United Press International
May 7, 2004 Friday
The Peter Principles: Prisoner’s base
By PETER ROFF
WASHINGTON, May 7 (UPI)
The Bush administration’s public standing appears badly damaged by
the unfolding scandal that was kicked off by the discovery of
photographs seeming to show U.S. military personnel mistreating
inmates at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.
Since the revelations, Bush’s approval rating in the Gallup Poll
dropped 3 points, from 52 percent in mid-April to 49 percent in early
May. Those who said they disapproved of the way he is handling his
job as president increased by the same amount.
Like Claude Raines in Casablanca, there are any number of people who
claim they are “shocked, shocked” to discover that prisoners may have
been tortured or abused. While upsetting — and a potentially
damaging revelation as far as U.S. diplomatic relations with the Arab
world are concerned — the news is hardly Earth shaking. Anyone with
an even passing knowledge of what occurs in U.S. correctional
facilities on a daily basis is aware that prisons are not, to put it
mildly, nice places.
Prisoners are assaulted — and worse — on a regular basis by other
inmates and, if some claims are to be believed, also by their
warders. The same is true in countless prisons and detention
facilities throughout the world, some of the worst of which were
located in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. There, prisoners were routinely
tortured in unspeakable ways for political reasons or simply for
amusement.
While the purported incidents in the Abu Ghraib prison are disturbing
by U.S. standards, they are fairly benign when measured against what
goes on in the rest of the world. In reality, it is President George
Bush’s reaction that should really give the world pause, because it
explains yet again why the United States is different from most other
nations.
In remarks following his meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan,
comments certain to be broadcast throughout the Arab world, Bush
addressed the issue at length. The two leaders talked, Bush said,
“about what has been on the TV screens recently, not only in our own
country, but overseas — the images of cruelty and humiliation.”
“I told His Majesty as plainly as I could that the wrongdoers will be
brought to justice,” Bush said, “and that the actions of those folks
in Iraq do not represent the values of the United States of America.”
“I told him I was sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi
prisoners, and the humiliation suffered by their families. I told him
I was equally sorry that people who have been seeing those pictures
didn’t understand the true nature and heart of America.”
And, in what may be one of the most remarkable admissions ever made
by a U.S. leader in wartime, “I assured him Americans, like me,
didn’t appreciate what we saw, that it made us sick to our stomachs.
I also made it clear to His Majesty that the troops we have in Iraq,
who are there for security and peace and freedom, are the finest of
the fine, fantastic United States citizens, who represent the very
best qualities of America: courage, love of freedom, compassion and
decency.”
In the Arab world, where much worse torture and abuse is routine if
not required, the president’s words must come as a true revelation.
The leader of the world’s most powerful nation humbled himself and
his country not just before its own citizens but before the people of
the world, admitting that an injustice had been done, not by another
nation but by the United States itself. More importantly is Bush’s
commitment that the perpetrators of the abuse would be punished and
that steps would be taken to insure that the abuse would not occur
again.
Other nations are rarely if ever as public in their expressions of
humility.
The People’s Republic of China has not apologized for the 1989
massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. The
Turkish government has never apologized for the slaughter of
Armenians. Neither the Soviets nor the members of the Commonwealth of
Independent States that succeeded it have fully atoned for the gulags
or uttered meaningful expressions of remorse for the pogroms
committed by the Czars against Russia’s once considerable Jewish
population.
The Japanese have never fully atoned for the infamous 1937 “Rape of
Nanking.” The British are still silent about their invention of the
concentration camp during the Boer War, the violence they perpetrated
against the Irish people over centuries and for not doing all they
could to alleviate 1942’s Bengal famine that killed at least 2
million people.
An even longer list of similar atrocities, against which the alleged
abuses in Abu Ghraib prison pale by comparison, could be assembled.
What is unique to the Abu Ghraib incident is not the abuse but the
apology.
That Abu Ghraib matters, not even but especially at the highest
levels of the U.S. government, should stand as proof before the world
that the United States is a great nation full of good people who can
do amazing things. It is not just a matter of not letting the single
bad apple spoil the entire barrel but a triumph of the idea that, in
the view of the United States, all men are created equal and should
be treated accordingly, with respect.
(The Peter Principles is a regular column on politics, culture and
the media by Peter Roff, UPI political analyst and 20-year veteran of
the Washington scene.)
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
