Arriving back from a week's holiday in the South of China I was disturbed to read the reports of military abuses of Iraqi prisoners. It caused me to remember the day I sat watching a war movie with my father who had been in the Australian Army in Egypt and other places in WW II. I was about 13 years old and vividly remember my father's reaction to a scene in which Field Marshall Rommell allowed a staff sergeant to beat an allied prisoner. Dad got very upset with that, for 'Rommell was a gentleman' who guaranteed the proper treatment of his prisoners. Rommell was no Nazi. Dad had in fact known one soldier who had been captured, but subsequently escaped no less than three times from one of Rommell's prison camps.
I still remember our discussion and some of the things he told me about the behaviour and savage acts of Australian and other allied troops during the war. He pulled no punches. He didn't say that the other side were better or worse, just that 'you don't hear about the atrocities that the winners engage in.'
This time around we are hearing about such atrocities, and it is a fool who believes that such things have never gone on, or that the other side is better or worse. War brings with it a whole host of psychological problems including blood lust, rape, over exaggerated retaliatory punishment, and of course deep psychological emotional scarring; all of which are understandable; none of which are excusable.
To think that the Iraqi 'enemy' treated their captives (let alone their own people) better is sheer blindness; to think that the latest revelations prove anything is wishful thinking; to use these events to justify an end to the military presence in Iraq is to be defeated by propaganda, for that is what it is.
The West likes to win, but Westerners feel a need in that process, to tread the high moral ground by holding onto superior concepts; they like their social perspectives completely sanitized and their political aspirations to be pious and civilized, and in doing so they completely fail to understand the 'realities' of life for the majority of the world's populations.''
The rest of the 'real' world doesn't give a damn about 'how a war is won, as long as it is won.' Do you really think that China and Russia were ever able to win a war on the ground? No! But being societies that don't play by our 'civilized' rules of war, neither would ever have hesitated to utterly destroy the world with their nuclear weapons. WIN AT ALL COSTS IS THE WAY REAL WARS ARE FOUGHT!
The behaviour of Allied troops toward prisoners in Iraq was not 'humane, decent, legal, good PR or anything else positive', BUT IT IS WHAT HAPPENS IN EVERY WAR, and usually on a far more extreme level. Those delicate people who have till now supported the war should become aware of the realities of war, face the situation, deal with it, ask for and support the punishment meted out, and then get on with supporting the business of 'this' war. Those of course who do not support the war can jump up and down for joy in the full knowledge that they are morally superior to everyone else and look forward to the day when they will be treated with the same high minded ideals when their own countries are defeated. The world is 'AFTER ALL', waiting for the final defeat of the USA and its allies, and the more U.S. and allied citizens that join that endeavour, the sooner the task can be accomplished.
R.P. BenDedek can be reached at http://kingscalendar.com.
