What Goes Around...

In today's news is a story that mentions—yet again—why it is that government of the United States is arguing that national security will be compromised if the government is forced to release photos showing how American soldiers abused prisoners at Bagram Air Force base in Iraq. The main argument by the government is that terrorist organizations (Al Queda, ISIS, etc.) could use the photos as propaganda to recruit people into their organizations.

It would be as unfair and unreasonable as if, in WWII, Americans used pictures of American prisoners-of-war to encourage support of the war by the American public.

What???

Showing the public what the enemy was doing, and was capable of doing, was a great public relations tool for us. And a reasonable, justified one. The Japanese and the Germans DID to terrible things to their prisoners, both prisoners of war and others, and America and Americans were perfectly justified in being incensed and fired up to win the war.

But apparently when America and Americans torture and abuse prisoners, and degrade them, and sic dogs on them, and sexually humiliate them—it's completely unreasonable for the other guys to use them?

Is there no end to our hypocrisy?

Sorry, that was a rhetorical question. I know the answer.

American soldiers acting on behalf of their peers, their commanders, the military, the President and ultimately the American people, treated Middle Eastern prisoners like animals. And when I saw "they treated them like animals," the animals to which I am referring are not the people receiving the treatment, but rather the ones doling it out. 

The terrorists and the not-terrorists and the rest of the world and the American people need to see and understand how Americans treat prisoners. They violate their religious beliefs, they urinate on them, they sexually assault and violate them, they humiliate them, they imprison them for no reason. This is who Americans are, this is how Americans behave.

Just because Americans—like the Germans and Japanese of WWII era—find it convenient to ignore what their government and their military does on their behalf, does NOT mean that the rest of the world—and particularly the people of the Middle East—have any doubts about how we behave and what we're capable of. 

Those pictures need to be released. We can only hope that one or two or a few percent of the people who see them will realize that it CAN happen here, it IS happening here.

And it's perfectly reasonable and completely rational for Al Queda, ISIS, et al, to use things like this as recruitment tools.