Osama (R-Pakistani Border) Wins

By Meteor Blades

It is said that Osama bin Laden was surprised but gleeful upon learning that his hand-picked hijackers had done more than expected and toppled the twin towers of the World Trade Center. But the devastation of that attack five years ago caused minuscule damage compared with the dirty bomb that the Senate and House have exploded in our midst this week. The rule of law is contaminated. In the clash of civilizations, civilization took another hit.

If al Qaeda held five seats in the U.S. Senate, does anyone doubt that there would be five more ayes today to approve the Dungeons and Rendition Act? It wasn’t, however, al Qaeda that voted for torture and against habeas corpus. This was the act of men and women who swore an oath to the Constitution they have now chosen to eviscerate. Not all at once, mind you, rather death by a thousand cuts.

About an hour ago, I got off the phone with my stepson. He confirmed for me what my wife and I have known was coming for months. He has chosen after five years in America to move to England. His mother, who didn’t see or talk to him or his sister for 15 years because their father had kidnapped them to Libya, is obviously much saddened by this decision. That sadness pales beside her rage.

When he told me he had been watching C-Span yesterday and today, I knew I was fighting a losing battle because he hadn't even waited for the final vote. Still, I tried my best to persuade him to, at least, delay his decision, remain in school the rest of the term. We can change things, I said. We can turn this around. I concede that I wasn’t all that convincing even to myself.

Trouble is, it wasn’t the Dungeons and Rendition Act that started my stepson down this path. Merely the final spark. He’s been thinking about leaving for some time. Watching Ted Koppel’s The Price of Security a few weeks ago just about clinched the deal. It was on that show our family heard the results of a Discovery Channel-Time magazine poll. Of the 1001 respondents, 47% said Arab-Americans should have their ethnic origin stamped on their identity cards. With a margin of error at 3.3%, that’s half of Americans. And 25% agreed that it would be a good idea to put Arab-Americans in camps until their loyalty can be appraised. The pollsters didn’t inquire if respondents thought torture should be used for this determination. Nor if Arab-Americans should be required sew a red crescent on their clothes. Nor whether the government should be allowed to grab suspects off the street and disappear them into secret prisons outside the reach of attorneys.

But one can imagine how they might have responded had they been asked.

My stepson – let me, as I have done before, call him Ibrahim, although that is not his name – didn’t have to imagine. Born in Oregon, Ibrahim lived from 1983 until 2001 in Libya, a dictatorship where such things are done regularly. Two of his uncles spent time in Moammar Qadafi’s prisons in the ‘80s. Then and now, loose talk about the colonel and the wreckage he has made of a potentially rich country is unwise. Today, while the Bush Regime talks democracy in the Arab world, Qadafi has become one of Washington’s new best friends.

His human rights record is ignored. His foreign intelligence chief, Musa Kousa, the plotter of the Pan Am 103 bombing above Lockerbie, regularly meets with CIA officials as high as deputy directors to chat about terrorists and tradecraft over tea. They’ve traded more than information. CIA rendition flights have touched down in Libya. Prisoners have moved from Libyan custody to American, and vice versa. But, then, what should one expect when the czar of U.S. intelligence has death squads on his résumé?

Meanwhile, as U.S. and British oil companies have renewed their seismic activities in the two-thirds of the Libyan desert yet to be explored, Libyan society has moved ever more speedily in a fundamentalist direction, a product of an estimated 40% unemployment and the delegitimization and brutal suppression of any opposition. Wearing of hijab once seemed on the way out, but now more and more women wear scarves and veils, Saudi style. Domestic intelligence chief Abdullah Sanussi once claimed to know every man in Tripoli with a beard. No more. They are everywhere. Violent jihad is not spoken of aloud, but its whispers seethe.

After being reunited in Libya with his mother in 1998, Ibrahim and his sister met my wife and me in Malta in 2000. It was an appropriate destination. For millennia, it’s been a meeting place between east and west. In that year before Nine-Eleven, you could still obtain an American passport at any embassy. Both Ibrahim and his sister needed new ones because the embargo against terrorist Libya barred them from traveling to the U.S. on their Libyan passports.

Freedom and democracy were two treasured words for Ibrahim. A perfect contrast to the oppressive, murderous dictatorship he lived in. He knew America from the music he listened to on pirated CDs and the muscle cars he drooled over on partially censored American movies shown on Libyan television. From some of his professors in the dilapidated, ideologically controlled education system, he knew he could get better schooling in America.

