This IHT article underscores how strained the Bush administration’s arguments have become in defending some of its more unsavory practices, such as shipping suspected terrorists to countries where they can be tortured.

American officials were defending their policies Friday before a U.N. panel investigating possible breaches of the Convention Against Torture, a 1987 treaty that bans prisoner abuse and that the U.S. signed and ratified.

The reason that America needs to send terror suspects to countries with poor human rights records, the officials said, was to keep dangerous individuals out of the United States. But that doesn’t make much sense. Suspects held by the U.S. remain in custody and unable to harm others. Those abroad, on the other hand, seem to find ways to escape. How does it make America safer, then, to ship its problems elsewhere?

When the U.S. sends suspects to these countries, American officials also said, it seeks assurances that the individuals will not be tortured. That argument seemed less than credible to the U.N. panel. “The very fact that you are asking for diplomatic assurances means you are in doubt,” said Andreas Mavrommatis, chairman of the committee.

As for allegations of torture and murder by U.S. personnel, an American official insisted that the criticism had become “so hyperbolic as to be absurd.” He added: “I would ask you not to believe every allegation that you have heard.”

Fair enough. But let’s remember that American soldiers themselves have made these allegations. And given that the Bush administration won’t even take the simple, good-faith step of allowing U.N. investigators to interview prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, it’s not hard to understand why critics would be paranoid about prisoner abuse. Hyperbole feeds on secrecy.

It’s worth reviewing some relevant passages from the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which the U.S. is legally bound to follow:

[Torture is defined as] any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity….

Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction…. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture….

No State Party shall expel, return (refouler”) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture….

Each State Party shall undertake to prevent in any territory under its jurisdiction other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment which do not amount to torture as defined [above], when such acts are committed by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity….

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

Always release the bad news midday on Friday, for brief mention in the ill-read Saturday paper.

Yesterday the U.S. State Department released its second annual Country Reports on Terrorism (click here for the report). This year, there were statistics. According to the government, there were 11,000 terrorist attacks around the world in 2005, which killed a total of 14,600 people. Iraq alone accounted for about one-third of these attacks and more than half of the fatalities. At a news conference announcing the report’s findings, the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator put a happy face on the numbers, insisting that the world is becoming a safer place and the fight against terrorism can’t be measured “month by month or year by year.”

So how exactly are we doing in the “war on terror”? Do we have any idea of how last year compares to previous years? The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which compiled the report’s statistics, says that the 2005 figures cannot be compared to previous year’s figures because the center started using a new methodology for identifying terrorist attacks. This new methodology counts not just incidents of “international terrorism” (“incidents that involve the territory or citizens of two or more countries”), but acts of terrorism more broadly.

Perhaps I’m missing something here, but a browse through the NCTC’s online data pulls up not just the 2005 data, but also the 2004 data — beginning on January 1 and including incidents with victims from just one country (i.e., the broader definition of terrorism). These are the figures we get for 2004: 3,168 incidents of terrorism, 7,717 fatalities, 18,865 injuries, and 6,086 hostages. In 2005, there were 11,110 incidents, 14,602 fatalities, 24,755 injuries, and 34,780 hostages.

On all counts, the numbers have gone up — way up.

Now, I’m not sure when the methodology change occurred, or if it even applies to the data online (the difference may be between what’s online and the previous reports, for example). But assuming that the change occurred in May 2004 — as the Counterterrorism Blog suggests — then the figures later in the year should be comparable. In December 2004, there were 455 incidents and 692 deaths; in December 2005, there were 888 incidents and 1,013 deaths. In October 2004, there were 323 incidents and 628 deaths; in October 2005, there were 927 incidents and 1,377 deaths.

Again, the 2005 figures are substantially higher.

So is the world really a safer place? I’m not sure, but the numbers here don’t look promising. We should also remember that the government has quite a history of spinning terrorism numbers. Last year’s Country Reports on Terrorism did not include statistics after a controversy over what to categorize as “terrorist incidents.” Counterterrorism officials declined to use an alternative accounting method recommended by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s office that would have reported fewer significant attacks. Rice’s office responded by creating the Country Reports on Terrorism — which replaced the previous series, Patterns of Global Terrorism — and refusing to include any numbers in the 2004 report. (At the news conference announcing that report, however, State Department officials did provide figures: 1,907 people had been killed and 9,300 wounded in terrorist attacks in 2004, they said — the highest ever.)

