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Seymour Hersh: "After 9/11 We Became a Different Country"
By
Faisal Abbas,
Asharq Al-Awsat. Posted
December 25, 2008.
The New Yorker's star
reporter discusses Abu Ghraib, the "war on terror," and why U.S.
reporters don't pay enough attention to the Arab press.
Asharq Al-Awsat, London -- In this interview, Asharq Al-Awsat
speaks to veteran American reporter Seymour Hersh, who, four years
ago, exposed the now infamous prison abuse scandal of Abu Ghraib
in Iraq at the hands of U.S. soldiers.
In 1969, Hersh brought to light the My Lai massacre carried out
by U.S. forces in Vietnam, for which he received a Pulitzer Prize
for International Reporting in 1970.
However, as most journalists know, it is impossible to please
everybody. Hersh has been praised and is often regarded as "the
last American reporter," while on the other hand he is also
criticized and described as "the closest thing American journalism
has to a terrorist," particularly for his outspokenness against
the American administration and U.S. forces.
The interview proceeded as follows:....more
Freedom
of the Person
Slavery, serfdom, and all forms of human bondage must disappear.
Freedom
of the Mind
Unless a free people are educated -- taught to think intelligently
and plan wisely -- freedom usually does more harm than good.
The
reign of law.
Liberty can be enjoyed only when the will and whims of human
rulers are replaced by legislative enactments in accordance with
accepted fundamental law.
Freedom
of speech.
Representative government is unthinkable without freedom of all
forms of expression for human aspirations and opinions.
Security
of property.
No government can long endure if it fails to provide for the right
to enjoy personal property in some form. Man craves the right to
use, control, bestow, sell, lease, and bequeath his personal
property.
The
right of petition.
Representative government assumes the right of citizens to be
heard. The privilege of petition is inherent in free citizenship.
The
right to rule.
It is not enough to be heard; the power of petition must progress
to the actual management of the government.
Universal
suffrage.
Representative government presupposes an intelligent, efficient,
and universal electorate. The character of such a government will
ever be determined by the character and caliber of those who
compose it. As civilization progresses, suffrage, while remaining
universal for both sexes, will be effectively modified, regrouped,
and otherwise differentiated.
Control
of public servants.
No civil government will be serviceable and effective unless the
citizenry possess and use wise techniques of guiding and
controlling officeholders and public servants.
Intelligent
and trained representation.
The survival of democracy is dependent on successful
representative government; and that is conditioned upon the
practice of electing to public offices only those individuals who
are technically trained, intellectually competent, socially loyal,
and morally fit.
Only by such provisions can government of the people, by the
people, and for the people be preserved.
"A
nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it
cannot survive treason
from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is
known and carries his banner openly. But the
traitor
moves amongst those within the gate freely,
his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the
very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a
traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he
wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness
that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a
nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine
the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it
can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.
The traitor is the plague."
Marcus Tullius
Cicero (106- 43 BC)
''When elected public servants
use taxpayer dollars to manipulate or deceive the very people
whose consent they require for their legitimacy, our public
servants then become our masters,''
Sanho Tree
"The
problems we face today cannot be solved by the minds that created
them" Albert Einstein
"Fear can only prevail when
victims are ignorant of the facts."
Thomas
Jefferson
"Give me the money that
has been spent in war and I will clothe every man, woman, and
child in an attire of which kings and queens will be proud. I will
build a schoolhouse in every valley over the whole earth. I will
crown every hillside with a place of worship consecrated to
peace": Charles
Sumner
"In a
democratic government, the right of decision belongs to the
majority, but the right of representation belongs to all." -
Ernest
Naville, 1865
"The test
of our progress is not whether we add to the abundance of those
who have much. It is whether we provide enough to those who have
little." -
Franklin D. Roosevelt
"Human
progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward
the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle;
the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated
individuals." -
Martin Luther King
When one
who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, they will either quit
being mistaken or cease to be honest.
"It is part of the general pattern
of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms
economy which was bred in an artificually induced psychosis of war
hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear."
