Immoral, or merely conforming?

Robert looked at them with quite a numb expression on his face in the beginning. At some point though, he found something quite amusing and asked me to look at it with a smirk on his face. It was the picture of a female American soldier with a grin on her face pointing at the wired genitals of an Iraqi prisoner sporting nothing except a hood. I failed to be amused, and looked at Robert quizzically. Apparently, the prisoner, who was standing atop a desk, had been told that if he tried to move off the desk, he would be risking his life because the wires were linked to some device that would electrocute him. Ah, so the funny bit, I realized, was how the poor man had been made a fool of by this bobby-sox girl. "That's a laugh, ain't it?" Robert asked. I disagreed -- not politely -- and at that moment, lost all interest in conversing with Robert the helpful banker.

It has become pathetic really, the charade going on down in Iraq. They came in on their high horses as "liberators" with promises of a better life centered around freedom and the pursuit of happiness. And this is what they have provided. Men forced to participate in simulated sexual orgies. Men forced to pose naked with wires attached to their genitals. I assure you, no matter how much you try to imagine the humiliation these people had to go through, you will fail. I shudder to think what they did with the Iraqi women. And yet, they have the nerve to still claim they have "liberated" Iraq.

Then last week, President Bush called the acts "abhorrent" in a televised address on two Arabic language channels. He certainly showed a panache for stating the obvious with that. The symbolism is uncanny. Abu Ghraib is the same center where Saddam Hussein would carry out his most vile acts of torture. It is an awe-inspiring crucible of fear located around 20 kilometers from Baghdad. And in this same house of horror, the occupiers who came in the name of freedom are torturing the Iraqis in an altogether more humiliating manner.

Bush also said that while Saddam's torture squads were never brought to justice for their indiscretions, the American soldiers who participated in this debauchery would be punished. I am glad he compared his regime to Saddam's. Maybe he is finally ready to admit he is not much better than the ousted Iraqi dictator. He has stood by his defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, though, who has been called upon by many leading newspapers in the United States to resign. I'm not too sure though, that that would be necessarily a good thing, because waiting in the wings is Paul Wolfowitz, probably the leading neo-conservative in the whole of Bush's cabinet. It is a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils, you see.

One of the accused soldiers, Sergeant Chip Frederick, has come out and said that he had no training whatsoever on how to treat prisoners of war, and that the first time he ever received a copy of the Geneva Conventions was on the day he was charged. I have never put on an army uniform of any sort, and even I know that it is one of the ancient rules of warfare that you treat all your prisoners with respect. He is your enemy only to the point he resists. The moment he surrenders, he is your responsibility.

Anyhow, that is the point around which Frederick will build his defense in a military court. Fair enough. The law, after all, is quite a different entity to morality, and Frederick's fight is against the law. But on the subject of morality, has humanity failed so badly that now we have to be trained in order to understand that it is not right to strip grown men naked and pile them on top of each other? That we have to be trained to not make two men whose religion shuns homosexuality simulate oral sex?

Other American soldiers have been accused of similar acts at Guantanamo Bay, where the prisoners are once again, Muslims, and mostly Arabs. That is the common factor. The truth is, the Americans are only acting on their own high-flown standards of morality. These people they treat as less than human beings after all, have been designated as "evil" by their own commander-in-chief on several occasions, including the all-important State of the Union speeches.

"Arab" is a dirty word, with synonyms ranging from "towelhead" to "terrorist." They are evil, while the Americans are good. You can do no wrong when you are dealing with evil. Just a few days ago, I saw the revolting Ashanti on a British television station, a feature film starring, of all people, Michael Caine and Omar Sharif, which depicts Arabs almost exclusively as murderers, rapists, child-molesters, liars and thieves. The generalisation is appalling to say the least. It is only one of hundreds of such films in the Western entertainment industries. Anybody who does not know better would be champing at the bits to get out and teach these Arabs a "lesson." To soften them up, beat them, torture them, humiliate them.

And that is why Robert the banker, a kind enough man to help a stranger with his bags, a moral enough man to condemn David Beckham's infidelity, and an educated enough man to work at a prestigious organization like Natwest, can find amusement in an Arab's humiliation. Standards of morality in a society are set by its leaders, and in the West, particularly in America, and through proxy in Britain, humiliating an Arab is not outside the confines of a moral act.

They, like everyone else, have been taught to hate evil. You can never get out of line against evil, no matter what boundaries you breach. Unfortunately, they have also been taught and told of how every enemy they face in the Arab world is evil incarnate. You do not need to read the Geneva Conventions to retain your humanity, Sergeant Frederick. You just need to see through the lies you are fed by your commanders, your media, and, most unfortunately, your President. Maybe you could read the Bible though, seeing Bush's tendency to use Biblical terms. But even Michael, when he slayed the Devil himself, did not subject him to such humiliation.

Shayan S. Khan is a student at Coventry University, UK.