Remarks of Congressman Jim McGovern: Drum Major Award/Martin Luther King Breakfast

REMARKS OF CONGRESSMAN JIM MCGOVERN: DRUM MAJOR AWARD/MARTIN LUTHER KING BREAKFAST

University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
Dartmouth, MA

January 28, 2005

Thank you to my friend, Chancellor Jean MacCormack, who does such an incredible job here. I also want to acknowledge and thank my friend Dr. George Smith, who we dearly miss in Worcester, and who initiated the Martin Luther King breakfasts in Worcester. He was and continues to be a voice of conscience. And thank you all for welcoming me here today.

I want to congratulate Dr. Jeanne Leffers and Yvonne Drayton, the recipients of this year's Drum Major Awards. Your work serves as an inspiration to us all. It's a tremendous honor for me to be here today at the Martin Luther King breakfast.
I must say that it's a great disappointment to me that I no longer represent the town of Dartmouth - and this great institution - in Congress. But I know that Congressman Frank is serving you extremely well. And no matter where the political boundaries of my district are drawn, I will always consider myself a part of this community.

It's difficult to imagine that it has been nearly 37 years since Dr. King was assassinated. To many Americans, the wounds from that painful time are still fresh - the scars have not yet healed.

And it can also be difficult to appropriately and correctly apply the lessons Dr. King taught us to the political and social circumstances we face today. What would he say about the great challenges we face?

First things first. I know that he would urge all of us - of every race, of every religion, of every background, regardless of gender or sexual orientation - to be engaged in the issues that define our time.

He would urge each one of us to heed the call to service. Service to our schools, our churches, our communities. Service to our friends and neighbors. He would remind us that we all have a part to play, and a responsibility to play it.

And he would push us to use our voices to press for change; to push for justice; and to speak out against injustice.

During the celebrations of the life and legacy of Dr. King, we are often reminded - rightly, of course - of the famous "I have a dream" speech he gave during the March on Washington. During that speech he spoke to our higher ideals. He gave us a sense of the possible - the view from the mountaintop, if you will.

But Dr. King was also well-aware of the view from the ground. Of the hard, long struggle it takes to get to that mountaintop.

And so I've been reading another of Dr. King's works from that same year, 1963, his "Letter from Birmingham Jail." The letter was a lengthy, closely reasoned, passionate and articulate response to a group of white clergy. These clergy had urged Dr. King to 'take it easy.' To go slow. To not upset the apple cart in his efforts to end desegregation.
But King would have none of it.

As he says in the letter, "I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

Those words apply just as well to those of us in this room. We cannot - we must not - sit idly by in Massachusetts and not be concerned about what happens in Washington, or in Sudan, or even in another prison cell halfway around the world in Afghanistan, or just 90 miles off our shores in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Which brings me to another struggle we are facing today. It is the struggle to uphold the most fundamental ideal of our democracy - the notion that all men and women are created equal. In short, it is the struggle for human rights.

There isn't a politician - Republican or Democrat - that I know who doesn't proclaim their allegiance to human rights. We all talk about it. And we're rarely hesitant to condemn human rights abuses in other countries. Unfortunately, recent events have forced us to examine our own practices, our own human rights record. And what we have seen isn't good.

That's why I am deeply disturbed by the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to be the Attorney General of the United States. By all accounts, Mr. Gonzales is a bright man and a successful lawyer. But he should not be confirmed.

As you may know, Mr. Gonzales is one of the architects of our nation's policy on the treatment of detainees in Cuba and Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere. He bears responsibility for creating a climate where the United States has turned its back on international law. He is responsible for allowing some of the abuses that we so readily criticize in other nations. He solicited and participated in the preparation of a memo in the Justice Department that redefined torture only as the kind of abuse that might destroy bodily organs or kill the victim.

We have all seen the results of that policy - the pictures from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq of prisoners being mistreated and tortured; the report from the FBI that prisoners in Cuba were chained to the floor, deprived of their basic human needs.

And believe me - the rest of the world has seen it, too. Our reputation has been tarnished. People who used to look to the United States as an example to be followed now see us as the perpetrators of a gross injustice.

During his confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Gonzales' answers to reasonable questions about torture were vague at best and downright misleading at worst.

And his written responses to prepared questions were no better. According to Mr. Gonzales - who, as White House Counsel, was President Bush's closest legal advisor - the Bush Administration continues to assert its right to indefinitely hold foreigners in secret locations without any legal process; to deny them access to the International Red Cross; to transport them to countries where torture is practiced; and to subject them to treatment that is cruel, inhumane or degrading.

Mr. Gonzales goes on to assert that the abuse of prisoners is appropriate, as long as the abuse is practiced by the CIA and is done so outside the United States. In other words, if a prisoner is a foreigner, and is held by the United States in a foreign country, all bets are off.