-
General
Douglas MacArthur
"Corporations
cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed, nor excommunicated, for
they have no souls"
Lord Edward Coke
"By liberty I
mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what
he believes is his duty against the influence of authority and
majorities, custom and opinion." -
Lord Acton
"Always vote
for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the
sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost." -
John Quincy Adams
"Never think that war, no
matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime":
Ernest Hemingway -
"If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never
again be any war": Pentagon
official explaining why the U.S. military censored graphic footage
from the Gulf War
"If it
were proved to me that in making war, my ideal had a chance of
being realized, I would still say "no" to war. For one does not
create a human society on mounds of corpses":
Louis Lecoin
"As so often
before, liberty has been wounded in the house of its friends.
Liberty in the wild and freakish hands of fanatics has once more,
as frequently in the past, proved the effective helpmate of
autocracy and the twin-brother of tyranny":
Otto
Hermann Kahn
"Always vote for principle, though you may
vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your
vote is never lost."
- John Quincy Adams
Perfection Is Our Goal
We are a part of a gigantic
creation, and it is not strange that everything does not work in
perfection; our universe was not created in perfection. Perfection
is our eternal goal, not our origin.
Hope that Transcends
Fear
And throughout every trial and
in the presence of every hardship, spirit-born souls are sustained
by that hope which transcends all fear because the love of God is
shed abroad in all hearts by the presence of the divine Spirit.
The Power of an Idea
In influencing the expanding
evolutionary mind, the power of an idea lies not in its reality or
reasonableness but rather in its vividness and the universality of
its ready and simple application.
Goodness, Beauty,
and Truth
The sincere
pursuit of goodness, beauty, and truth leads to God.
Service
Service -- more
service, increased service, difficult service, adventurous
service, and at last divine and perfect service -- is the goal of
time and the destination of space.
Greatness
Greatness lies
not so much in possessing strength as in making a wise and divine
use of such strength.
The Privilege of
Service
The privilege of
service immediately follows the discovery of trustworthiness.
Nothing can stand between you and opportunity for increased
service except your own untrustworthiness, your lack of capacity
for appreciation of the solemnity of trust.
Trustworthiness
Trust is the
crucial test of will creatures. Trustworthiness is the true
measure of self-mastery, character.
Achievement
Your actual
achievement is not so important as the fact that the direction of
your progress is Godward.
A Heart Dominated
by Love
Let your hearts
be so dominated by love that your spirit guide will have little
trouble in delivering you from the tendency to give vent to those
outbursts of animal anger which are inconsistent with the status
of divine sonship.
Time
You all have
time in which to insure your survival; and time is fatally
squandered only when it is buried in neglect... Failure to improve
one's time to the fullest extent possible does not impose fatal
penalties; it merely retards the pilgrim of time in his journey of
ascent.
Mercy requires...
Mercy requires
that every wrongdoer have sufficient time in which to formulate a
deliberate and fully chosen attitude regarding his evil thoughts
and sinful acts.
The Educated
Person
Truly educated persons are
not satisfied with remaining in ignorance of the lives and doings
of their fellows.
Regrettable Experiences
Be not downcast
by your failure wholly to forget some of your regrettable
experiences. The mistakes which you fail to forget in time will be
forgotten in eternity.
Opportunity
What you begin
in time you will assuredly finish in eternity -- if it is worth
finishing.
Ambition
Ambition is
dangerous until it is fully socialized. You have not truly
acquired any virtue until your acts make you worthy of it.
Love your Enemies
Love your enemies -- remember
the moral claims of human brotherhood.
Heroism
Mind bravery is a higher type
of human courage, but the highest and supreme is uncompromising
loyalty to the enlightened convictions of profound spiritual
realities. And such courage constitutes the heroism of the
God-knowing man.
Change without
Growth
Change without growth,
expansion of meaning and exaltation of value, is valueless -- is
potential evil.
Acts of Goodness
No act of good
is ever wholly lost; it may be long thwarted but never wholly
annulled, and it is eternally potent in proportion to the divinity
of its motivation.
