Public Realm Witnesses Stained ’’US Democracy’’
A video posted on YouTube showing US soldiers urinating on the bodies of Taliban fighters has provoked much anger, and has also caused a setback in America's attempts to fix its tarnished image.
America's image had been already totally stained by the shocking images that were leaked into cyber world on Iraq's infamous Abu Ghraib Prison, where US Soldiers were shown humiliating and torturing Iraqi prisoners.
With that image well imprinted in mind, another image is carved in the memory of the public sphere of humiliating pictures from Guantanamo that raised many concerns on the US mistreatment to detainees.
This time, the video pictures four men in US Marine field uniform urinating on three dead bodies in loose Afghan-style clothes, laughing and making some obscene remarks.
On case of anonymity, the whistleblower wrote a caption asserting that the Marines are part of a scout sniper team with the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, and an infantry unit from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
Since the broadcast in 2004 of photographs of abuse and torture of inmates by US soldiers and contractors, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal has revealed a systemic failure of leadership, tactics and strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A year into the American invasion and occupation of Iraq-- CBS' 60 Minutes
program broadcast photographs showing American soldiers apparently abusing, humiliating, beating and torturing Iraqi prisoners held at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.
As for the branded Guantanamo, many of the prisoners said they were also subjected to unauthorized abuses such as water boarding, sleep deprivation, temperature extremes, the use of stress positions, and prolonged isolation resulting in severe and prolonged physical and mental pain. Not only that, but also an official study found that the US government doctors who cared for the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay deliberately concealed or ignored evidence that their patients were being tortured.
As for Afghanistan's Bagram, Inmates in the US-run prison in Afghanistan have faced abuses including torture, beatings and other mistreatment, a report said last week.
As always, US officials declared that such actions are not consistent with US core values and are not indicative of the character of the Marines in our Corps."
The US war secretary condemns US marines' treating the bodies of Taliban militants with utmost immorality, as is shown in a recently-surfaced video.
Leon Panetta called Hamid Karzai on Thursday to allegedly offer assurances as to a full related investigation after the Afghan president expressed outrage over the footage.
For her part, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday denounced the videoed abuse of the bodies of Afghans by US Marines, saying the perpetrators must be held "fully accountable. And the same cliché, she repeats "The United States remains strongly committed to helping build a secure, peaceful, prosperous, democratic future for the people of Afghanistan."
This particular incident might be one of the most outrageous and shocking scenes, but no doubt it is not one of its kind; most probably not the last! There have been a dozen of stories of similar abuses committed by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to the Geneva Convention, bodies of enemy soldiers must be "honorably interred, if possible according to the rites of the religion to which they belonged."
The marines on the video show no respect either to the rites of Islam, to which the dead men apparently belonged, or to the basic principles of any religion, hence this was a crime against humanity.
The desecration of the bodies not only violates the Geneva Convention but all codes of civil behavior, regardless of culture or religion.
This video is just another example of the highly publicized process of bringing democracy to the world, and if democracy comes in such brute form, then the public realm should do the judgment!
Source: moqawama.org
