06 April 2012
By Jacob G. Hornberger Both Glenn Greenwald and Chris Hedges have
excellent analyses of the federal terrorism conviction
of American citizen named Tarek Mehanna. At his sentencing hearing last week in federal
court, Mehanna delivered a scathing condemnation of
U.S. foreign policy, a statement that Greenwald
incorporates in full in his blog. U.S. District Judge George A. O'Toole stated, "I am
frankly concerned by the defendant's apparent lack of
remorse, notwithstanding the jury's verdict" and then
proceeded to sentence the 29-year-old Islamic
pharmacist to serve the next 17 years of his life in a
federal penitentiary. If Mehanna had instead delivered the following
statement at his sentencing hearing, I wonder if the
judge might have gone easier on him: Oh, dear honorable Judge, who holds the power of
incarcerating me for the next several years of my
life, please listen carefully to my pre-sentencing
statement. I apologize. I apologize to you, to the
CIA, to the Pentagon, to the troops who are
defending our rights and freedoms, to President
Obama and former President Bush, to Congress, to all
U.S. officials, to all British officials and to all
other officials whose regimes have been parts of
U.S. coalitions of the willing, to the American
people, and to the people of the world. I am so very sorry for having questioned the good
intentions of the U.S. Empire and U.S. national
security state and the wonderful results of their
interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere
around the world. I repent, your honor, completely, fully, and
without hesitation. Can you please forgive me, your
honor? I am so filled with remorse. Oh, honorable judge, I now realize that the U.S.
government just made an honest mistake in believing
that Saddam Hussein still had the weapons of mass
destruction that the United States had delivered to
him when he was using them to kill Iranians. I now
realize, your honor, that our officials are not
perfect. They make mistakes too. Sure, they killed a
lot of people as they invaded Iraq and searched
desperately for those nonexistent WMDs. But I now
realize and acknowledge that those Iraqis had no
right to resist the invasion of their country. They
should have known that their ruler, Saddam Hussein,
might not have destroyed those WMDs that the United
States had previously delivered to him pursuant to
the U.S. government's partnership with him. The
Iraqi people had a moral and legal duty to welcome
our invading troops with open arms. And I now realize, your honor, that when our
troops failed to find those nonexistent WMDs, it was
necessary for the troops to remain in Iraq for a
decade in order to bring freedom, democracy, and
stability to Iraq. Why couldn't I see before now how
much U.S. officials love the Iraqi people and have
always been so concerned about their welfare? Why,
U.S. officials were even willing to sacrifice any
number of Iraqis in order to achieve freedom,
democracy, and stability in their country! How could
I not recognize such love and devotion before now? I
now see that our officials really do love the Iraqi
people to death. I now realize that those Iraqis who resisted the
U.S. invasion of their country were bad people. They
were terrorists. They had no appreciation for the
love that the U.S. Empire had for them. Didn't they
realize that the Empire loved them so much that it
even sacrificed hundreds of thousands of their
children with the deadly sanctions that the U.S.
government imposed on Iraq for some 11 years? What
better proof of love than that? And I now so much
agree with what U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine
Albright told the world about the deaths of those
half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions.
