Shaker Aamer is the last British resident in Guantanamo Bay, and writes about his torturous treatment. But this is the part that jumped out at me:
I met the new doctor. He is no different than any of the other doctors – different dancer, same club. He certainly dances to the same tune as his predecessors. He came to see me recently. It was even the same song. “I am your new doctor. If you need any help, ask for me.” I told him he is not a doctor but a tool in the colonel’s hand. He said, “No I am not.” So I said I would give him a little test. I reminded him of my arthritis and rheumatism, and said I needed a blanket to keep out the air conditioning that they run so cold here. He said, “That is not my job, I am here to give you medication.” I told him that a real doctor would care about my health, not just give me pills. But he did not want to listen, and he left.
They are not doctors, they are navy personnel; they follow orders, not their medical ethics. The system is for the system. The torture is for the torture.
The complicity of psychologists, psychiatrists, and medical doctors in the torture and murder committed in our name by our gov’t is well documented. From designing the systems, to executing them, to approving and covering up abuses they have been an integral part of the inhumanity we have visited, without due process, upon the innocent and the guilty without distinction.
The cognitive capture displayed by these professionals, and their wholesale integration into the national security state, exceptionalist mentality is in part an individual renunciation of their vaunted (and profitable) professionalism. It is also an indication of how pervasive, almost inescapable, is the cultural and moral degradation of American society.
Beyond infuriating and …sad.
Happy New Year, just like the old year?
Torture comes in many forms. For example if Israel actually wanted a two-state solution and a real peace it would not be demanding an “undivided Jerusalem” or recognition as a “Jewish state” nor would it continue to build thousands of new settler homes in the occupied West Bank. What Isreal and the Zionists really want is for the 50 year long bloody and torturous status quo to remain in place. The time has come for the U.S. to stop playing the Israeli game of pretending to want peace and a two-state solution and to call for a one-state solution. It’s a New Year and we should all follow a different path which doesn’t include the ongoing torture of the Palestinian people.
“… “That is not my job, I am here to give you medication.” I told him that a real doctor would care about my health, not just give me pills. But he did not want to listen, and he left…”
The rather sad thing is that even outside the world of Guantanamo, and outside of the world of health professionals within the military abetting in crimes – we, as a society – have far too many health professionals who only want to prescribe pills, and not get to the root of their patients health problems.
And I think a lot of time the root of the problem has to do with the unfairness and injustice that happens to people all the time as cogs within the Corporation-must-profit- must extract machine.
Our inner selves are telling us something is horribly wrong. Taking a pill does nothing to change the system. Too many health professionals either do not see that, or worse, pretend they do not see that.