AP reports today that some veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, including a first-term congressman, are questioning the low number of medals that have been awarded in these two wars: six. In comparison, 244 were awarded in the Vietnam war. The military argues that the current wars don’t present the same opportunities for incredible heroism, something which the veterans question. I think I’m with the military on this one.
The only Congressional Medal of Honor recipient that I’ve ever met is Charles Liteky, a former Catholic priest and Army chaplain who saved over 20 wounded men during a savage battle in Vietnam by carrying them from the battlefield to a safe zone while dodging enemy fire. Read his wikipedia entry, it is incredible what this man did. I cannot imagine that valor like his is particularly common.
I came across Liteky through Mike’s work with School of the Americas Watch (Mike was responsible for scanning and ocr’ing the lists of SOA graduates and their “torture” manuals’; after his work the School of the Americas started denying requests for new lists of graduates.) Liteky is (was?) fully involved in the organization, “crossing” the line in peaceful demonstrations to bring attention to the perverse work of the School of the Americas. For those unfamiliar with it, it’s the American military institution that instructs Latin American military on how to fight social movements at home. It was one of the institutions where the doctrine of national security was developed and disseminated. Many of its graduates have been accused of committing crimes against humanity. Liteky has been arrested and sent to prison several times for his peaceful protests – even as he entered his 70’s. And continues fighting the good fight.
I would hope that the Medal of Honor not suffer the fate of the Presidential Medal of Freedom which is given almost exclusively for political considerations (Bush gave it to people who are likely to have committed crimes against humanity themselves). Hopefully it will continue meaning something – but as our cultures becomes a greater and greater celebrator of mediocracy, it’s unlikely that it will.
Author: marga (Page 61 of 158)
LONDON (AP) – The government says an illegal immigrant sneaked into the U.K. by smuggling himself aboard a bus full of British border agents.
Britain’s Home Office says the man hid in the small space between the bus’s chassis and its fuel tank as it traveled through the Channel Tunnel from the French town of Coquelles to the British coastal city of Dover.
The Daily Mail newspaper reported Saturday that the bus carried at least 20 Border Agency staff, whose job it is to keep illegal immigrants out. The newspaper says the man was spotted dropping from the bus on to the road but ran away before he could be caught.
The Home Office said the incident occurred within the last week but could not immediately give a precise date. It said the man has not been caught.
http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/world/2009/07/30/D99P2CM80_eu_med_failed_un_strategy/index.html
One of the reasons why I work in human rights is because it is a mostly unambiguous field. Torturing, executing people extra-judicially, denying them due process rights is wrong. Period. There are some areas that are a bit gray – should we pursue the criminal indictment of sitting presidents, when it’s likely that by doing so they will increase repression in their own countries and/or deny access to humanitarian agencies? But in general, it’s pretty black and white.
Not so with humanitarian work. The old adage that you should not give a man a fish but teach him how to fish has definitely some truth to it – though it doesn’t explain what you should do when there are no fish in the river. And there are complex questions such as to what degree humanitarian aid absolves governments of their own responsibility to provide economic rights to their own people, to what degree it contributes to de-politicize local populations and maintain the political status quo and to what degree it has negative unintended consequences. For example, humanitarian aid is often appropriated by corrupt governments or armed groups that use it to hold populations hostage or to allow them to allocate their resources to weapons and so forth. And then there is the question of effectiveness.
This study shows that development aid aimed at children in Bangladesh has been pretty much useless: “in areas where the program wasn’t implemented, slightly more children were vaccinated against measles, and there was no big difference in death rates.” Similar accusations have been made in other instances.
I, of course, have no answers. It’s better to try and fail than to not try at all – but it’s of little use to throw money at a problem without really understanding it. And I, of course, do not (understand it). So I continue with my morally “safe” occupation and leave more complex ethical matters to others 🙂
A friend of mine posted this in facebook, and it’s indeed frightening. It doesn’t surprise me very much, however, given that 1) I always suspected that Bush wanted to stay in power through illicit means and 2) a military dictatorship is the emblematic end result of the application of the doctrine of national security. It didn’t happen – but perhaps because they found in Obama s/o who would follow Bush’s policies.
Cheney’s Plans for a Military Coup – Harpers
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