Hardships of Life
When thinking men and women
look upon Jesus as he offers up his life on the cross, they will
hardly again permit themselves to complain at even the severest
hardships of life, much less at petty harassments and their many
purely fictitious grievances.
Divine Love
The beauty of divine love,
once fully admitted to the human heart, forever destroys the charm
of sin and the power of evil.
Life's
Opportunities
Ability is the
practical measure of life's opportunities. You will never be held
responsible for the accomplishment of that which is beyond your
abilities.
Graciousness
You can cultivate
gracefulness, but graciousness is the aroma of friendliness which
emanates from a love-saturated soul.
Exhibiting Mercy
You should realize that there
is a great reward of personal satisfaction in being first just,
next fair, then patient, then kind. And then, on that foundation,
if you choose and have it in your heart, you can take the next
step and really show mercy; but you cannot exhibit mercy in and of
itself.
Love Others
If you love people, they will
draw near you -- you will have no difficulty in winning them.
Love
Love is the desire to do good
to others.
Evil
The possibility of evil is
necessary to moral choosing, but not the actuality thereof....Evil
becomes a reality of personal experience only when a moral mind
makes evil its choice.
Living Truth
Truth is living; the Spirit
of Truth is ever leading the children of light into new realms of
spiritual reality and divine service.
Faith and Fear
Few persons live
up to the faith which they really have. Unreasoned fear is a
master intellectual fraud practiced upon the evolving mortal soul.
Triumphant Faith
Belief may not
be able to resist doubt and withstand fear, but faith is always
triumphant over doubting, for faith is both positive and living.
Fatherly Love
Fatherly love has singleness
of purpose, and it always looks for the best in man; that is the
attitude of a true parent.
Hope
Sometimes the planting of a
seed necessitates its death, the death of your fondest hopes,
before it can be reborn to bear the fruits of new life and new
opportunity.
Prejudice Blinds
the Soul
Prejudice blinds
the soul to the recognition of truth, and prejudice can be removed
only by the sincere devotion of the soul to the adoration of a
cause that is all-embracing and all-inclusive of one's fellow men.
A Philosophy of
Living
An effective philosophy of
living is formed by a combination of cosmic insight and the total
of one’s emotional reactions to the social and economic
environment.
Human Rights
Every human right is
associated with a social duty; group privilege is an insurance
mechanism which unfailingly demands the full payment of the
exacting premiums of group service.
Things Spiritual
Your only assurance of a
personal God consists in your own insight as to your belief in,
and experience with, things spiritual.
Our Earthly Goal
At first life was a struggle
for existence; now, for a standard of living; next it will be for
quality of thinking, the coming earthly goal of human existence.
Our Relationships
The relationships between
personalities are never scaffolding; mortal memory of personality
relationships has cosmic value and will persist.
Dangers
of Pride
Of all the dangers which beset man's mortal nature and jeopardize
his spiritual integrity, pride is the greatest. Courage is
valorous, but egotism is vainglorious and suicidal.
Personality
If this were a mechanistic
universe . . . there would be no disagreement; there would be no
friction. But in our evolving universe of relative perfection and
imperfection we rejoice that disagreement and misunderstanding are
possible, for thereby is evidenced the fact and the act of
personality in the universe.
Afflictions
Man should not blame God for
those afflictions which are the natural result of the life which
he chooses to live; neither should man complain of those
experiences which are a part of life as it is lived on this world.
Perfection
We are a part of a gigantic
creation, and it is not strange that everything does not work in
perfection; our universe was not created in perfection. Perfection
is our eternal goal, not our origin.
Humor
Humor functions as an
automatic safety valve to prevent the building up of excessive
pressures due to the monotony of sustained and serious
self-contemplation..
Effective Praying
You must make a wholehearted
choice of the divine will. You must obliterate the dead center of
indecision.
A Victorious Human Life
The consciousness of a
victorious human life on earth is born of that creature faith
which dares to challenge each recurring episode of existence when
confronted with the awful spectacle of human limitations, by the
unfailing declaration: Even if I cannot do this, there lives in me
one who can and will do it.!
