Denial and Dehumanization

Saturday, letters were published in the St. Petersburg Times trying to justify mistreatment of those detained at the Abu Ghraib prison. They tended to be immature, at best, and evidence of how Americans will see only what they want to see.

One letter writer thinks “I’ll take a leash without any close compared to” being dragged through the streets and hung and burned. Of course, everyone is going to chose humiliation over death, but the letter writer neglects to bring up the sodomy and other mistreatment of prisoners, nor the duration of how long these people were exposed to such treatments. Death over long term humiliation is a tougher choice to make. The fact an exact date hasn’t been put on photos showing also factors in.

Another letter writer also makes the comparison to security personnel being dragged and hung last month and then claims, “how easily people forget.” The problem is, no one forgot that happened. We, as Americans, are supposed to be better than what has been revealed at the Abu Ghraib prison. Can you so easily justify sinking to an unmoral level?

One last letter writer states that last month’s horrid events in Fallujah need to be placed in front of these horrid events in a time line sense. I believe this is to justify the attacks against prisoners as “an eye for an eye”. Well, L. Paul Bremer stated on Friday that he had heard of abuses in Abu Ghraib by American Soldiers beginning in January… January certainly comes before April.

Don’t try to justify what US Soldiers have done in Iraq. We’re supposed to be better than that as a country. If our soldiers and citizens can justify dehumanizing citizens of the world for selfish reasons, than I want to know what happened to the America I grew up in and the land that I love?