A rchive Date
[ 06-05-2004 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Salim_Mansur/2004/05/06/448453.html
U.S. torturers will be brought to justice
By SALIM MANSUR -- For the Toronto Sun
Thu, May 6, 2004
THE PICTURES of Iraqi detainees abused by American soldiers in the Abu Ghraib prison complex outside of Baghdad provide a sordid and inexcusable narrative of the ugly side of war.
In an explosive environment, these pictures of naked Iraqis abused by men and women wearing the uniform of the U.S. military may push to the tipping point the American public's resolve to stay the course in Iraq and help bring some semblance of responsible and representative government. This, in a region with its own unique record of cruelty by tyrants and barbarity of mobs, as witnessed in the desecration of bodies of slain Americans a few weeks ago in Fallujah.
Iraqis wanted freedom, and Americans took the burden of liberating Iraq.
But war is hell, and Americans were mistaken if they expected to be received with flowers as the French received them in 1945.
Iraqis lacked the leadership and good sense to accept their liberators as friends and work with Americans to build a relatively free and prosperous society for themselves, as the South Koreans have done.
America is a free and open society, and its institutions, including its armed forces, reflect its values. But a democratic society is not without faults, and these inescapably do surface in its institutions.
What distinguishes America, as democracies are distinct from tyrannies, is its rule of law, providing a system of government for a society that demands accountability from its representative institutions.
In the understandable outrage that has seized the Arab-Muslim world, what is missing is the sort of sober reflection that put things into perspective. The inexcusable abuse captured on film pales in comparison to the horrors that were routine in the same prison during Saddam Hussein's rule, and in prisons elsewhere in the neighbourhood.
Nevertheless for Iraqis, and for others in the region, there is a lesson in observing how a democratic society acknowledges its faults openly and strives to correct them transparently.
The exposure of these abuses has come from Americans themselves, and proper military investigations will reach into the ranks of those who have sullied America's reputation abroad so grievously -- and punish them.
But there are those beyond the Arab-Muslim world who have made anti-Americanism into a profession, and they are now joined by a new class of Americans that imagines being better by sneering at the republic.
They have glibly equated the abuses in Abu Ghraib with the massacre of unarmed villagers in My Lai, South Vietnam, by American soldiers led by a renegade officer, Lt. William Calley in March, 1968. Calley was duly tried, found guilty and imprisoned. Those involved in the abuses at Abu Ghraib will have their day in court, too, and will receive judgment according to the laws they were sworn to protect.
The hyperbole of the anti-American crowd is inflammatory and pathetic. It diminishes the memory of My Lai by maliciously inflating gross abuse in a prison complex, and it ignites Iraqi emotions with predictable consequences contrary to their interests.
Salim Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario. His column appears alternate Thursdays. He can be reached at: smansurca@yahoo.ca Letters to the editor should be sent to: editor@tor.sunpub.com Home Page
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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