Before that, there was a flap over the 2003 report, which the government hailed as showing a decline in terrorism when first released. After a barrage of criticism — including allegations from two academics that the numbers were being manipulated — the government revised its estimate upward two months later and admitted a “slight increase” in terror.

Here’s some insightful background on the government’s international terrorism reports from the Counterterrorism Blog.

You have to wonder how the U.S. government is going to win this war on terror if it can’t even get the numbers right.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

Last week I visited the peace park in Hiroshima, where a U.S. bomber dropped the first nuclear weapon to be used in war. Walking through the memorials, it is impossible not to remember the exact moment of the bomb’s detonation: 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945. Clocks in the city stopped because of the awesome power of the atomic blast, and the distinctive face of the A-bomb watch — minute hand stretched level to the right, hour hand splayed out slightly lower to the left — is Hiroshima’s own crucifix, displayed in wristwatch relics that survived the bombing as well as modern-day memorials. By the end of 1945, an estimated 140,000 people had died from the A-bomb attack, slightly less than half the city’s population. An astounding one in ten of the dead were actually Koreans, many of them brought over to Hiroshima as slave laborers.

I remember a while back there was a flap over an exhibit in the Smithsonian Institution commemorating the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. American veterans groups were angry that the exhibit focused too much on the casualties inflicted by the bomb and not enough on how it — and the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki three days later — brought about a thankfully swift end to the war. The Smithsonian exhibit was eventually canceled. More anniversaries have come and gone, but the debate is still not resolved. Supporters of the bombings, including some Japanese historians, have argued that the war would have gone on for many months longer without the use of atomic weapons and that the cost of conquering Japan, in military casualties on both sides as well as Japanese civilian deaths, would have surpassed the nuclear death toll. Opponents of the bombings, including General Dwight Eisenhower and other top U.S. commanders during the war, have said that Japan was all but defeated by August 1945 and the use of such an awesome and indiscriminate weapon could not be justified militarily. The latter is the view expressed in the Hiroshima peace museum. Clearly, the Japanese war machine needed to be stopped — the exhibits in the museum make pointed reference to Japanese war crimes in China and Korea — but the atomic bombings were not the solution. The museum makes the case — one that I never heard growing up in the U.S. — that the entry of the Soviet Union into the war against Japan would have ended the war quickly, without the need for atomic weapons. (The Americans refused to wait, the museum claims, because they did not want the communists to establish any further footholds in Asia once the fighting ended and the victorious powers began carving up their post-war spheres of influence.)

Which military scenario would have brought about the least loss of life is just one of the questions to consider, however. We sometimes forget that bombing Hiroshima was more than just the taking of civilian life — it was the taking of life in the most gruesome way imaginable. The horror is captured in heartbreaking detail by the museum’s exhibits. Men, women, and children walked through the burning city like zombies, their skin charred and hanging off their bodies in tatters. Black rain fell from the skies, the detritus of a poisoned earth; bomb victims mad with thirst drank the radioactive waters. The black-and-white photographs of the carnage are difficult to behold, but for me the most moving images were the sketches drawn by the survivors themselves. In raw colors and sometimes child-like scrawls, they depict the most terrible suffering. Naked bodies and tortured flesh, like a scene of hell from the dark imaginations of medieval Christian painters. A mother wailing over her son’s disfigured body as it lies in a field of unclaimed dead. Such suffering did not end on the day of the bombing. Those who were within one kilometer of the blast radius died within days. Others drowned themselves in the Motoyasu River because the pain of their wounds was so great and the available treatment so little. Still others suffered for years to come, bearing keloid scars and other disfigurements and eventually contracting diseases linked to their radiation poisoning. (They included the young girl Sadako Sasaki, just two years old when she was exposed to the bomb’s radiation, who died of leukemia at the age of 12 and whose spirit is remembered in the peace park’s especially moving memorial to Hiroshima’s young victims.)

