There are several photographs that I have seen in my life that remain ingrained in my brain: John Jr. saluting the coffin of his father, the lone Chinese student demonstrator facing down a tank, the man falling headfirst from the burning Twin Tower. The pictures conjure up emotions and meanings without needing words. Last week another picture was added to those that I will remember for the course of my life. It was the picture of a pixie-ish looking woman in military fatigues holding a leash. On the end of the leash was a naked and demoralized Iraqi prisoner huddled on the ground, his face contorted in humiliation. I have read the news reports of the abuses in the prison. I have read that things are going to get worse before they get better…that there are videos showing Iraqi women being raped and one man being beaten, perhaps to death.
What are we doing? We call ourselves a Christian nation and we are sending soldiers to Iraq who think that’s it’s somehow their duty or their right or, even worse, their amusement, to parade the prisoners around naked, hooking them up to wires, and giving them the impression that at any moment they will be electrocuted. I feel as though those soldiers have shamed not only our country but me, personally. After all, am I not part of the society and the culture that produced these people? Can we not do better? We are the richest country in the world. We have freedom, liberty, and justice for all. Yet we produce the same kind of people that we condemned Hussein for producing.
I don’t have a pat ending for this message. I don’t know what scriptures to quote to somehow make it better or more understandable. I do know that we cannot make excuses for the soldiers’ abominable behavior. We need to correct our abuses and mete out proper punishment to those who defied both the Geneva Conventions and military protocol. We don’t need to do it because it’s an election year or to appease the coalition, either. We need to do it because we were wrong. We have sinned and we need to make reparations.