In August 2000, Ibrahim and his sister arrived in California for a five-week stay. They met their grandparents, their uncles and aunts and cousins, and many friends and colleagues who had helped in our 10-year effort to reunite my wife and her kids. We picnicked and hiked, saw Disneyland, Hollywood, and Six Flags. We visited Denver and the Rockies. We shopped. We took a leisurely drive from Spokane to Los Angeles, visiting Ibrahim’s birthplace and grandparents in Portland. We saw the giant redwoods, sea lions, the Golden Gate Bridge, Big Sur. We stopped at campuses in San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara. Despite the language barrier, we talked endlessly of music, movies, food and politics. Ibrahim was eager to put Tripoli behind him. His sister hesitated.

Then came word from Libya that an examination date had been moved. To arrive in time to take it, they had to fly to Tripoli on September 6 instead of September 13, as previously planned. Between the time we watched from the gate as they walked down the runway to the British Airways jet and the time Ibrahim returned in November, our lives turned upside-down. And so they have remained.

But let Ibrahim tell you in words he wrote and I blogged March 2005 in My Stepson Has Some Words for Karen Hughes). It’s a piece he wrote for his English class. I apologize if you’ve read it before. (Every word is his, but I corrected some spelling and tense problems.)

The Man with No Country

Although I was born in the United States, I lived most of my life in Libya with my father. In Libya, people live under an oppressive government. One of the most widely known stories happened in the early 1980’s. Several university students were taken from their classrooms. They got hanged just tens of meters away from their classes in the campus square. The only thing they had done was not agreeing with the government’s point of view. The executions were shown on the government TV. The students did not have any trial. Their lives did not mean anything to the people who killed them.

After I left the U.S. at age 3, all of my connection with my mother was cut for several reasons. The political situation between Libya and the United States was one of them. I did not hear from my mother for 15 years. I did not even know what she looked like because I did not have a single picture of her. The day in 1998 that my sister and I saw my mother after so long was very emotional for all of us.

My mother was the only American who came to Tripoli with a group of mothers from the United Kingdom whose children were in Libya. The mothers had been unable to see their children because of the political problems between Libya and the West, and family difficulties with the fathers. An arrangement between a Libyan government-controlled organization and a social organization in the United Kingdom allowed the mothers to visit Libya to see their children for two weeks.

The next summer, my mother came by herself. I noticed that I was being followed everywhere I went by two men. Clearly, they were doing their job! I was afraid that one day I might disappear if I said or did something that the government and their not very secret police disliked. I felt their eyes were on me even when I slept.

The summer of 2000 I went with my sister to meet my mother and stepfather in Malta and to get my American passport. There is no American consulate or embassy in Libya. I took my passport back to Tripoli in my shoe. Luckily, I was not searched.

In the summer of 2001 I decided to go with my sister to visit the United States for the first time in 18 years. It was love, sort of, at first sight.

When I came here, I thought that this country was going to be my home. At the Los Angeles airport, I saw people in the line where the sign said “Americans check in here.” Those Americans were of African, Asian, South American and European descent. We were treated equally.

I stayed here for five weeks. I went to see my grandparents in Oregon, and my stepfather’s parents in Colorado. We had a great time at my uncle’s cabin near a beautiful lake in Washington. We went by car down the coast of Washington, Oregon and California. For the first time, I saw the Pacific Ocean and the redwoods. Everything was so beautiful. I saw that people spoke out against the government without fear of being followed or arrested. I felt the freedom in the air. I loved this country so much that I decided to live here permanently. I wanted to be an American, an American-Arab or Arab-American. I did not care which.

I told my mother that I wanted to live with her. She was thrilled to hear that.

I had to take my sister back to Libya, tell my father what I had decided and get my college transcripts. On my way back to Tripoli my mother and stepfather went with us all the way to the gate of the airplane to say goodbye. When I left on September 6th, I was treated like any American. I was so proud of my blue passport.

I remember the night I talked to my father about coming to live in the United States. I saw tears on his face. He told me, “Son, you are a man now and you can make your own decisions.” I remember that night very well because the day after would change my fate forever.

I was having lunch at my friend’s farm when his cousin came running to us. He told us that an airplane had crashed into a skyscraper in New York. My first reaction was that it must have been an accident. We went to the TV to see what was going on. I was standing not believing what I was looking at when we saw the other airplane crashing into the second tower. I felt like a bullet went through my heart. I could not stand on my feet. When I went back home, my father asked me whether I still wanted to go to the United States. I was determined to go. I was not afraid.