Since the bombing of Hiroshima, the city’s mayors have written letters to the leaders of the world’s nuclear powers, reminding them after each nuclear test they conduct that they are dishonoring Hiroshima’s dead and killing the hopes of the bomb’s survivors for an end to war. The last two letters featured in the museum were sent in February to U.S. President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Sixty years after Hiroshima, the United States and Great Britain persist in testing sophisticated new forms of nuclear weaponry, even while reprimanding hostile nations like Iran and North Korea for their arms development.

Since the U.S. and British governments still have not given up their addiction to nuclear weapons, citizens of these two countries may find a trip to the city’s peace museum all the more important. For American visitors in particular, the scenes of blasted buildings and soot-covered victims may evoke memories of the horrors of the September 11 terrorist attacks. It seems that the power to perpetrate mass killings of civilians, and the politics to justify them, remain very much with us today. Until the world lays down its arms, Hiroshima, too, will remain with us, as the cross of our shared suffering.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

I’ve been in Tokyo for a day now, and today I visited the Tsukiji fish market, the world’s largest, which handles more than 400 types of seafood every day. This includes fresh tuna weighing more than 600 pounds each, which are auctioned off in frenzied early-morning bidding and then quickly find their way into sushi bars across the country and around the world.

The irony is that many of these tuna are caught in waters off the coast of New England, then are shipped overnight to Tsukiji in Tokyo — and then, if deemed premium grade, may actually make their way back to America for sale in top-end sushi bars.

This article in Foreign Policy provides a fascinating look at the global network of fishermen, fishmongers, and businesspeople who bring that fresh pink tuna onto your dinner plate. Here’s one paragraph worth pondering:

Not to impugn the quality of the fish sold in the United States, but on the New England docks, the first determination of tuna buyers is whether they are looking at a “domestic” fish or an “export” fish. On that judgment hangs several dollars a pound for the fisher, and the supply of sashimi-grade tuna for fishmongers, sushi bars, and seafood restaurants up and down the Eastern seaboard. Some of the best tuna from New England may make it to New York or Los Angeles, but by way of Tokyo — validated as top quality (and top price) by the decision to ship it to Japan by air for sale at Tsukiji, where it may be purchased by one of the handful of Tsukiji sushi exporters who supply premier expatriate sushi chefs in the world’s leading cities.

So what value does that around-the-world jaunt from New England to Tokyo and back actually impart to your wasabi-laden sushi roll? Nothing more than the stamp of approval of a certified Japanese tuna buyer — one worth a substantial amount of money in this global fish market.

Of course, this may not be so strange a concept if you remember all the “American” brand-name products that are manufactured in far-off lands, with no real U.S. connection except for, at best, a corporate headquarters still rooted (thanks to generous tax breaks) in some random city. Even the label “Made in America” can sometimes mean parts produced in Mexico and China were merely clamped and welded together in a domestic factory.

In the interconnected world of today, rich countries like America and Japan may not build or produce anything in their own factories anymore, but they sure know good value — enough to charge a hefty premium for it.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

The U.S. Supreme Court refused today to hear a legal challenge to the president’s war powers brought by Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen who was held until recently as an “enemy combatant” without basic legal rights. The court’s majority pointed out that since the Bush administration moved Padilla after 3 1/2 years from military to civilian custody, the appeal was now “hypothetical.” (Forget that the administration transferred Padilla precisely to avoid any such legal questioning of its wartime policies.) But by not taking up the case, the court has left unanswered key questions about the president’s wartime authority to circumvent or defy the Constitution. The administration will continue with dubious measures it insists are legal, and critics will continue to be able to do nothing about it. What, you may ask, is the purpose of a Supreme Court, if it cannot resolve these divisive wartime issues?

It’s important to remember this kind of legal uncertainty encourages abuse. We can see this at U.S.-run prison camps in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, where the administration’s failure to dictate clear policies encouraged soldiers to make their own conclusions about what treatment was “humane” and what was not — with tragic results.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

Those were the good days when a man had friends in distant clans. Your generations does not know that. You stay at home, afraid of your next-door neighbor. Even a man’s motherland is strange to him nowadays.

—Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

On Wednesday I wrote about Chinua Achebe’s book Things Fall Apart, and its relevance to modern-day struggles between old and new — specifically, the recently renewed debate over evolution, which pits religious doctrine against scientific knowledge.

I should be clear about one thing: By humanizing deeply flawed men like Okonkwo, Achebe is not telling us that we should wax nostalgic about the old ways. It would be foolish to forget the cruelties of that past society. But it would be foolish, too, to forget why Okonkwo clings so desperately to his culture’s disappearing traditions — or, for that matter, why men and women of a similar mindset today persist in certain beliefs about the origins and history of life in spite of scientific evidence to the contrary.

When I used to cover religious issues as a reporter, I saw these reasons firsthand. The church is, above all, a community, and tradition is the bedrock of that community, the shared language, imagery, and philosophy that make communication, and communion, possible. It is not surprising that today’s most fervent defenders of the old doctrines — evangelical Christians in this country — have some of the most tightly knit communities of faith and the fastest-growing congregations. Especially in regions of the country (or world) that have yet to hear the good news of this new era of global markets, the good news of scripture adds real, undeniable value to people’s lives.

Perhaps the clash of cultures in Things Fall Apart could have turned out less tragically, and we may hope the same for the current battle over evolution. (There have been some recent attempts to reconcile faith with science — take, for example, the Dalai Lama’s recent book, The Universe in a Single Atom, which attempts a dialogue between Buddhism and modern science, especially physics and genetics.) That said, the lack of understanding on either side does not bode well. We see the terrible consequences of such ignorance in Achebe’s novel. The British overlords do not understand why the Igbo persist in their “primitive” customs, and their intransigence forces a confrontation that ends in death.

Particularly illuminating is the description of one zealous missionary, the Rev. James Smith, who insists there is no reason to compromise with or accommodate the heathens. “He saw the world as a battlefield in which the children of light were locked in mortal conflict with the sons of darkness,” Achebe writes. It is not hard to see a similar kind of combativeness on both sides in the recent debate over teaching evolution. On one side are those who disdain science; on the other are those who see the religiously devout as “primitives” of another sort. What lies between them is shared misunderstanding. When Okonkwo and his fellow villagers confront the missionary, one of the men offers an apt description of their predicament: “We say he is foolish because he does not know our ways, and perhaps he says we are foolish because we do not know his.”

Near the end of Things Fall Apart, Achebe gives us more clues of what the old ways mean to men like Okonkwo. Giving thanks before a feast at Okonkwo’s home, his uncle Uchendu prays to the ancestors for health and children. “We do not ask for wealth because he that has health and children will also have wealth. We do not pray to have more money but to have more kinsmen. We are better than animals because we have kinsmen. An animal rubs its itching flank against a tree, a man asks his kinsman to scratch him.”

With all our modern technology and sophistication, humanity still hungers for connection and kinship. The old ways die, the new ways take root, but what happens to the community? That is the tragedy of Achebe’s book, and the challenge we face now, on the precipice of another transformation.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

I say let the prisoners pick the fruits.

—Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, Republican from California, criticizing a Senate bill that would provide an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants the opportunity to become U.S. citizens. Rather than turning to immigrant farm workers, Rohrabacher said, the agricultural industry should instead rely upon the country’s homegrown inmate population, currently the world’s largest, at 2.1 million. Another House Republican, Rep. Steve King of Iowa, said that “anybody that votes for an amnesty bill deserves to be branded with a scarlet letter A&rdquo — reminding Americans of a kinder, gentler time in our nation’s history, when “witch hunt” was not yet a quaint figure of speech.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

”If we leave our gods and follow your god,” asked another man, “who will protect us from the anger of our neglected gods and ancestors?”

“Your gods are not alive and cannot do you any harm,” replied the white man. “They are pieces of wood and stone.”

When this was interpreted to the men of Mbanta they broke into derisive laughter.

—Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

Continuing my occasional series, “Random Thoughts About Random Books,” I want to say a few things about Things Fall Apart, by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, which I recently reread. This slim, sparely written book is so many things — a story of a family crushed under the weight of a father’s sins, a history of upheaval and subjugation in colonial Africa, a tragedy reminiscent of the Greek classics that speaks of the consequences of pride, a tale of violent conflict between sexes, classes, communities, and cultures. I can’t hope to do justice to its brilliance with the few words I have here. But I want to focus on one particular strand of Achebe’s masterpiece: what happens after new ways usurp the old, and those older traditions — and the communities they hold together — fall apart.

