• Upholding American values Upholding American values The pictures from abu ghraib prison are so disturbing because they are at odds with the values Americans proclaim to the world: We stand for human rights. We stand up against torturers. We
• Upholding American values
Upholding American values
The pictures from abu ghraib prison are so disturbing because they are at odds with the values Americans proclaim to the world: We stand for human rights. We stand up against torturers. We promote women’s rights around the world.
The shots of nude Arab men being sexually humiliated in front of smiling, female U.S. soldiers say more than a thousand words to those in the Arab world who already revile the sexual mores of American culture. The photographs are seen as naked proof that United States violates human rights, tortures prisoners and seeks to impose a degrading sexual culture on Islamic countries.
Try as he might, President George W. Bush can’t make everything right with words; neither words of regret nor words of apology. For Muslims who accept Osama bin Laden’s critique of U.S. decadence, there is no way to protest that the prison pictures have nothing to do with the value of giving women an equal voice in society.
Mr. Bush is not powerless, however, on the broader issue of human rights. He can and must recommit the United States to the Geneva Conventions’ high principles for the treatment of war prisoners. America led the world in developing the principles of international justice until Mr. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld decided to betray them.
Even before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush administration said it would not participate in the new International Criminal Court. When the United States brought more than 600 Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after the war in Afghanistan, the administration blithely announced that the men were not protected by the Geneva Conventions.
It’s true that an illegal enemy combatant – who doesn’t wear a uniform – can be classified as an enemy combatant who doesn’t get prisoner-of-war protections. But neither the president nor the defense secretary can simply declare people to be illegal combatants. Each case must go before a tribunal.
In a less-than-reassuring reassurance, Mr. Rumsfeld said that the United States would treat the prisoners as if they were POWs “for the most part.”
At Guantanamo, military guards softened up the prisoners for questioning by intelligence officials. The report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba on the Abu Ghraib prison abuse says that the Guantanamo system was imported to Iraq. The Taguba report also says that the military police, who face criminal charges for abusing the prisoners at Abu Ghraib, were preparing prisoners for questioning by intelligence agents. This is why Gen. Taguba called the abuse “systemic,” while Mr. Rumsfeld, who hadn’t read the report, said it was not.
Now it turns out that the United States is investigating the deaths of 14 prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the International Red Cross has been complaining about the abuse for months.
No one expects U.S. troops to pat prisoners on the head. But the nation that led the world in the adoption of international standards of justice, the nation that still leads the fight for human rights, should adhere to the high standards of justice that are a part of our national character.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
