No Justice, No Peace

[wbarnhill]

This is an op-ed piece, but read the story, and ask yourself if we should continue this rendition program.

No Justice, No Peace
By BOB HERBERT
Published: February 23, 2006

If you talk to Maher Arar long enough, even on the telephone, you'll get the disturbing sense that you are speaking with someone whose life has been shattered like a pane of glass.

"Sometimes I have the feeling that I want to go and live on another planet," he told me. "A completely different planet than planet Earth. You know?"

Mr. Arar, thanks to the United States government, went through the almost incomprehensible agony of being tortured. Now he is trying to live with the aftermath of torture, which is its own form of agony.

On Sept. 26, 2002, Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen born in Syria, was taken into custody by American authorities at Kennedy Airport in New York. He was locked in chains and shackles and accused of being "a member of a known terrorist organization."

There was no evidence to support the accusation, and no evidence has ever come to light. Nevertheless, as part of the hideous U.S. policy known as extraordinary rendition, Mr. Arar was shipped off to Syria, where he was kept in an underground rat-infested, grave-like cell, and tortured. (When I visited him in Ottawa last year, he told me how he had screamed and wept and begged both God and his captors for mercy.)

After 10 months, he was released. No charges against him were ever filed.

I called Mr. Arar last week after a federal judge in Brooklyn threw out a lawsuit in which Mr. Arar had sought damages from the U.S. government for his ordeal.

"I don't feel like I am the same person," he said. "I feel that my brain or my inner soul does not want to think about what's going on. My soul is trying to distract itself from reality."

The reality, he said, is that his life has been all but completely destroyed. He is fearful. He has become psychologically and emotionally distant from his wife and two young children. He has nightmares. He can't find a job. He spins dizzily from one bout with depression to another. And some former friends who are Muslim will no longer associate with him because "they're afraid to be the next target."

"I mean, you can tell, no one wants to hear about me," he said. "After 9/11, everyone branded with the terrorism label — they're doomed."

Mr. Arar, now 35, made a comfortable living as a software engineer before he fell into the demonic embrace of the rendition program. Now no one will hire him. "They put it in a nice way," he said. "They've said to people: 'Listen, we believe he's innocent. But, you know, we don't want to hire him.'"

Mr. Arar's own psychological difficulties have compounded the external challenges he faces. "I was invited to go and speak in Vancouver, which is west of here," he said. "But I can't take the plane anymore. Psychologically I am so scared to fly. So I couldn't go."

He said he frequently lacks the confidence or motivation to perform even minor tasks, and often feels overwhelmed by the thought of something as ordinary as a scheduled meeting with the principal at his 9-year-old daughter's school.

He said his 4-year-old son, Houd, panics whenever he thinks his father is about to go out. "He always wants to come with me," said Mr. Arar. "He insists, and he cries if I can't take him. He's afraid that if I go, I won't ever come back."

So the nightmare that began with rendition continues with no end in sight. Mr. Arar is grateful that his wife was able to land a job last year with a political party. "It's not much money," he said, "but had she not found a job we would be in a very, very miserable situation. We're just barely surviving."

Unexpected emotional support has come from ordinary Canadians; strangers frequently come up to Mr. Arar on the street and shake his hand. "They might say, "We're behind you,' or, 'We support you,' " he said. "It means a lot to me."

The rendition program is one more example of the way the United States, using the threat of terror as an excuse, has locked its ideals away in a drawer somewhere. We don't even give them lip service anymore. A person like Mr. Arar is not seen as having any rights. He's not even seen as human. He was carted away in accordance with official U.S. policy, and treated like an animal.

"They are doing this to people and it is wrong, wrong, wrong," said Mr. Arar. "This is an evil practice, and I want them to acknowledge it. I want them to acknowledge that what they did to me was wrong."

 

[Dan Smith]

This is an op-ed piece, but read the story, and ask yourself if we should continue this rendition program.

Hard to say; this piece is long on judgement, but awfully short on facts or background. Have you researched it at all?

Dan

 

[SteveR]

Hard to say; this piece is long on judgement, but awfully short on facts or background. Have you researched it at all?

Dan

Thats what I was thinking. Generally, with a typical America-bashing story like this, if there were any readily available hard facts (and often when there aren't), the American media wastes no time in jumping on the story.

Also, if you look at Mr. Herbert's list of recent editorials, its easy to see that he is pretty biased. IMO, when you are biased to the extent that he obviously is, your credibility goes right up there with the Enquirer. Just browsing the titles of his last 10 "stories" tells me a lot.

 

[wbarnhill]

Got a neg. rep point earlier:

No Justice, No Peace February 23rd, 2006 12:20 PM I'm sorry, but I don't like troll posts.

I do apologize if someone mistakenly thought this was a troll. I thought I made it clear through my observation that this was an op-ed piece that the quoted article was not a news story, and my statement was only to provoke discussion of the topic, which I'm thankful for the two people who did respond, and I understand their issues with bias. One of the main reasons I posted that it was indeed an op-ed article. Sorry that someone misunderstood the post, and hopefully they'll accept that apology. I'll try to be clearer next time.

 

[Richard]

Wall, you're like the city feller wantin' to talk 'bout poltics when out here on the porch we just jus' talk 'bout mostly other stuff. Now, if'n you wanna' talk 'bout airplanes, we can do that.

Politics and other stuff are important but mostly we (well, okay, I) have had it up to here with that. I heard there's a guy down the ways who loves to talk about that. Don't know where he is exactly, you'll know 'im when you see 'im.

 

[Chas]

I read Herbert for about 10 years until I couldn't take any more from the NYT op-ed page about 5 years ago and switched to the WSJ. His politics are very much straight NYT editorial line, maybe a little left even there. Sometimes he would really get one right, but not often enough IMHO.

My wife says I'm cutting off my nose to spite my face, as it were. The NYT unfortunately still has far the best global news coverage here in the U.S., but now I'm on the web mostly for news anyway and go to european sources a lot.

 

[EdFred]

Wall, you're like the city feller wantin' to talk 'bout poltics when out here on the porch we just jus' talk 'bout mostly other stuff. Now, if'n you wanna' talk 'bout airplanes, we can do that.

Politics and other stuff are important but mostly we (well, okay, I) have had it up to here with that. I heard there's a guy down the ways who loves to talk about that. Don't know where he is exactly, you'll know 'im when you see 'im.

My thoughts exactly. If I want to talk about america bashing politics, there are plenty of other places I would go to do that. Now, pass me a sasparilla willya?