Brotherhood
Brotherhood constitutes
a fact of relationship between every personality in universal
existence. No person can escape the benefits or the penalties that
may come as a result of relationship to other persons. The good
effort of each man benefits all men; the error or evil of each man
augments the tribulation of all men.
Unexpected
Situations
The mortal personality, never
sure as to which will next be encountered, through humor swiftly
grasps... the unexpected nature of the situation be it fact or be
it truth.
Our Future and
Past
The future signifies
struggle and advancement; it bespeaks work, effort, and
achievement; but the past savors of things already mastered and
achieved.
Peace on Earth
Without God, neither
freedom and liberty, nor property and wealth will lead to peace.
Unremitting
Service
Jesus taught men to
place a high value upon themselves in time and in eternity.
Because of this high estimate which Jesus placed upon men, he was
willing to spend himself in the unremitting service of humankind.
Uncertainty
When the clouds gather
overhead, your faith should accept the fact of the presence of the
indwelling Spirit Adjuster, and thus you should be able to look
beyond the mists of mortal uncertainty into the clear shining of
the sun of eternal righteousness ...
Misguided
Conscience
A misguided conscience
can become responsible for much conflict, worry, sorrow, and no
end of human unhappiness.
Spiritual Loyalty and Wealth
Riches have nothing
directly to do with entrance into the kingdom of heaven, but the
love of wealth does. The spiritual loyalties of the kingdom are
incompatible with servility to materialistic mammon. Man may not
share his supreme loyalty to a spiritual ideal with a material
devotion.
Freewill Choice
The portal of eternity opens only in response
to the freewill choice of the freewill sons of the God of free
will.
Courage
Is courage -- strength
of character -- desirable? Then must man be reared in an
environment which necessitates grappling with hardships and
reacting to disappointments.
Pressure
Man is
not saved or ennobled by pressure...Spiritual growth is greatest
where all external pressures are at a minimum.
Providence
When men pray for providential intervention
in the circumstances of life, many times the answer to their
prayer is their own changed attitudes toward life.
Mind - The Referee
The mind of
evolutionary man is ever confronted with the intricate problem of
refereeing the contest between the natural expansion of emotional
impulses and the moral growth of unselfish urges predicated on
spiritual insight.
Partnership with God
...When man and God enter into
partnership, no limitation can be placed upon the future
possibilities of such a partnership.
Truth
The more truth you
know, the more truth you are, the more of the past you can
understand and of the future you can comprehend.
The Sincere
Religionist
The sincere religionist is conscious of
universe citizenship and is aware of making contact with sources
of superhuman power.
Genuine Religion
Genuine religion
renders the religionist socially fragrant and creates insights
into human fellowship.
Genuine Prayer
Genuine prayer adds to
spiritual growth, modifies attitudes, and yields that satisfaction
which comes from communion with divinity.
Effective Prayer
If you engage in
effective praying, you must make a wholehearted choice of the
divine will. You must obliterate the dead center of indecision.
An Eternal Quest
Knowledge is an
eternal quest; always are you learning, but never are you able to
arrive at the full knowledge of absolute truth.
Love
Human things must be
known in order to be loved, but divine things must be loved in
order to be known.
True Religion
Always keep in mind:
True religion is to know God as your Father and man as your
brother.
Greatness
To be
great is to be Godlike.
Egoistic Desires
Jesus seemed to be
utterly free from all egoistic desire to win an argument merely to
experience logical triumph over his fellows, being interested
supremely in just one thing: to proclaim everlasting truth ...
Eternal Life
When, by living faith,
you become divinely God-conscious, you are then born of the spirit
as children of light and life, even the eternal life wherewith you
shall ascend the universe of universes and attain the experience
of finding God the Father on Paradise.
Work
Have faith in God to
the end of your days on earth. Never forget that, when you are a
faith son of God, all upright work of the realm is sacred. Nothing
which a son of God does can be common. Do your work, therefore,
from this time on, as for God.
Tact and Tolerance
You cannot hope for a
large measure of success in either secular or religious work
unless you can learn how to persuade your fellows.... You simply
must have tact and tolerance.
