No Moral High Ground!

I was booted off a US Christian forum last week when responding to a thread where someone was praising the actions of US marines. Apparently they were chasing a wooden cross as part of a workout, before going back to prosecute the Iraq War. The poster of the thread thought how wonderful it was that these ‘spiritual’ marines should use the cross for this purpose! I begged to differ! How dare they debase a symbol of ultimate love and sacrifice, in order to get fit, so they could kill more of the ‘enemy’! This made me so mad; I expressed my views quite forcefully! was told that I had no right to criticise the US military that were defending their homeland. I find that a specious argument, their homeland is thousands of miles away from the war, no WMD’s were found, the main reason we were given for the invasion of Iraq in the first place. To compound the litany of mistakes, the US military put an Iraqi general, one of Saddam’s elite guard, in charge of Falluja when they retreated from the town. Maybe they don’t now believe that Saddam’s regime was that bad after all?

To add to my sense of outrage over this whole unnecessary war, I was horrified when I saw the photos of those tortured Iraqi prisoners on our TV screens, their US captors grinning with evil delight at their handiwork. It would appear that they thought their superior officers would turn a blind eye to their despicable behaviour, as they were happy to pose for the camera. I don’t know if this would have been the case, but it was not until the world media got hold of the story did expressions of disgust emanate from the military, and the White House, even though the facts were known days before.

For a day or so I lived in a fools paradise thinking that the British Army was above anything like that. I was shocked when I discovered some of our troops appear to be torturing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners too!

While it is likely that only a small proportion of US and UK soldiers were involved in the torture of prisoners, this whole disgusting episode has damaged the reputation of both countries immeasurably. It may be many years before we can dare to claim the moral high ground once more!