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US-Iraq War
U.S. Champions of Human Rights?—Not! By J. Conrad Guest The Bush administration recently laid out its legal reasoning for denying suspected terrorists the protection of international humanitarian law, yet renounced a memo arguing that torture might be justified in the fight against al-Qaeda. In 2002 Bush signed an order that reserved for him the right to suspend, at any time, the Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners of war, claiming that since terrorists don’t adhere to the Geneva Conventions, the U.S. can thumb its nose at the document created, in 1949, to protect the human rights of POWs—a what is good for the goose is good for the gander, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth mentality predicated on the tenet that one must fight fire with fire. Yet such thinking leaves little to differentiate us from the terrorists against whom we are fighting. Aren’t we supposed to be the guys in the white hats—the champions of human rights and the harbingers of freedom? If we truly are who we say we are—liberators of the oppressed—then shouldn’t we strive to treat others as we expect to be treated? Shouldn’t we be setting a shining example to the world of what our country stands for? To act in any other fashion merely results in the escalation of aggression of an already aggrieved nation. Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib were interrogated for as long as 20 hours at a time, kept hooded and naked, intimidated with dogs, and forcibly shaved. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved this treatment, yet there can be no real justification for it. While three civilians (two Americans and one South Korean) have recently been beheaded by Iraqi insurgents, I’ve not heard that American prisoners have been treated as poorly as our soldiers have treated their captives, many of whom are innocent of anything save being Iraqi. As Champions of Human Rights, we must elevate ourselves above those who would drag us down to their level, else we become no different from the oppressors from whom we are supposed to be liberating the Iraqi people. Isn’t Right Supposed to be Might? One needs only look at the history of our nation to see how our leaders have transposed the meaning of August and Julius Hare’s century old adage Right is Might. We took this country from the Indians, displaying total disregard for their cultures and little respect for their human rights. To end World War II we committed what many regard as an act of terrorism by dropping the first atomic bomb over a populated area, killing 340,000, injuring over 1,000,000 civilians, and affecting generations with radiation poisoning. The death toll of World War II for Allied and Axis nations is estimated at over 55 million; more than half of those fatalities were civilian. The justification: It would have been a lot more had we not dropped the bomb. Were we right, or did our might simply make us right? On June 23, facing strong opposition, the U.S. dropped a resolution seeking exemption for American peacekeepers from international prosecution for war crimes. That the U.S. should even consider such an exemption is unconscionable. Who are we to hold ourselves above international law? This country should hold itself to the highest standard—one of high morals to which other nations might aspire. But unfortunately, as history documents, we’ve always created and hidden behind our own standard of rights and morals simply because no one is capable of holding us accountable for our actions. I wonder: when will we hear that an Iraqi POW has been beheaded? About the Author(s): See under Our Contributors to find out about the Author(s) of this article. |
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