Moazzam Begg - American prisoner - Japan diary Hugh Cook's LIFE IN JAPAN diary by Hugh Cook Section

Diary 55

Life in Japan

zenvirus.com

back one web page      forward one web page

       contents of this diary - contents     special topics written about - topics

First entry this page: this page: first entry    Hugh Cook - his blog: latest entry

on this page:- hostile feedback

site contents diary essays poems stories

Section 55 Entry 0001. Date: 2003 July 27 Sunday.
(diary) (previous) (top) (bottom) (next) (topics) (contents)

It's good to get feedback, even when it's hostile. In fact, hostile feedback is generally more useful than the positive stuff (assuming that one's ego is in good repair, and doesn't fuss about a little turbulence.) The positive stuff, after all, only reminds the mind of the groove it's currently running in. By contrast, hostile feedback suggests new rhetorical possibilities, new avenues of inquiry and debate. So, with that in mind, let's turn to what can only be described as today's hate mail.

Well, actually, to be technical, I opened the e-mail in question on Saturday 26th, Japan time. It was from an initial at a Hotmail address, and it focuses on the case of Moazzam Begg, a gentleman from England whom the Americans have been holding as a prisoner now for more than a year.

The name "Moazzam Begg" apparently surfaced in a Taliban document, and, on this basis, the Begg who is now a prisoner was kidnapped from Pakistan and taken into American custody. Earlier, I wrote of Mr Begg as follows:-

Apparently he went to Afghanistan while the Taliban were in control, and his story is that he went there to do relief work. This story seems not unreasonable, in that he took along his wife and his three children. Your average hard core terrorist would have done the smart thing and left his family at home in Britain.

Then, after the September 11 attacks in 2001, the Americans bombed Afghanistan. And so, in early October of 2001, Moazzam Begg took his wife and three children to Pakistan. Once again, the actions match the story. The hard core fighters didn't run away - they stayed to fight it out.

Running away was the sensible thing to do (and is certainly what I would have done under the circumstances) and it's what aid workers naturally do when whatever miserable country they happen to be working in suddenly gets turned into a war zone.

My rather passionate e-mail correspondent writes as follows:-

I guess after 9/11 alarm bells wouldn't go off if someone, with or without their family, travelled first to Afghanistan then to Pakistan as you stated. To top it off his name, even if it isn't him, is on a Taliban list? Nah, I'm sure he'd be the first guy that you'd scratch off of your list of "hard core terrorists".

In this case the fault is evidently mine for not being clear enough about the chronology. In fact, Moazzam Begg went to Afghanistan in June of 2001, according to an account given by the British newspaper The Telegraph.

Moazzam Begg article - THE TELEGRAPH

The chronology looks like this, then:-

(1) June 2001: Moazzam Begg goes to Afghanistan with his wife and children.
(2) September 11, 2001: In an Al Qaeda attack, two airplanes fly into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York.
(3) America bombs Afghanistan.
(4) Later in 2001 (one source says October, but The Telegraph says December) Moazzam Begg leaves Afghanistan, taking his wife and children with him.
(5) February 2002: Moazzam Begg is kidnapped from Pakistan and taken into American custody.
(6) Moazzam Begg apparently subsequently spends a year as a prisoner of the Americans in a cellar at Bagram airbase near Kabul.

Now, plainly, this Muslim guy called Moazzam Begg was not captured on the battlefield with a gun in his hand. His guilt, real or imagined, has not yet been tested in court. Therefore it seems reasonable to write, as I did write:

whether guilty or innocent, Moazzam Begg has already been punished, even before his trial (which has not yet happened.) To start with, he was locked up for a year - a year! - in a cellar at Bagram airbase near Kabul.

This is what the American Empire is doing right now: grabbing possible suspects without being too fussy about whether they are guilty or innocent, throwing them into dungeons, denying them lawyers, denying them consular visits, and denying them contact with their families, denying them even the right to make phone calls.

A phrase from the Vietnam War era keeps going through my head:-

"Kill them all and let God sort them out!"

In the legal field, it's on this kind of ruthless "might is right" basis that the Bush regime seems to be choosing to operate.