I came back to the United States two months after September the 11th. Everything was different, like day and night. The United States was at war. This war was with an enemy that the government had little knowledge about. I saw how the airport had transformed from almost a bus station with metal detectors to a chaos of lines and confusion. There were soldiers with guns, just like in Libya. I was asked many questions about my passport and my family and why I was in America. They asked me the same questions several times. All of a sudden, I had become a suspect simply because of the color of my skin, my name and my religion. My blue passport meant nothing to them. Instead of an Arab-American, I was now an Arab-Suspect.

I understood why this was happening. America was attacked. I thought America was right to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda. I thought that after the war Arabs and Muslims would not be treated differently. I was wrong.

I have traveled by airplane six times overseas and four times in the U.S. in the past three years. I notice that I am selected in their “random search” every single time before I get into an airplane. I have been “interviewed” several times, once for more than an hour. Not only me. My mother and my stepfather are selected every time they travel as well. Also every time before I leave the package claim area I get pulled aside for another full search. All that treatment because my name is [Ibrahim] and my religion is Islam. It is humiliating to have my freedom in the hands of people who don’t understand my religion or my culture.

The war on Iraq makes everything worse. What happens at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo shames me, but this does not seem to matter very much to other Americans. When I am in the airport now and they search me I wonder if they would torture me. President Bush talks about how bad Iran and Syria are, and I worry we will have more war against Muslims. I think Bush believes in a Crusade, not in freedom and democracy.

September the 11th robbed my right to be like any other American. September the 11th gave the excuse for the government to chew my freedom and my pride. Government policies let airport authorities digest my American citizenship into a name on the “must search list.” September the 11th made the United States act in ways that sometimes makes me ashamed of my blue passport.

I still love America. But I am thinking about moving to another country. I am now worried about my life here. I am worried about what will happen to us if another terror attack happens. Will the government put all of the Arabs or Muslims in camps like what they did to the Japanese in World War II?

When I talked with Ibrahim today, I wished I could have told him that the situation in America has changed since he wrote that essay 18 months ago. I wished I could have told him our leaders have wised up after Iraq. I wished I could have said that diplomacy has taken the front seat to military force. I wish I could have told him that Mister Bush will not attack Iran, or that if he does, the Democrats will make him wish he hadn’t. I wish I could have said that everything will be different if only the Republicans lose their House and Senate majorities in November. I wished I could have said that everything will be different if you just be patient.

But I couldn’t, could I?

So Ibrahim, who I have come to love as if he were my own child, will be heading off to England with his wife to finish his education. Not a bad thing, of itself, but done because America, land of the free, beacon of liberty, turned out not to be.

Ibrahim’s sister remains here for now. After hesitating for three years, she broke off her engagement and arrived 14 months ago to further her studies. She’s still in the honeymoon phase, in part for being released from the relentless pressure on her in Libya to get married, in part because her English has yet to become well-honed enough for her to gain a full understanding of what’s going on here.

When she does, will Osama bin Bush drive her out as well?

Comments

[DemFromCT]

Not much to say by way of consolation. This is a terrible time for America that will have to be undone.

[MarkC]

Thanks for this great essay.

The revival of conspicuous Islamic identification in Libya, which you imply is due to its status as an alternative to state corruption, is something I wonder about. My first thought was, will it do the people any good? Then I think about the oil companies and wonder how long it would be until charismatic Islamic leaders in the Falwell or Robertson mould begin to collaborate with those companies. This "clash of civilizations" thing promises to be a great distraction from the rise of what is increasingly an economic monoculture.

[Brian Boru]

England may be better than the US, but I fear only marginally so. Ibrahim might want to visit Ireland to see if it suits him.

[ab initio]

MB, your stepson wrote a very poignant essay. He sounds like a great person. I am sure he will come out stronger and wiser for his experience. I feel for him and the Maher Arar's. We have clearly become mad in this country. Ever since 9/11, this is not the America that I grew up in. We have been moving inexorablly towards dicatorship since that fateful day. Bush & Cheney have twisted the fear and vengeance that Americans felt after 9/11 to aggrandize their power. Unfortunately, we did not fight the power grab soon enough.

