I’ve been hearing a lot about the abuse of the prisoners in Iraq by American troops, and I wasn’t sure what to think of it. Did it happen because these troops weren’t trained properly? Or perhaps because they were frustrated, worn out? Was it because they couldn’t take it anymore themselves? Was it because they hated these people and tried to punish them (in own way) for their alleged crimes? No, I don’t think it was any of these things.

The reasons offered above may be excusable, at least partially, but the facts speak for themselves. There’s this article writen in Slate, that details the charges brought against these troops, and compares them with the official statements from our political leaders. Read on: “Rape Rooms: A Chronology”. Civilized human beings don’t strip prisoners naked and force them to perform sexual acts with each other or with the troops for their enjoyment. Normal human beings don’t subject any one to forced sexual acts (that’s rape, in case you were wondering). Normal human beings don’t humiliate other human beings. Normal human beings don’t subject other human beings to physical and psychological torture. But of course, these troops did all these things, and more. So what can I say about that? What conclusion can I draw? These things were going on for months and months. People higher up the scale had to know about it. The United States is supposed to have one of the best intelligence services in the world. It’s very hard for me to believe that word didn’t somehow travel to those in charge, whether by hearsay or through direct complaints. I think news of this did travel, and it was ignored. Nobody cared. After all, they were Iraqis, and some of them had tried to kill us, the Americans. They don’t deserve better, right? Wrong!

What happened to us, as a nation? What happened, really? Have we become so blinded by conflict and hatred, and pride and feelings of superiority that we have succumbed to barbarity? First I heard of innocent people being raped and killed in Vietnam. Now I hear of this. What’s become of us? We’re the strongest military power in the world. We don’t even need to show it. Everyone knows it. We should be setting an example. We should act as civilized as possible. We should treat everyone humanely, no matter what they’re accused of. When we let other Americans do this sort of thing, we are setting an example whose reputation will outlive our lifetimes and will leave an indelible mark in history. We are giving yet more ammunition to terrorist groups, and we are directly causing yet more people to enlist and fight against the power that we’ve become. We call ourselves just, and we call ourselves freedom-loving people, and we say that we are a shining example of democracy, the guardian of the free world, and yet the facts speak for themselves. We abuse prisoners in ways that I, having grown up in a Communist regime, have not yet heard of, we have, so far, bungled our attempt to install “democracy” in Iraq, and in what’s an even more silent yet all the more loud example, our headquarters in Baghdad are directly in Saddam’s citadel. It seems to me that too much of Saddam’s regime has rubbed off on us. Instead of being the saviors, we have become the oppressors.

What these soldiers did is the very unfortunate illustration of their unspoken feelings. I guess it could be called decompensation. One can hold their desires inside only so much until they have to be let out, one way or another. These soldiers showed, very eloquently, that they didn’t care about human life, that they have no respect for other human beings, that they don’t know the meaning of charity and of brotherly love, that they have no decency, no morals and no ethics. If this is how Americans treat POWs, how can we expect other nations to treat us when we become POWs? Are we to expect anything less when we’ve just “raised the bar”, so to speak, in terms of barbarity and inhumanity? How dare we call ourselves a Christian nation when we commit such bestial acts? Is this American justice? We can call this an isolated incident, but what about Guantanamo bay? Sure, prisoners aren’t abused in this way over there (or are they?), but there are people there who’ve been in prison since 2001 without a trial! Is that humane treatment?

I fear that we as a nation are fast becoming the bully of the world - and that’s putting it mildly. You can blame it on increasing acts of terrorism, but I wonder, and this is a question for the ages, who shot the first arrow? Who fired their weapon first? What caused these terrorist groups to spring up? Did they sprout like mushrooms after a rainy day, or were they slowly fed and groomed over decades of hard lives, poverty and low standards of living caused by less than wise foreign policy and probably certain classified operations? One doesn’t decide to bomb another country on a whim… But I digress, or do I… What is there to do now? The obvious answer is to immediately stop any and all such treatment of other human beings! The less obvious answer is to consider how we’ve gotten where we are today, and how we can get out of it - but that’s a topic for perhaps another post. Because we must get out of this. This sort of thing can’t go on! It’s unfathomable that this sort of thing could go on in the 21st century! It is so depressing and discouraging to me to see that people today can still engage in this sort of treatment. It’s truly disgusting. We are supposed to be civilized! For God’s sake, let’s please start acting like it!

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