To Serve and to Newspeak

The episode passed a little too quickly for much notice by our all-too-busy press, but here is what went down March 13, thus a month ago. Philip J. Crowley, the State Department spokesman, resigned after having described the treatment of PFC Bradley Manning, accused of leaking document to Wikileaks, as “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.” Manning was kept (maybe still is) naked and in solitary confinement; the grounds for this treatment is to prevent him injuring himself. He has yet to be tried.

Crowley resigned because we have a very curious but unwritten law that all those in public service must obey. They must learn and flawlessly speak Newspeak, more specifically to say in public only what, back in the bad-old communist days, used to be called the party line. They must never even indirectly criticize policy because, the fiction is, all policy in the executive branch directly links back to the President. And you don’t serve the public as a public servant, you serve the President. Right?

A brief wiggle in the news is likely now because the German Parliament’s Committee for Human Rights and Humanitarian Assistance wrote a letter to President Obama on April 12 and made it public, albeit in German, today. The letter is signed by Tom Koenigs, the committee chair. If you read German, you can see it here. But I’ll save you the bother. Here it is in English:

Dear Mr. President,

I turn to you concerning the conditions under which Bradley Manning is being held in investigatory confinement at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia. I do this in the name of the members of the committee for Human Rights and Humanitarian Assistance of the German Parliament. Based on information we have, Mr. Manning’s conditions of confinement are unnecessarily hard and have a punitive character. According to our information he is confined in an isolation cell without cushion or blankets and is undergoing sleep deprivation. In addition, on the grounds of alleged danger of suicide, his clothing has been removed. The circumstances of his confinement thus violate Article 10 of the International Pact for civil and political rights. Rights (IPbpR), which the United States has ratified. According to Art. 11 IPbpR it is required that “all persons who have been deprived of freedom be handled with humanity and respect for human dignity.” With this as background, I would like to ask you, in the name of my colleagues, to look into the conditions of Mr. Manning’s confinement and to ensure a humane implementation of the same.

With friendly greetings, Tom Koenigs

This would seem to indicate that Mr. Crowley not only violated Newspeak and thus indirectly insulted Big Brother, for which resignation would seem barely sufficient punishment, but he also committed whistle blowing, but with great lack of precision—in that he failed to cite chapter and verse of the applicable IPbpR.

I hope all those Arabs, enjoying what media label The Arab Spring, will carefully study this matter in efforts to learn how to imitate the behavior of genuine democrats and to turn themselves into our worthy successors.