It’s a topic that’s been on my mind lately, now that this country’s perennial unease about change has found its way into the headlines yet again. This time, it has taken the form of theories of “intelligent design” and other efforts to salvage religious doctrine from the onslaught of Darwin’s theories. In Achebe’s novel it is the Christianity of the European masters that viciously clears away the vital undergrowth of indigenous tradition. Today it is science that is burning away dominant Christian beliefs — or, at very least, threatening to do so. (Fortunately for those who love doctrine, today’s defenders of the faith are much better organized than the villagers in Achebe’s novel.)

Things Fall Apart focuses on the story of Okonkwo, a determined and industrious man living in an Igbo community in what is now Nigeria. Bitter at the memory of his late father, who lacked ambition and died heavily in debt, Okonkwo has long dreamed of achieving wealth and status in his village and raising his sons to be strong, tradition-minded men. But Okonkwo’s hopes collide with the transformations that are taking place throughout Africa. Christian missionaries establish a presence in the village and turn young and old against the old ways. British imperial functionaries impose their own customs, beliefs, and laws, and brutally suppress dissent.

Part of the beauty of Achebe’s novel is that he does not come out on the side of the old or the new. While Things Fall Apart was written as a necessary corrective to simplistic, condescending depictions of Africans in European literature (it takes its title from the much-quoted poem by Irish poet William Butler Yeats that prophesized the destruction of Western European civilization by rising hordes of “uncivilized” peoples), Achebe does not depict the Christian missionaries, or the doctrines they preach, as evil. In fact, his portrait of Christianity is quite sympathetic at times. We see courageous Christians standing up to aspects of Igbo traditional life that are unjust and unethical. Twins are left to die in the forest because they are believed to be cursed. Men are taught to be stern, even cruel, with their (multiple) wives. The society’s lowest caste — the Igbo version of India’s “untouchables” — are kept at a distance from the so-called “free-born.” Those men and women who convert to Christianity in Okonkwo’s village choose to reject these unjust beliefs among their people, and Achebe acknowledges their bravery. He also spends much time in his novel depicting the plight of those harmed by the whim of superstition and custom — including, most tragically, one of Okonkwo’s adopted sons.

But Achebe also shows us how the death of tradition becomes the death of a community. The old ways were unjust, irrational, impractical — but they gave men like Okonkwo a sense of purpose, a bond of kinship, and a foundation on which to build their society. As the fabric of tradition unravels, so does the community. “I fear for you young people because you do not understand how strong is the bond of kinship,” one of the village elders says at one point in the book. “You do not know what it is to speak with one voice. And what is the result? An abominable religion has settled among you. A man can now leave his father and his brothers. He can curse the gods of his fathers and his ancestors, like a hunter’s dog that suddenly goes mad and turns on his master. I fear for you; I fear for the clan.”

I’ll continue this discussion of the book in my post on Saturday.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

If an Israeli group wants to march in New York, do you allow Neo-Nazis into their parade? If African Americans are marching in Harlem, do they have to let the Ku Klux Klan into their parade? … People have rights. If we let the [Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization] in, is it the Irish Prostitute Association next?

—John Dunleavy, chairman of New York’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, telling The Irish Times why lesbian and gay marchers should be kept off the streets, in the closet, on the other side of the rainbow, etc.

There are rules to follow when making analogies. One is that they be logically consistent. To my knowledge, there are no Israeli Neo-Nazis, or African American KKK members. But there are Irish gays and lesbians — including New York’s newly elected council leader, Christine Quinn, who condemned Dunleavy’s remarks.

Just how petty can the parade’s organizers be? They banned not just the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization but also the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform, an advocacy group supporting undocumented Irish immigrants (an estimated 40,000 in the U.S.). Perhaps the organizers forget that many of their ancestors were terribly persecuted immigrants themselves, who escaped famine in their own land to face racism and poverty in America — back at a time when America’s borders were open and there was no such thing as an “illegal alien.”

