaks revelations has disappeared from the news cycle.
Both torture and the targeting of civilians are war crimes. And, in
spite of the reports of torture, Obama completed the handover of 9,250
detainees to the Iraqi government in July 2010. In so doing, he has
violated the Convention Against Torture, which forbids a party from
expelling, returning or extraditing a person to a country where there
are substantial grounds to believe he will be in danger of being
subjected to torture. This is called non-refoulement. The United
States has ratified the Torture Convention, making it part of U.S. law
under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.
The newly released documents show that between 2004 and 2009, at least
109,032 Iraqis died, including 66,081 civilians. More than 80 percent
of those killed in incidents related to convoys or at checkpoints
throughout Iraq were civilians. Pregnant women were shot dead,
priests were kidnapped and murdered, and Iraqi prison guards used
electric drills to get prisoners to confess.
A U.S. helicopter crew was granted approval to attack two Iraqis on
the ground even though the pilots reported that the men were trying to
surrender. Under the 1907 Hague Regulations, it is prohibited “to
kill or wound an enemy who, having laid down his arms, or having no
longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion.”
Last year, 239 American soldiers took their own lives and 1,713
soldiers survived suicide attempts; 146 soldiers died from high-risk
activities, including 74 drug overdoses. One-third of returning troops
report mental health problems, and 18.5 percent of all returning
service members have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or depression,
according to a study by the Rand Corporation.
Jon Stewart spent a whole show last week interviewing Obama about
everything from health care to the economy. But neither man mentioned
the wars, even though the billions spent on them could go a long way
toward fixing the economy and paying for health care.
It is time to put the wars back on the national agenda. Iraq Veterans
Against the War issued a statement saying, “We grieve for the Iraqi
and Afghan lives that were lost and destroyed in these wars. We also
grieve for our brothers and sisters in arms, who have been lost to
battle or suicide . . . We demand a real end to both wars, including
immediate withdrawal of the 50,000 “non-combat” troops who remain in
Iraq. The Iraq War Logs underscore the urgent need for peace,
healing, and reparations for all who have been harmed by these wars.
The first step is to bring our brothers and sisters home.”
We cannot rely on Obama to end the wars. It’s up to us to put
sustained pressure on him to do it.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and
past president of the National Lawyers Guild. Her latest book is
“Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent”
(with Kathleen Gilberd). Her anthology, “The United States and
Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse,” will be published
in December by NYU Press