Today, we have officially arrived in a dictatorship. Do we acquiesce or fight? As Mimikatz pointed out in an earlier thread the mothers of the disappeared dispalyed enormous courage in standing up the Argentinian junta. Will we have the courage to stand up to the current junta? Will the American people stand up on Nov 7th and say we have had enough?

[Mimikatz]

I'm sorry about your stepson, MB, although one can understand his feelings. I'm sorry for my country, too. It is now clear to me that the GOP doesn't plan on losing Congress, and doesn't paln on giving up Congress even if they lose it.

What a bunch of sheep the GOP is. Just march behind their leader, march the country off a cliff. No one takes this seriously. No one thinks it will touch them. The Dems who refused to oppose this abomination are bad, but the authors of it should rot in hell. They are far, far worse because they thought it up and will be the ones to use it.

"Ibrahim" and other Arab-Americans are just the first. But it will spread. Will most Americans even notice?

[Mimikatz]

It passed, 65-34.

Democrats in favor (12) - Carper (Del.), Johnson (S.D.), Landrieu (La.), Lautenberg (N.J.), Lieberman (Conn.), Menendez (N.J), Pryor (Ark.), Rockefeller (W. Va.), Salazar (Co.), Stabenow (Mich.), Nelson (Fla.), Nelson (Neb.)

Rockefeller?????????
Why????????????

[ab initio]

Mimikatz

Why??? They have no courage! No allegiance to American values!

They too only believe in the benefits of power. They think this vote will help them in the next election. This is a false victory.

We are in our period of darkness. Someday there will be light again but we cannot acquiesce now. We have to remember the deprivations Martin Luther King, Gandhi and Nelson Mandela suffered. They triumphed in the end. We have to make Nov 7th count. We have to make 2008 count.

[Prabhata]

Even if the Democrats win this November the House and the Senate, the torture bill will not be reversed because their numbers will not be veto proof.

Osama has won, and he won big. The movie "Red State" http://www.redstatethemovie.com/ explains why the GOP wants torture to be the law of the land.
Watch the youtube clip, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9hBZrkC2ps&eurl=

[DemFromCT]

Actually, i expect parts of it to be tossed out by the courts. Many of the voting senators apparently feel the same.

And even some Republicans who said voted for the bill said they expected the Supreme Court to strike down the legislation because of the habeas corpus provision, ultimately sending the legislation right back to Congress.

“We should have done it right, because we’re going to have to do it again,” said Senator Gordon Smith, a Republican from Oregon, who had voted to strike the habeas corpus provision, yet supported the bill.

Lieberman voted for the bill. Snowe didn't vote. Chafee voted against it.

[CaseyL]

I, too, have been hoping for a court review.

Then I thought some more about it.

This bill gives Bush absolute power over anyone he decides - for any reason or none at all - is "materially aiding" terrorists.

How much you want to bet that, if a Court decides to nullify this new law, Bush gets on TV and talks about how "activist judges" are materially aiding terrorists by not letting him have the authority to protect America from terrorist plots?

How much you want to bet that the Usual Suspects - on Congress, in the media, in the Religious RIght, and for sure in the punditariat - will rally behind him on that one?

I used to come up with scenarios of how bad things could conceivably get, and then feel reassured because I believed they never, ever could get that bad.

Then Bush and the GOP kept proving me wrong.

I no longer believe anything is beneath or beyond them.

I'm not even looking forward to the election at this point. Bush will have enough time between signing the bill into law and Election Day to play with the marvelous new toy Congress has given him. There's no way on sweet green Gaia he won't want to play with it. Big Time.

The future is very dark, and very short.

[texas dem]

I'm just terrified that Stevens will be dead by the time this gets to the Court.

That, and there's a rumor that the bill is written so that nobody will have standing to challenge it. Dunno if that's true or not.

Can you imagine this being upheld by a 5-4, Justice Luttig in the majority? Then it might really all be over.

Webb Ford McCaskill Webb Ford McCaskill Webb Ford McCaskill...

[4jkb4ia]

That bad! I was expecting something close to a party-line vote. I don't know what it will take beyond this for Joe Lieberman to show the voters of Connecticut that he is not independent enough. Of course he needs every Republican vote.

[4jkb4ia]

I don't mean to be flip. My attitude has been much closer to Mimikatz's post. As I saw random people and had time to think, I felt that a shadow had fallen on them. It was also chilling to think that these random people were probably unaware of what had happened.

[prostratedragon]

Stabenow (Mich.)