That said, I have to admit I can’t get too worked up over this parade issue because I find all parades to be boring. I’m sure there’s something I’m missing here. But really, what’s so exciting about standing outside in frigid weather watching grown men in funny costumes walk down the street and wave? It’s so 19th century.

Which basically sums up the mentality of the parade’s organizers.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

The body of Tom Fox, one of the four peace activists kidnapped in Iraq last November, was discovered Thursday. The 54-year-old father of two, a member of the Chicago-based Christian Peacemaker Teams, had been tortured with electric cables before being shot in the head.

Fox, a Quaker, was a dedicated activist who spent the last two years of his life in Iraq, working with Iraqi human rights groups to foster peace and seeking a richer understanding of Islamic culture. As a peacemaker he found his inspiration in Jesus and Gandhi, who taught him to stand firmly, nonviolently, against evil. Writing to his fellow activists in October, Fox asked them to remember the Mahatma’s words: “A person who has known God will be incapable of harboring anger or fear within him, no matter how overpowering the cause for that anger or fear may be.”

The day before his abduction, Fox shared another short reflection titled “Why are we here?” Here is an excerpt:

I have read that the word in the Greek Bible that is translated as “love” is the word “agape.” Again, I have read that this word is best expressed as a profound respect for all human beings simply for the fact that they are all God’s children. I would state that idea in a somewhat different way, as “never thinking or doing anything that would dehumanize one of my fellow human beings.”

As I survey the landscape here in Iraq, dehumanization seems to be the operative means of relating to each other. U.S. forces in their quest to hunt down and kill “terrorists” are, as a result of this dehumanizing word, not only killing “terrorists,” but also killing innocent Iraqis: men, women and children in the various towns and villages.

It seems as if the first step down the road to violence is taken when I dehumanize a person. That violence might stay within my thoughts or find its way into the outer world and become expressed verbally, psychologically, structurally or physically. As soon as I rob a fellow human being of his or her humanity by sticking a dehumanizing label on them, I begin the process that can have, as an end result, torture, injury and death.

“Why are we here?” We are here to root out all aspects of dehumanization that exist within us. We are here to stand with those being dehumanized by oppressors and stand firm against that dehumanization. We are here to stop people, including ourselves, from dehumanizing any of God’s children, no matter how much they dehumanize their own souls.

His hopeful words then sting us now with a painful irony. This is all the more true of the “statement of conviction” that Fox and his fellow sojourners signed last March, in which they acknowledged the dangers of their work in Iraq — and yet insisted its importance outweighed the risks. “We hope that in loving both friends and enemies and by intervening non-violently to aid those who are systematically oppressed, we can contribute in some small way to transforming this volatile situation,” the statement read.

Even if the love they showed to their enemies was not enough, there could be no hatred in their hearts, the statement went on to say. In the event of hostage-taking, “We will try to understand the motives for these actions, and to articulate them, while maintaining a firm stance that such actions are wrong…. [We] reject violence to punish anyone who harms us…. We forgive those who consider us their enemies.”

We will never know for certain what thoughts went through Tom Fox’s head in the moments before his death. But if the words and deeds he offered over the course of his life are any indication, he faced his murderers without fear, or anger.

Acknowledging the humanity that they had forsaken.

Forgiving them, for they knew not what they did.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

Personal information on detainees was withheld solely to protect detainee privacy and for their own security…. [Disclosure] could result in retribution or harm to the detainees or their families.

—Lt. Cmdr. Chito Peppler, U.S. military spokesman in Guantánamo Bay, on why the Pentagon refused for four years to release the names of the prisoners held at the offshore prison, until a federal judge ordered it to do so this week.

Ever since it started shipping prisoners arrested in Afghanistan and Pakistan to prison facilities at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the Bush administration has fought ferociously to keep them away from the rule of law and the skeptical eye of the international community. First, the suspects were planted upon a plot of occupied land that the U.S. government contends it leased but the Cuban government claims was taken by force. (When’s the last time you “leased” a car from your Honda dealer at gunpoint?) Then, it refused to allow the prisoners to see lawyers or family, classified them as “enemy combatants” to advance a flimsy legal argument for holding them indefinitely without charges, and prevented any outside group (except, after a while, the International Committee of the Red Cross) from gaining access to the prisoners. Even after incidents of torture came to light, the administration continued to refuse to release the identities of the prison’s occupants — until The Associated Press filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and a federal judge ruled against the government, demanding that the relevant documents be handed over on Friday.

