Shame

On Saturday, a General Court Martial convened in Colorado Springs found a U.S. warrant officer guilty of negligent homicide and negligent dereliction of duty in the death of an Iraqi general.

According to the Washington Post, his superior officer, a major, approved the use of completely enclosing the general in a sleeping bag as a means inciting claustrophobia designed to break the prisoner but did not approve of the convicted officer binding the POW or jumping on his chest.

As should be the case, the warrant officer likely will serve many years in prison and be discharged with dishonor from the Army.

This month, a major general in the U.S. Army invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination in a hearing on procedures used to elicit information from alleged insurgents in Iraq. That is a fundamental Constitutional right for each of us.

Military prisons in the U.S. are gaining more and more inmates for the torture or other maltreatment of prisoners in American custody in Iraq and elsewhere. It is the position of the armed forces that anyone who mistreats prisoners in custody should be subject to the punishment prescribed for the offenses for which they are convicted. How could anyone disagree?

But as these Americans serve their sentences, how can we not see cracks in our national façade that these acts are the exclusive works of rogue military personnel.

In recent weeks, the U.S. Congress overwhelmingly passed a law that prohibits our forces from engaging in torture or other violations of international norms. The President of the United States signed that law.

But at the very signing ceremony, the president stated that he reserved rights inherent in the presidency to ignore the new law if it abrogates his Constitutional powers.

Americans hate the idea that we would mistreat prisoners recognizing clearly that our own men and women might themselves be treated outside these same norms, especially if we are seen to be a nation that fails to abide by norms of human rights.

Yet even at a signing ceremony that highlights our moral superiority over inhumane and brutish behavior, the president felt compelled to state that he – and his forces – were placed above that law by our own cherished Constitution.

Are there no dots to be connected between those serving time and those others who will soon join them in spending years in penitentiaries for acts abhorrent to us all and to those above them in the chain of command?

I do not believe for a single minute that many of these people convicted of these terrible acts acted without tacit approval from above – far, far above. Sending the pawns to prison for evil acts does not wipe away the stain of shame if they were acting with the approval of their superiors.

Shame on the United States of America! Shame on the perpetrators! Shame on us! Shame on me!

Blog on!

Wild Bill