Now, what kind of "abuse" are we talking about? We are talking about things like sleep and sensory deprivation; heat and light and dietary manipulation; chaining people to the floor without food or water; and the infamous "water-boarding" technique, where a prisoner is stripped, shackled and submerged in water until he begins to lose consciousness; beatings that led to death.

Some may say that these prisoners may have deserved it. After all, aren't these people most likely terrorists? Or insurgency fighters? Not necessarily.

Vanity Fair magazine told the story of 15-year-old Iraqi boy who said he was pulled from a wooden crate he'd been forced to crouch inside, wearing handcuffs and blacked-out ski goggles, for 11 days and taken to the bathroom against his will where he was sexually assaulted. He said he was again sexually assaulted two days later in the prison north of Baghdad but let go later in the day when a soldier apologized to him for being illegally detained and gave him $50.

The Washington Post recently reported that a 73-year old Iraqi woman alleged that she was captured by American Special Forces, robbed of money and jewels, confined for days without food or water, stripped and humiliated, and then sexually assaulted.
Now, don't for a minute believe the argument that the abuse and torture of prisoners was the result of just "a few bad apples" acting on their own, without any knowledge or authorization from higher-up. And don't for a minute believe that after the abuses at Abu Ghraib came to light, the Bush Administration cleaned up its act.

The Post has also reported that the Administration has been so lax in investigating allegations of abuse, so willing to turn a blind eye that even those people who admit to abuses have not been charged with criminal conduct. The small handful of cases that are investigated rarely lead to any meaningful punishment for the perpetrators.

According to a recent report by Human Rights Watch, prisoners in Iraq under Iraqi government control are again being routinely beaten, hung by their wrists, and shocked with electrical wires.

Note that I said that these prisoners were being held by Iraqi authorities, not by U.S. Forces. So it's not our problem, right?

Wrong. We have a moral responsibility to ensure that the people we are putting in charge of Iraq respect human rights and due process under the law. Instead, according to the Human Rights Watch report, the United States is turning a blind eye.

The report would find only one case in which U.S. forces intervened to stop detainee abuse. A group of National Guard soldiers from Oregon saw Iraqi guards abusing prisoners. The soldiers tried to intervene. They disarmed the Iraqi guards and gave the prisoners water. But when the soldiers radioed up their chain of command for instructions, they were ordered to return the prisoners to the Iraqi authorities and leave the detention yard. They were ordered to walk away.

And now a man who bears direct responsibility for allowing this sort of thing to happen; a man who - at best - helped create a climate where torture and abuse became widespread, has been nominated to be the Attorney General, the chief law enforcement officer in our land.

In my opinion, Alberto Gonzales shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the Department of Justice.

The torture and abuse of prisoners - some of whom were innocent - in our name threatens our own soldiers and civilians; it threatens our own national security. I opposed the war in Iraq. And despite some of the abuses that have occurred there and elsewhere, I want to make it clear that I believe the vast majority of our soldiers there and elsewhere are doing a tremendous job. They are serving honorably.

Indeed, one of the reasons we must passionately and consistently oppose torture and abuse by Americans is that it could lead to the torture and abuse of Americans. It puts our own soldiers at risk. If, by our actions, we send a signal to the world that torture is acceptable, what will happen to our own soldiers captured in a foreign land?
Mr. Gonzales ignored the many professional experts, ranging from the Army's own legal corps to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who told him that existing interrogation practices were effective and that setting them aside would open the way to abuses and invite retaliation against Americans.

Our use of torture also threatens our reputation around the world. It undermines our moral authority.

And most fundamentally, it just isn't who we are. It is an affront to our highest and best ideals.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, as Dr. King wrote from Birmingham.
If we expect other people, other countries around the world to stand up for human rights, we need to be the example. We need to uphold the highest standards, not trample on them. We need to raise the bar for our nominees, not lower it.

As a member of the House, I don't have a vote on Alberto Gonzales. But I do have a voice. And so do you. There needs to be more outrage over this issue. This is important. This is about who we are as a nation. If you really do believe that all men and women are created equal, how do you ensure that human rights abuses don't happen in our name? And if they do happen, how do you ensure not only that they don't happen again but also that those responsible aren't promoted to cabinet level positions?

As Dr. King wrote in that Birmingham jail cell over 40 years ago, "we will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people."

I urge you to get engaged - and stay engaged - in the struggle for human rights and human dignity. I urge you to exercise your rights to speak out, to protest injustice, to put your feet on the streets in the cause of justice.

That was the charge Dr. King gave to us, and that is the charge we must keep.
Thank you.

http://www.house.gov/mcgovern/speech012805mlk.htm