Yes, I now see she was right — the deaths of those
half-a-million children really were "worth it." Oh, your honor, if I could only have seen the
truth before now. I would never have condemned the
treatment of those horrible people at Abu Ghraib
prison. Why couldn't I see before now that those
people deserved what they got? They were terrorists
who were resisting the invasion of their country —
an invasion based on nonexistent WMDs and then love
for the Iraqi people. Why shouldn't those prisoners
have been abused, humiliated, tortured, and
executed? It was all for their own good and the good
of their country. And the same for those terrorists
in Fallujah. And the same for the countless other
Iraqis who were maimed and killed and exiled as a
result of their resistance to the U.S. invasion of
their country, that, yes, okay, was based on a
honest mistake regarding nonexistent WMDs but one
also based on love and concern for the freedom and
well-being of the Iraqi people. Why, let's face it,
your honor: If the Iraqi people had never resisted
the invasion of their country, everything in Iraq
would have been hunky-dory. A paradise on earth! I repent, your honor. I am so sorry. Why couldn't I also see that the Afghan
government should have acceded to President Bush's
unconditional extradition demand for Osama bin
Laden? So what if there was no extradition treaty
between Afghanistan and the United States? What
difference does that make? The Taliban should never
have asked for evidence or offered to turn bin Laden
over to an independent court for trial. The Taliban
should have done what President Bush ordered them to
do — turn bin Laden over to the Pentagon or the CIA
for swift justice. Sure, it's true that the U.S. government
continues to harbor accused terrorist Luis Posada
Carriles, the man who is charged with planning the
bombing of a Cuban airliner, by refusing to accede
to the extradition demand of the Venezuelan
government. And yes, it's true that, unlike the case
between Afghanistan and the United States, there is
an extradition treaty between Venezuela and the
United States. But what difference does that make?
After all, Venezuela and Cuba are
communist/socialist regimes, aren't they? And, hey,
let's not forget that Posada worked for many years
for the CIA to protect our national security.
Doesn't that make him a hero? How can a hero be a
terrorist? And so what if 99 percent of the people killed in
Afghanistan, including all those wedding parties
that have been bombed, had nothing to do with 9/11?
They lived under a government that refused President
Bush's extradition demand, didn't they? Then what's
wrong with their paying the price for living under
that type of independent regime? They could easily
have chosen to have a pro-U.S. puppet regime ruling
over them, like that of Hamid Karzai, one of the
most honest, benevolent, uncorrupted pro-U.S.
puppets in history. I now openly acknowledge, your honor, that I love
the U.S. Empire. I love everything about it. The
Founding Fathers of America and the Framers of the
Constitution were wrong to oppose empire. They were
wrong to oppose militarism. They were wrong to
oppose foreign interventions. The people who have
been right have been their American successors — the
interventionists, the neo-cons, and the conservative
and liberal statists who brought us the military
industrial complex, the U.S. Empire, the
national-security state, the CIA, and the Pentagon,
along with their army of contractors and lobbyists
and, of course, their perpetual climate of war,
crisis, fear, and chaos. I now openly acknowledge
that the U.S. Empire and the U.S. national-security
state have been a grand and glorious transformative
power of imperialist, interventionist, and
militarist love for the people of the world. Why, I even now recognize how important it is for
the U.S. government to fund and train brutal
dictatorships around the world and to enter into
torture partnerships with them. How could I not
recognize this before now? How could I be so blind?
How could I fail to see that anything and everything
the U.S. Empire and U.S. national security state do
is good, moral, loving, Christian, and beneficial,
no matter what? Indeed, how could I have ever opposed the U.S.
government's support of brutal military
dictatorships in Latin America and its training and
maintenance of their infamous death squads that were
raping, maiming, and executing resisters to their
regimes? How could I not see that the victims were
nothing but no-good communists and terrorists? In fact, how could I ever have opposed the
50-year embargo against Cuba or the CIA-Mafia
assassination partnership to kill Fidel Castro?
Wouldn't the world have been better off without
Fidel Castro in it? Hasn't God wanted him dead from
the day he assumed power in Cuba? After all, Castro
is a communist, right? And that makes him a
terrorist, right? And why shouldn't the Cuban people
pay the price for keeping a communist terrorist in
power? Oh, your honor, why couldn't I have seen the
light before now? I want you to know, your honor, that I am hereby
converting from Islam to U.S. Christian. I hereby
join with my fellow American Christian statists to
merge — no, submerge — my conscience to the will of
the U.S. national security state. I now agree with
everything the national security state does and has
done to protect national security. I love it, just
as I know it loves me and loves the people of the
world. I now have my head straight. I am no longer an
individual. I no longer live for my own sake. I am
now one with the collective. Why, I'm even now
willing to become an informant for the state. Now, your honor, given my remorse, would you
please give me probation? Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of the
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