Leaving aside the question of innocence or guilt, "punishment first, trial later" is not a fit and proper way to proceed.

Now, a couple of incidental points.

First, my rather agitated correspondent for some reason sees fit to take me to task for identifying the individual in question by saying "This is a Muslim guy called Moazzam Begg".

I love how you support (your quote) "This is a Muslim guy called Moazzam Begg"! "This muslim guy," he's not a person first? I thought that you were all against labeling and dehumanising people, you bad boy!

However, to my way of thinking the issue of religion (and ethnicity) is right at the heart of the issue, and it would be fatuous to make any statement on the case of Moazzam Begg without making it clear, right from the very start, that he is in fact a male Muslim.

The danger of the present situation is that the "war on terror" will become a "war on Muslims" or a "war on minorities." And it seems to me that to some extent the American "war on terror" already has become a "war on minorities." I've written about this elsewhere in the blog at some length, starting:-

Today's meditation is about America, fascism, the persecution of ethnic minorities, and the possibility that this kind of persecution will encourage terrorism. And what exactly is it that encourages this meditation? Well, it's my own situation.

My own situation being that I am a member of a conspicuously visible ethnic minority living in Japan (this minority being "non-Asian foreigners"), and so it's pretty easy for me to get an imaginative handle on how horrible it would be to be a member of a minority group that was subject to (amongst other things) arbitrary arrest and detention without trial (and without access to lawyers or telephones, either.)

My e-mail correspondent did make one good point:-

Oh, before you drop bombs like this: "Kill them all and let God sort them out!", you'd best be attributing this to someone buddy other otherwise it starts sounding "a little hard core".

One document which attests to the use of this expression in the Vietnam War is a PDF (portable document format) document from a history course at Santa Barbara University in the United States. There is an HTML version available online in:-

Google's cache

I also found a Vietnam veteran making use of this expression on the site www.smokedot.org

smokedot.org page quoted

If I read the page correctly, the comment quoted was posted to the smokedot.org site by someone on Friday September 14th, 2001, and says, in part:-

When you use bombers to wage war suddenly there is a disconnect from what is really happening. You don't see the enemys' muzzle flash at 15 yards, you don't see the "target" dance when your rounds rip into them, you see a flash on the ground and some fire perhaps the sound of the explosion. despite what you may think or been lead to believe there is no precision with a bomb. It ends up being a "Kill them all and let God sort them out" situation and that is wrong, wrong, wrong. While I am anger stricken by the plane crashes and at first wanted to strike out violently at any and all of those Rag Hat Fuckers [sorry but thats the literal thought]. I have come to see that the cycle of violence has to stop. Period. It is truly the only way. Revenge cannot be part of it. Yes, bring the guilty to the bar of justice and judge them then punish the quilty with whatever is justified. If Joe Blow organized and financed it by all means hang the fucker if you are absolutely certain who it was. Leave the civilians out of it or the cycle will just continue. Yeah, an old combat veteran with a semi non violent point of view. Weird shit I know.

My e-mail correspondent asks me "Since you are so enlightened on the issue please inform us all as to what they should do."

I rather think that the Vietnam veteran quoted above sums it up rather nicely:

"Yes, bring the guilty to the bar of justice and judge them then punish the quilty with whatever is justified. If Joe Blow organized and financed it by all means hang the fucker if you are absolutely certain who it was."

The reason that quite a number of people are critical of the Bush regime is because it has neglected the "bar of justice" business. Instead, we have punishment without trial, and, as the months have gone by, it has become painfully clear that quite a number of innocent people have been unjustly punished, incarcerated for months by the Americans without appropriate cause and mistreated while in custody.

The "absolutely certain" part has always been at the heart of the administration of justice, and, now that the Bush regime seems to be walking away from that principle, there's no telling where we're ultimately going to end up.
(diary) (previous) (top) (bottom) (next) (topics) (contents)

site contents

diary

essays

poems

stories

flash fiction

FAQ

e-mail

write fiction

CHRONICLES

MILIEU MAP

WORSHIPPERS

WITCHLORD

free novels

Hugh Cook

story list

novel list

poem list

Trojan War

Wizard War

Diary

Life in Japan

Hugh Cook

zenvirus.com