Howell-at-the-Moon
!Libertarian Rants! John Wingspread Howell
Castro & The Olympics
Cuba, China, Communism
Why do So Many Bad Words Begin with "C"?
and... Tribunal Justice
August 8, 2008
It may be a coincidence that China was gearing up for the Olympic opening ceremonies as Raul Castro gave his version of the state of the state address. The Chinese, according to a recent poll, are among the most optimistic people in the world. The Cubans are the most hopeless. Why wouldn't they be, why wouldn't you be, if you thought things couldn't get any worse until your Dictator got up and told you to expect things to get worse-- that the world food crisis will hit you hard, even though you have limited access to food as it is, that the price of oil will come as the counter-punch.
My heart broke for one Cuban man recently interviewed on NPR: a Medical Doctor in his fifties, earning the equivalent of $20 per month. He said he can't live on his salary. He's a doctor and he can't live on the salary the government pays him. He is forced to expect contraband gifts from his patients, just to survive. He was afraid to give his name to the reporter for fear of losing his job or being arrested for admitting he has to accept gifts under the table.He is a doctor. And he can't live on the the salary his socialist government pays him.
Put yourself in his place. You can't live on what you are paid. You look around and the once beautiful country you were born in is crumbling around you. Everyone is struggling, except those in the government. You think things can't get any worse, until your leader stands up and you know things will only get worse. And what's worse than that? He leaves out the other half of the cliche. "Things will get worse," he says, but then there is silence. He never finishes the sentence. He never says, "before they get better." He leaves them worse. He knows better than to invoke the usual propoganda. He knows, at some level, how empty his rhetoric is, what a joke those billboards are and have always been. The workers will not prevail. The socialist state will not be vindicated. His doctrines, slogans, mind-control mantras crumble like the monuments around them, decompose like the corpses of Che Guevera and Stalin and soon enough (if not already) Fidel himself.
Raul Castro knows he himself is closer to his brother's fate than the opposite. Like his country, like his dream, he's almost dead and determined to take his country with him. In the meantime, for the duration, "We'll all have to conserve more," he says. We? What is he conserving. More? What's left to cut back on?
He could save them, he knows. He could jump start the economy in five minutes with one simple proclamation. So why doesn't he? He's a Communist. Don't confuse him with facts. Better to die than to acknowledge your enemy was right all these years. But he throws them one bone. He legalizes cell phones. No risk there. No normal Cuban can afford one. But the few who can, perhaps, can call for help.
As Cuba crumbles, China rises. At first glance, perhaps, the new cities, the vertical steel and glass and neon (and yes, smog) could be America, the Sequel. But not. Unlike Castro's subjects the Chinese have not been sealed in a techno time-capsule, have not been sealed up in a planned economy, did not watch their country die on the vine when the Soviet Union fell apart. But the Chinese and the Cubans have one thing in common. Their spirits are in chains.
Have you watched them, listened to the interviews, beginning with the earthquake and flowing seamlessly from disaster to determination to make the Olympics work, to show the world that China is really great after all. Once and again. The world will know it now. How can they not see it?
And these people believe every word they say. Belief as a zombie believes. As a child learns the alphabet or a nursery rhyme. And that is the trick in China. Just as they used to bind their feet they now bind their spirits. Politically they are permanent children. Frozen in naievte. They are innocents. They know no better. They know nothing else. Their egos have not been nurtured. They gladly fall into line, like the hundreds of performers in their opening Olympic shabang, they have no thought for personal expression. They fall into line, march in step, speak on cue, always the party line. The person is nothing. The people are great. The government is God. And when the sky falls, "The Government will take care of us." Eyes are glazed. Tone is flat. They are zombies. Cogs in a wheel.
Not the Cubans. The Cubans at least have secretly nurtured their souls, their individual selves. They conform, when they have to-- which is most of the time. They conform, but only in plain view. And lately their conformity is more like lack of resistance than compliance. They have lain down. They know the lie. They step over sleeping dogs. By now they get it. They were all fed a line. But its too late for many, for most perhaps. They're too poor, too tired, too worn down to fight, maybe even to care. Too willing just to lie down and let it happen. It's like freezing to death. They have reached the point when they just want to go to sleep.
This is good for us, for champions of liberty everywhere. It reminds us what we might have been, still might be, if we let ourselves believe the standard spin. Freedom, liberty, and truth are interdependent. Though opposite sides of the Communist coin, China and Cuba both sacrificed freedom for strength, liberty for security, truth for doctrine. We could be them. We may be becoming them. We are being told we should make the same trade-offs. We are being told to trust our government. Not to question. Not to notice the man behind the curtain. This is how it starts.
All governments exist only at the will of the people. Any government-- including those seated in Havana and Beijing-- could be overthrown in a day if the masses rose up. Eventually the Chinese will come to life and realize the potential of their power to be free. Eventually the Cubans will come back to life, awaken from a fitful sleep and realize their jailer is dead and their chains have rusted off.
But by then, where will we be? Hopefully not in the middle of a role reversal.
And now a word about Bin Laden's driver...
And I make these comments immediately following those above for a reason. The trial of Salim Hamdan for war crimes has been a complete farce, but worse, a mockery of the values and the rule of law we (as a nation) claim to honor and cherish. Although there is no lasting comfort in the accidental justice of the military tribunal system, there is much to be celebrated-- and feared.
We should celebrate that despite the fact that the military tribunals were set up for the Bush administration to dispose of anyone they wanted to label an enemy combatant with what would appear to be a "stacked deck," of a do-it-yourself court of military leaders, this stacked jury still showed restraint and a commitment to truth and justice, in Hamedan's case. In fact, the Judge even expressed compassion for the accused. We should also celebrate Hamdan's attorneys. They are military lawyers. Still, they believed in their client and became passionate about saving him. In short, despite the fact that our executive branch did everything within its power to railroad this poor young man caught in the crossfire, the values and principles of justice seem to have been so well inculcated in the players involved in this case that truth and justice seem to have prevailed. Attorneys, Judge and Jury all in their own ways, pushed back.
Why should we care about this Middle Eastern young man, a muslim, an employee of Al Kaieda if not a member of the group, who was, after all, admittedly Bin Laden's driver?
We should care because in the scheme of things he was only trying to earn a living. He committed no war crimes, yet he was tried for war crimes in a military tribunal. More than anything he was guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was set up by the President of the United States to be scapegoated. It worked for a while until his legal team started winning some small victories in the courts, then larger victories, and finally, the The Supreme Court ruling that guaranteed Mr.Hamdan fair treatment. Despite a later reversals, the courts put the Imperial Presidency in its place with this case.
We should care because from domestic spying to classifying citizens as enemy combatants in order to circumvent their Constitutional rights and our justice system, the current administration is leading us -- or trying to-- right out of America as we know it and right into something that resembles Cuba more or China more than anything we're familiar with. Truth is missing in action in the administration's spin. We're being told that we're at war, so it's necessary to cut some strings and skip some steps.We need to remember why we have the system we have, and how that system is what makes us the great nation we are today, and how easy it has already become to let it slip away.
"Howoooo!"
John Howell-at-the-Moon