Is America Different?

Remember the story about American Soldiers committing atrocities and torturing Iraqi Prisoners at Abu Ghraib? In fact right now go google "Abu Ghraib". The top link is Wikipedia report of abuse scandals. Everyone remembers it.

Interesting the historical word for atrocities and torture would usually relate to the gouging of eyes, ripping off of fingernails, whipping, acid baths, screw drivers into muscles, etc. The pictures of prisoners who were rescued from Japanese POW camps were weighing around 100 pounds while being disease infested and nearly starving to death. But these "atrocities" were soldiers making Iraqi prisoners get naked around each other in front of women (whom they are not to be naked around according to their religion). They were on dog leashes or simulated sexual acts. The worse things was being urinated on or maybe hit with a rifle in the groin. Are those from a historical standpoint considered atrocities? I would say not. Neither are they right or should their actions be condoned. But "Torture"? NO!

In other cultures prisoners are tortured to near death. The recently released Chinese "terrorist" that were released from Gitmo and sent to Bermuda talked about how much better they were treated in Cuba by Americans than they are their own government. In fact if they were sent back to China they would have surely been killed by their own government. Yet terrorist commit the most evil acts you can imagine and your hard pressed to find other Muslims condemning their acts. Don't get me wrong by no means am I saying that All Muslims are evil or terrorist. There are lots of great Muslim people. But where are the majority of them condemning their acts. Yet when Americans do things that are far from those extremes they are condemned by the U.S. media and politicians, and are usually put on trial and sentenced to punishment that is not justified when put into context.

These Iraqi terrorist have killed and tortured many of these soldiers fellow soldiers. Put yourself in their place and lets say your best friend was killed by them. Would you be tempted to embarrass and irritate many of the prisoners? Yes of course. Does it make it right to do? No. But in America we strongly condemn our few soldiers who commit these acts. But to call them atrocities or torture is just stupid. In fact the only truly stupid thing these soldiers did as Walter William once wrote was allow people to photograph their actions. That truly was stupid.

America is in fact different. We hold ourselves to a higher standard. I like that. But lets put into context our actions. We are a great country and different!