Where the World's Views of America Come into Focus
|
|
Where the World's Views of America Come into Focus
|
EDITORIAL
May 22, 2005
For months, human rights watchdogs had
been shouting until hoarse that American military interrogators were inhumanly
torturing the Afghan prisoners at Bagram Airbase, and that their savagery
had resulted in the deaths of some of these prisoners. Yet the American military
and its bosses back home have remained in a perpetual state of denial. And
they remain in denial even now -- after an investigation by their own Army
has confirmed the death of at least two Afghans at the hands of American interrogators.
Laughably, the U.S. army spokesman in Kabul still has the gumption to crow
that the U.S. military doesn't tolerate any "mistreatment" (read as torture)
of detainees.
— BBC NEWS VIDEO: Karzai 'Shocked' Over News of U.S. Abuse of Afghan Prisoners,
May 21, 00:01:27
Who is going to believe him? Even the U.S. Army investigation said "harsh
treatment" of prisoners by interrogators at Bagram is routine, as is the
beating --with impunity -- of shackled detainees. Indeed, the horrific stories
of prisoner torture, humiliation and abuse emanating from overseas U.S. prisons
are so prolific and so profuse that no sane person can buy Washington's bunkum
that such treatment is just an exception. By all accounts, it seems like the
rule. In fact, the picture conjured up by these reports puts the prisons of
America's war on terror in close league with the concentration camps of the
Second World War Nazi thugs.
Let there be no doubt. If Auschwitz has come to represent for all time the
ruthlessness of a souless clutch of thuggish human beings, the U.S. prisons
at Abu Gharib, Guantanamo Bay and Bagram testify to the savagery of a band
of uncivilized, unconscionable and criminal bullies. And if the horrors of
Auschwitz continue to sear humanity's soul, so should the pyramids of naked
Iraqi prisoners at Abu Gharib, the desecration of the Holy Koran, the religious
humiliation of inmates at Guantanamo Bay, and the torture of Afghan detainees
at Bagram Airbase.
And whatever noises the American military and its political bosses may make
now, their credibility as practitioners of human rights and as respecters of
religious diversity stands completely demolished. Their moral standing, by every
reckoning, is less than zero. In the face of such damning evidence, no ploy
could help the Americans keep up the pretence of higher values and principles.
They can do whatever they like, but in the popular perception, the U.S. military
-- even in honest sections of America itself -- will appear as no more than
a clutch of compulsive bullies, not civilized human beings.
Why do national governments leave their land open for these savages to brutalize
their own people? The Iraqi and the Afghan elites may be indebted to the Americans.
But why should the Karzai government feel inhibited in asking Washington to
keep its hands off the Afghan people. If there are some criminals among them,
let Afghan's deal with it.
Why is even the newly elected Iraqi government leaving its nationals to American
jailers -- to be pumelled and humiliates in Iraqi prisons? And why are the Muslim
countries, including Pakistan, not asking for their nationals' return from the
Guantanamo prison? Like the Europeans, they must insist on their repatriation
and try them at home under their own laws.