The REAL COLOMBIA SCANDAL:
When Bedding Prostitutes Is Worse Than Crimes Against Humanity
By Finian Cunningham
Global Research, April 19, 2012
URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30397
Get caught with a hooker in your hotel room and
it’s a firing offence; get caught desecrating the corpses of dead
Afghans and – nothing.
Two scandals emerging this week involving immoral
conduct of US Secret Service and military personnel reveal starkly
different reactions and priorities among the American ruling elite.
Revelations from Colombia that up to 21 Secret
Service agents and military officers, including five Special Forces,
were entertaining prostitutes in their hotel rooms overnight while
supposedly on security duty ahead of US President Obama’s arrival for
the Americas Summit last week, have resulted in swift retribution from
superiors.
As news of the scandal broke, all 21 American
individuals were immediately recalled to US headquarters and had their
security clearances cancelled. So far, three secret service agents are
out of their jobs. One was fired, the other two are said to have
“retired”.
In this US election year, more sackings or
“retirements” can be expected soon as the White House tries to limit the
political damage from the president’s security detail, known as “jump
teams”, being seen to be more occupied with jumping on prostitutes than
would-be assassins.
“We demand that all of our employees adhere to the
highest professional and ethical standards and are committed to a full
review of this matter,” the Secret Service said in a statement.
Meanwhile, revelations from Afghanistan this week
show yet more depraved behaviour by US military in that war-torn
country. In the latest scandal, photographs published by the Los Angeles
Times depict US paratroopers gloating over dead Afghan militants by
holding up limbs of their dismembered corpses.
The barbaric images have prompted condemnations from
President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. “This does not
represent who we are,” asserted Panetta. He promised a full
investigation and that those involved would be held to account.
Panetta’s promises of investigation and justice over
the latest sickening violation of international law and morality by US
forces in Afghanistan can be dismissed as disingenuous platitudes. The
truth is that, unlike the Colombian hooker affair, there will be no
immediate retribution against American personnel. There will be no
credible investigation. There will be no security clearances cancelled.
No sackings.
Recall the incidents of American military urinating
on Afghan corpses, hacking off body parts as war trophies, or being
photographed humiliating prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, with mock
executions and torture.
We only have to recall, too, the track record of
Washington’s response to these and countless other atrocities and
violations by US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq to realise that the
latest obscenity will be shunted down the memory hole or, at best, spun
out in some inconsequential tribunal.
How many days passed before the Pentagon reluctantly
moved to bring charges against Sergeant Robert Bales over the
cold-blooded slaughter of 17 Afghans civilians, including women and
children, last month? The Pentagon has also shirked calls for an
investigation based on credible claims that more than one US soldier was
involved in that particular all-night orgy.
That Obama and Panetta appeared to react with
indignation to the latest scandal out of Afghanistan is less about
genuine concern for moral decency and international law. After all,
these two politicians stand as criminals under international law
overseeing wars of aggression or acts of aggression in Afghanistan,
Iraq, Libya, Syria and Iran, among other countries. Of course their
condemnations of the 82nd Airborne platoon violating human remains are
meaningless, and are more directed at trying to placate public outrage
both in the US and Afghanistan. When Panetta says: “This is not who we
are” his assertion belies the exact opposite: “This is exactly who we
are.”
The violation of corpses in Afghanistan by US
military personnel is not some perverse, atypical act of a few
individuals. The crime is an integral part of a much bigger systematic
crime: the violation of an entire population by the US ruling elite,
headed up by the likes of Obama and Panetta.
Jumping on prostitutes in Colombia – some of them
believed to be underage girls – by Secret Service agents and US military
officers is an offence to moral decency and an embarrassing scandal of
indiscipline. It is also misconduct deserving sacking, according to
Pentagon employment rules.
But in the eyes of the media tabloids, a CIA sex scandal is always front page news in comparison to the broader issue of crimes against humanity. Ask yourself: how does it compare with desecrating dead Afghans and the many other atrocities committed by the American military in recent years including the rape and murder of children?
But in the eyes of the media tabloids, a CIA sex scandal is always front page news in comparison to the broader issue of crimes against humanity. Ask yourself: how does it compare with desecrating dead Afghans and the many other atrocities committed by the American military in recent years including the rape and murder of children?
The rapid response for retribution in the Colombian
hooker scandal from White House and Pentagon chiefs compared with the
hackneyed platitudes and inaction over systematic war crimes does not
just reflect a distasteful, distorted concern for public relations. It
points to the perverse and criminal depth of the US ruling class.
Finian Cunningham is Global Research’s Middle East and East Africa Correspondent
