Jose Padilla And The Road To Hell

Jose Padilla

In April 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis marching with striking garbage men. Back in Atlanta, at his home church, the bulletins for Sunday's worship would soon go to print, and King was asked to telephone in his sermon title for the approaching Sunday.

King never made it back to Atlanta; a bullet fired from a hotel balcony pierced his throat and head, and he died bleeding on the floor. Yet the sermon title does exist, and nearly forty years later, it is still haunting:

''Why America May Go to Hell.''

I have never heard or read an excerpt or rough draft of this sermon; I only know that the title exists. Yet I believe King, was he alive today to complete this sermon, would have included the story of Jose Padilla, and the hell that has surrounded him.

Padilla was born in Brooklyn, which makes him a U.S. citizen, and holder of constitutional rights. He had a troubled, gang-related past, yet also was mentored by a teacher of nonviolence. Somewhere along the way, Padilla became involved with Al-Qaeda and plotted to explode a dirty bomb on U.S. soil - according to the U.S. government as they arrested him in Chicago's O'Hare airport in 2002.

Padilla's descent begins here; he lost his citizenship when the current administration labeled him an ''enemy combatant.'' Padilla was taken to a naval prison in South Carolina; in its war on terrorism, the U.S. government and members of its military held Padilla there for more than three years. The practices in which Padilla was subject are unconstitutional, illegal under international law, and immoral under divine and natural law, according to human rights groups, psychiatrists, and international treaties.

These practices have a common name: torture.

The Guardian's George Monbiot writes about reports from The New York Times and The Detainee Abuse and Accountability Project that state the widespread use of torture in this war on terrorism. More than 450 prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay were subject to one or more of the following conditions: physical beatings, rape, stress positions, sleep deprivations, mock executions and even death itself. Reports state that prisoners were forced in standing positions, with hands chained to the wall above them, for nearly two weeks. They were naked. They were hooded. They did not sleep.

In Guantanamo Bay, Muslim prisoners have their religion used against them: while kneeling on top of a pentagram, they forced by their captors to bow down to Satan; while naked, they are subjected to sexual contact with females; their Koran is desecrated. This comes from James Yee, who was once a decorated Army Muslim chaplain, but became a prisoner of his own government when he began to speak out against such practices.

"The Washington Post alleges that prisoners… were 'commonly blindfolded and thrown into walls, bound in painful positions, subjected to loud noises and deprived of sleep' while kept, like Jose Padilla and the arrivals at Guantanamo Bay, 'in black hoods or spray-painted goggles','' writes Monbiot.

Padilla was kept in such an environment for more than three years. Doctors who recently examined Padilla before his Miami trial state that he has lost his sanity. It is as if his mind was completely destroyed, said Dr. Angela Haggerty to DemocracyNow!'s Amy Goodman. He was completely terrified.

Padilla has become a new form of terrorist. Instead of spreading it, he has been forced to swallow it whole. By his own government.

And this is why America is walking the road to hell.

Hell, in the traditional sense, is the realm of separation, of sin. Religions describe hell to be complete separation from God, and if this version is true, then the torture chambers in which Jose Padilla and the other hundreds of suspected terrorists are currently confined can be viewed as hell - for they are created out of such madness and damnable logic that the only outcome they produce is further separation, never reconciliation.

I am not advocating freedom for those intent on the destruction of the U.S.; if Padilla was plotting a dirty bomb attack, then he should be imprisoned. Yet not every prisoner is guilty, and we must remember, there is a clear difference between prison and hell.

Recall the nightmarish images leaked from Abu Ghraib. Soldiers leading naked Muslim prisoners around on all fours, like a dog. Naked piles of male prisoners. Camouflaged guards laughing, clutching at the prisoners like trophies, like they just won a football game. The hooded man (did we ever learn his name?) standing on the box with electrodes attached to his fingertips, believing that if he moves he will be shocked. Or killed. Or fall and never stop falling.

I do not know who to mourn more: the loss of Jose Padilla's mind or the individuals who are able to do this to another human. Extreme isolation and sensory deprivation and torture do not only affect the tortured; they curse the torturer, for what we do to another human, we do to ourselves and to God.

"It's a no-brainer for me,'' said vice-president Dick Cheney in his infamous statement emphatically supporting the use of torture to prevent a terrorist attack. The vice-president and Jose Padilla now have something in common: they are both insane.

And the same system is responsible.

(David Cook is a former journalist for the Chattanooga Times-Free Press. He currently teaches American history at Girls Preparatory School and can be reached at dcook7@gmail.com)

Source: http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_112538.asp