Those Secret Snatches
Render Unto Caesar
By Chris Floyd
March 16, 2002 at CounterPunch.org
The rule of law is dead.
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Nor are U.S. residents exempt from rendering.
In January, just after the release of "Black Hawk Down," the story
of kindly American soldiers being butchered by nasty, bug-eyed
Somalis, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft grabbed three dozen
Somali-Americans from their homes, classrooms and businesses and
deported them -- without charges, without hearings, "not shriving
time allowed" -- to Mogadishu, the London Times reports.
These were men, and one woman, who had been
in the United States for many years, some of them from infancy.
They had fled with their families from the murderous warlords
who ravaged their country, and had found peace and prosperity
in America. But now it was over. They were seized by Ashcroft's
immigration officials, they were beaten, shackled, boarded onto
planes and dumped in Somalia without papers, passports or any
means of support. Most of them don't speak the language or even
dare walk the streets, where foreigners -- especially Americans
-- are viewed with hostility. They're now trapped in a fleabag
hotel, broke, desperate, and besieged by local media screaming
about "the terrorists."
Why were they taken? No one knows; or rather,
no one will say. Ashcroft's minions claim they are "investigating"
the situation, but will give no details. They never do. Perhaps
some Somali warlord pointed to a rival clan, some past enemy --
and their children -- and whispered the magic words: "al-Qaida."
After all, the Somali gangleaders are now courting Bush's favor,
hoping to get the kind of money and weapons the Americans are
doling out to their favored drug-dealers and warlords in Afghanistan,
where dozens of innocent civilians have been killed by U.S. air
strikes called in by mercenary chieftains knocking off their rivals.
That's the world the "defenders of civilization"
have given us. They strut out in their thousand-dollar suits and
preach to us about "civilized values" and "enduring freedom" while
they pay their murderers and wave their cattle prods and "expand
their nuclear attack options," plotting the death of millions.
They're teaching every budding terrorist, every aspiring dictator,
every mafia goon that violence, death and dominance are the truest
human values, the way to wealth and glory.
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