18 November 2005
Iraqi Torture
The government of Iraq denied on 11/16/2005 that it was suppressing the Sunni minority by torturing over a hundred in a prison in the basement of the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad. It then admitted that as many as seven of the tortured prisoners were actually Shiites. And in any case, according to the Minister, “Only a few prisoners were mistreated.”
If nothing else, the new Iraqi leadership seems to be a quick study of the doublespeak that greases the skids of democratic rule in Washington. Unfortunately, the opposing sides in disputes like those exposed in the Interior Ministry prisoner abuse situation are more embittered rivals than the institutionalized antagonists (e.g., the press vs. the government) in Western political systems. They are tribal or sectarian enemies; moreover, they are armed.
Of course, scandals such as Abu Ghraib loosened the American moral standards that were supposed to be introduced to Iraq by our invasion and change of regime. That was the disappointing result of our government’s adoption of a militant strategy for dealing with opponents that we define as non-state terrorists. We relaxed the bounds on the behavior of our own soldiers, principally because they were placed in locations not subject to an internationally recognized legal order. Now we are forced to live with the consequences – a world where we impose rules like ours that are unsuitable for regulating cultural environments that are more diverse and quite different
The government of Iraq denied on 11/16/2005 that it was suppressing the Sunni minority by torturing over a hundred in a prison in the basement of the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad. It then admitted that as many as seven of the tortured prisoners were actually Shiites. And in any case, according to the Minister, “Only a few prisoners were mistreated.”
If nothing else, the new Iraqi leadership seems to be a quick study of the doublespeak that greases the skids of democratic rule in Washington. Unfortunately, the opposing sides in disputes like those exposed in the Interior Ministry prisoner abuse situation are more embittered rivals than the institutionalized antagonists (e.g., the press vs. the government) in Western political systems. They are tribal or sectarian enemies; moreover, they are armed.
Of course, scandals such as Abu Ghraib loosened the American moral standards that were supposed to be introduced to Iraq by our invasion and change of regime. That was the disappointing result of our government’s adoption of a militant strategy for dealing with opponents that we define as non-state terrorists. We relaxed the bounds on the behavior of our own soldiers, principally because they were placed in locations not subject to an internationally recognized legal order. Now we are forced to live with the consequences – a world where we impose rules like ours that are unsuitable for regulating cultural environments that are more diverse and quite different
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