True Believer
The true believer does not grow weary in
well-doing just because he is thwarted. Difficulty whets the ardor
of the truth lover, while obstacles only challenge the exertions
of the undaunted kingdom builder.
Every Moral Choice
Every time man makes a
reflective moral choice, he immediately experiences a new divine
invasion of his soul.
God Concious Mortal
The God-conscious
mortal is certain of salvation; he is unafraid of life; he is
honest and consistent. He knows how bravely to endure unavoidable
suffering; he is uncomplaining when faced by inescapable hardship.
Religious Faith
Religious faith is available alike to the
learned and the unlearned.
God's Will
Never forget there is only one adventure
which is more satisfying and thrilling than the attempt to
discover the will of the living God, and that is the supreme
experience of honestly trying to do that divine will.
Jesus' Religious
Life
The secret of Jesus'
unparalleled religious life was a consciousness of the presence of
God; and he attained it by intelligent prayer and sincere worship
...
Fatherly
Love
Fatherly love has singleness of purpose, and it always looks for
the best in man...
Fear and Anger
Fear and anger weaken character and destroy
happiness.
Effective Praying
You must qualify
as a potent prayer by sincerely and courageously facing the
problems of universe reality. You must possess cosmic stamina.
Moral and
Spiritual Adjustments
Only moral and spiritual adjustments can be
made on the spur of the moment, and even these require the passing
of time for the full outworking of their material and social
repercussions.
Values
You can best discover
values in your associates by discovering their motivation. If
someone irritates you, causes feelings of resentment, you should
sympathetically seek to discern his viewpoint, his reasons for
such objectionable conduct.
Our Father Within
Us
Do not allow the magnitude of the infinity,
the immensity of the eternity, and the grandeur and glory of the
matchless character of God to overawe, stagger, or discourage you;
for the Father is not very far from any one of you; he dwells
within you...
Brotherhood
Brotherhood constitutes a fact of relationship between every
personality in universal existence. No person can escape the
benefits or the penalties that may come as a result of
relationship to other persons. The good effort of each man
benefits all men; the error or evil of each man augments the
tribulation of all men.
A
Victorious Human Life
The consciousness of a
victorious human life on earth is born of that creature faith
which dares to challenge each recurring episode of existence when
confronted with the awful spectacle of human limitations, by the
unfailing declaration: Even if I cannot do this, there lives in me
one who can and will do it...
TRUE Government
The ten steps or stages to the evolution of a true democracy.
1.
Freedom of the Person
Slavery, serfdom, and all
forms of human bondage must disappear.
2.
Freedom of the Mind
Unless a free people are
educated -- taught to think intelligently and plan wisely --
freedom usually does more harm than good.
3.
The reign of law
Liberty can be enjoyed
only when the will and whims of human rulers are replaced by
legislative enactments in accordance with accepted fundamental
law.
4.
Freedom of speech
Representative government
is unthinkable without freedom of all forms of expression for
human aspirations and opinions.
5.
Security of property.
No government can long
endure if it fails to provide for the right to enjoy personal
property in some form. Man craves the right to use, control,
bestow, sell, lease, and bequeath his personal property.
6.
The right of petition.
Representative government
assumes the right of citizens to be heard. The privilege of
petition is inherent in free citizenship.
7.
The right to rule.
It is not enough to be heard; the power of petition must progress
to the actual management of the government.
8.
Universal suffrage.
Representative government
presupposes an intelligent, efficient, and universal electorate.
The character of such a government will ever be determined by the
character and caliber of those who compose it. As civilization
progresses, suffrage, while remaining universal for both sexes,
will be effectively modified, regrouped, and otherwise
differentiated.
9.
Control of public servants.
No civil government will
be serviceable and effective unless the citizenry possess and use
wise techniques of guiding and controlling officeholders and
public servants.
10.
Intelligent and trained representation.
The survival of democracy
is dependent on successful representative government; and that is
conditioned upon the practice of electing to public offices only
those individuals who are technically trained, intellectually
competent, socially loyal, and morally fit. Only by such
provisions can government of the people, by the people, and for
the people be preserved
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