Submit Response is a weblog by Jack Mottram, a That’s Not The Way We Do Things In America?
You’ve probably seen the photographs of US Army war criminals humiliating, torturing, beating and excecuting Iraqi prisoners of war by now.
George W. Bush’s response was to say, ‘That’s not the way we do things in America.’
Come on. That’s exactly how they do things in America, whether mistreating prisoners of war in shadowy outposts like Guantanamo Bay, or in terms of police brutality and human rights abuses, or the fact that Bush himself has long had an unhealthy enthusiasm for executing his own citizens.
Of course, I’m not one of the daft lefties who see the US as analagous to a regime like Saddam Hussein’s, but pointing out the irony of these war crimes taking place in a facility used by Hussein to carry out similar atrocities is unavoidable, and one more example of regime change making life worse for the Iraqi people. Not that it’s much of a regime change, what with former Ba’athist generals being brought in to control Fallujah.
Update:
Mistreatment of Prisoners Is Called Routine in U.S.:
Physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, similar to what has been uncovered in Iraq, takes place in American prisons with little public knowledge or concern, according to corrections officials, inmates and human rights advocates.
The corrections experts say that some of the worst abuses have occurred in Texas, whose prisons were under a federal consent decree during much of the time President Bush was governor because of crowding and violence by guards against inmates. Judge William Wayne Justice of Federal District Court imposed the decree after finding that guards were allowing inmate gang leaders to buy and sell other inmates as slaves for sex.
See also: Rape Rooms: A Chronology - What Bush said as the Iraq prison scandal unfolded.
the photographs were abhorrent.
no doubt seen as mildly humiliating and highly amusing by their perpetrators, they simply stank of american arrogance.
i dispair of the these times.
Posted by generalape at 9pm on 30.04.04
That’s not how they do things in America. That’s how the Americans do things in Iraq.
Posted by Leon McDermott at 1am on 01.05.04
My point is, that behaviour comes out of a culture that has the death penalty, and routinely brutalises its own citizens…
It didn’t matter that, say, Abner Louima was in America when the police raped him with a broom handle during ‘questioning.’ And being in America didn’t keep John Paul Penry off Death Row, despite the fact he had a mental age of six. Heck, the fact they even have the death penalty is plain uncivilised.
Not, of course, that the UK is run by blameless lovelies, but compared to most First World nations, the US has a shitty human rights record when it comes to its own people (recently, not just in terms of that nice Apartheid system they had going until the 70s). Amnesty say so, and I tend to believe them - so it’s no great surprise they’ll treat prisoners of war like that.
Update: Perhaps I should read the news before checking this site - evidence of British soldiers committing similar war crimes, which rather scotches my brutal American society leads to brutal soldiers theory.
Posted by Jack at 12pm on 01.05.04
Real good post, great to hear about your experience
Posted by Jogn at 7pm on 18.12.10