Though she is running for re-election, this has to be a major disappointment. To my knowledge, her challenger has not been running that close, and Michigan has the largest Arab-American voter base in the country and a significant Black vote, both of which are probably feeling somewhat uneasy over the recent news.

[janinsanfran]

The historic remedy to unjust laws has been for good people to violate them publically. And take the consequences. It seems likely that one early set of victims of the dictatorship law will be the operators of Islamic charities. I wonder if there are progressive Christian churches that can be encouraged to take up support of those charitable enterprises, thereby sharing in the repression likely to be visited on our Muslim brethren?

Just a thought.

[Jodi]

Perhaps the majority voters thought that it was necessary. There are people that don't want to hold a gun, yet others will join the police and others the army in Iraq. Of their own choice by the way.
Others that think it is ok to marry more than one person at a time.

That is what a democracy is all about.

I know that you feel bad and I am sorry for your personal grief. Still I would feel that your stepson should go further to express his convictions and give up his citizenship since he feels so strongly about it. And we wish them luck.

Really he should emigrate to Canada or France perhaps.

[MarkC]

Jodi, you talk about diversity of opinion in the first paragraph and say "that is what a democracy is all about." But the post was about a person who is singled out because of his appearance, and what happens when that diversity is threatened because some groups are made to feel unwelcome. When you say "we" wish "them" luck, you're lining up with those who would make others feel unwelcome. Isn't that, by your definition, undermining what "democracy is all about"?

[Beel]

MB, this is one outstanding post! I have only one comment--those who react to this legislative tragedy by saying they won't vote for Democrats in November are responding just as Rove & Co. want them to. Politics is always going to be grubby and full of compromise, but the only practical choice we have is to get Dems. back in power in November. If that happens, we then push for repeal of this hash, and impeachment of our Deciderer (and his VP), and some rational solution to our currently insane foreign policy, etc. etc. It always is about simple choices, one at a time. And it's a very sad thing that Ibrahim is leaving the US.

[Jodi]

I think that you can find 1001 people that will say all sorts of things. I think that some people worry too much. I have people single me out because I am a blond woman.

Perhaps you are just confused with the difference between legal freedom and freedom from being exposed to rude or crude people.

But still in this country if you don't like it, you can leave. I am not saying that I want you to. You are saying that.

[Jesurgislac]

I've never commented here before, MB, but - best wishes to your stepson. I hope things change in the US before he graduates in the UK - enough so he feels he can come home to his family - and tell him I wish him well in my country. (Oh, and if he's going anywhere near Manchester, this place was good two years ago and hopefully still is.)

[Meteor Blades]

Well, Jodi, when you are singled out, hooded, named an enemy combatant and shipped off to some secret prison for an indefinite stay because you're blond, get back to me.

Oh. You won't be able to, will you?

[greg]

I have an exchange student from Austria staying with me, and this morning I got to explain to her what is going on. I explained how all through my education I learned about the terrible things that were done, out of fear, to Japanese-Americans during WWII. How we always congratulated ourselves that yes, we had screwed up royally, but we have an open, free society where we can discuss and learn from mistakes like that one, and we had learned, and at least we could be certain that such a thing would never happen again. Until yesterday. Guess we didn't learn so much after all.

We are rapidly ceasing to be a Constitutional Republic, becoming instead a Democracy without (or with no meaningful) constitutional protections for individuals. This means that we have mob rule and the oppession of minorities by the majority. It looks like that is just how Jodi likes it (at least as long as she remains in the majority).

[donna]

I have a good friend who is gay who announced yesterday that he and his partner are moving to Sweden. They won't be the last of the brain drain, and neither will your son.

What we will lose in this country now because educated foreigners or Americans of foreign decent or who are gay or afraid or whatever and decide to not come here, or leave if they are here, is priceless.

America has started down a sad, sad, period of decline. After all we have stood for, it is down to this - a government that insists on giving its president the right to disappear and torture people.

Our dream is becoming very, very dark, indeed.

[Jodi]

Meteor Blades.

Whoa! You mean that your stepson had that happen? Being hooded? Being shipped off to some torture chamber in a "unnamed country."

Well he does have recourse. One avenue is a civil suit.

I guess in my hurry I missed that he had had it happen.

I thought that he was just a worrier, even perhaps a bit paranoid, OR perhaps he was trying to be dramatic to state some political feelings.

I hope he is out of prison and his hood now.

Again I wish you all a quiet peaceful life, and hope that you sue the eyes off the bastards. By the way you can't do that in most countries.

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