Following their usual practice of letting no bad deed go un-spun, the Bush administration is suddenly making itself out to be a kinder, gentler jailer. The identities of Guantánamo’s prisoners, says a Pentagon spokesman, were withheld “solely to protect detainee privacy and for their own security.”

Privacy? Security? Sir, have you no sense of irony?

It is truly awe-inspiring to watch a government spokesperson say these things with a straight face. It reminds me of how the Pentagon, when faced with a rash of attempted suicides at the Guantánamo prison, started reclassifying them as “manipulative self-injurious behaviors” — because anyone who wants to kill himself is just being “manipulative.”

Of course, it is possible that the Guantánamo prisoners, wasting away for years in their cells with no connection to the world outside, are really pining for privacy. They don’t want anyone else to know or care about what happens to them. Their detainment is, after all, a private matter to be discussed between the prisoner and his jailer. Perhaps they’re afraid of identity theft or telemarketers.

It is possible that the prisoners fear for their safety, too. Inside the Guantánamo prison, they’ve been pampered — with repeated beatings and sexual abuse, having feeding tubes shoved up their noses without sedatives, being chained in a fetal position for hours until they defecate upon themselves. Outside, who knows what may happen to them?

There are surely some very bad men holed up in Guantánamo. But after five years of this human rights (and public relations) disaster, there is still no compelling reason why the prisoners being held there can’t be charged with crimes, given fair trails, and then, if found guilty, sentenced and punished. Does the Bush administration persist in its Orwellian policies because of mere stubbornness or because it lacks any evidence that many of these men were actually al-Qaeda fighters (as a review of the Pentagon’s own data concluded)?

Or maybe the government has just grown attached to its little gulag in sunny Guantánamo. What would the 500-some prisoners do without the Bush administration to look after their privacy, security, and tendencies toward “manipulative self-injurious behavior”?

Maybe this is what George Bush meant when he talked about compassionate conservatism. At Guantánamo, Big Brother knows best.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world knows nothing.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

There’s a great piece by Thomas Walkom in the Toronto Star about how the climate of fear that the Bush administration has exploited since the September 11 terrorist attacks is itself to blame for the hysteria over the sale of six ports to an Arab, state-owned company based in Dubai — a hysteria that Bush is struggling mightily now to control, in defiance of many members of his own party.

Irony is a constant in politics. Since Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush has deliberately defined the world in the black-and-white, us-versus-them language of his war on terror. Now, the rhetorical demons he so assiduously promoted are coming back to bite.

The fears surrounding the port deal are misinformed, even “racist,” Walkom says. There is no compelling security reason for blocking this firm from purchasing the ports:

The American president points out, correctly, that the arch-conservative and profoundly undemocratic U.A.E. government is a staunch U.S. ally.

His defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld notes — also correctly — that terrorists can come from anywhere, including the U.S. and Britain. Why condemn an entire nation because a few of its citizens made the wrong choice?

The editors of The Wall Street Journal, who find the entire episode distasteful, note that security at these ports will continue to be handled by the U.S. government.

The only effective difference is that profits made by running the ports will flow to princelings in Dubai rather than capitalists in the City of London.

But among Americans, none of this seems to matter. A citizenry whose fears have been so successfully exploited by this administration remains unconvinced.

Over the past five years, Bush has defined his presidency by his willingness — better yet, eagerness — to overturn or ignore laws that he feels stand in the way of “getting the terrorists.” Now his fans must wonder why Bush has suddenly grown soft. How can he defend the rights of foreigners to do business while endangering the lives of Americans?

The criticism of the port deal may not be justified, but for the many millions of Americans whipped into an eschatological frenzy thanks to the constant terror alerts and Iraqi roadside bombings and bin Laden terror tapes, it makes perfect sense. In the America that Bush built, racism is indeed rational.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen