| Editorial Saturday, July 26, 2003 Why this double standards!The two were second and third on America's "most wanted" list of former Saddam regime officials. Events turned from dramatic to morbid and pathetic when, under pressure to prove that Saddam's sons had indeed been killed, the US released photos of their dead bodies - blood and all. There is nothing new in this. Brutal armies and rebels in Africa, Asia, and Latin America have put bodies of their enemies on display or published the photos. However, the world always looked at this as macabre exhibitionism. The US used to be the leading critic of such behaviour. When it made its disastrous intervention in Somalia, a dead US soldier was dragged in the streets of Mogadishu. The world was so shocked with the degrading treatment of the soldier who was essentially part of a peace enforcement mission, and the US public was so revolted, America simply had to withdraw its troops. More recently, US President George Bush and all the supporters of the war against Iraq were outraged when American prisoners of war were displayed on TV by Saddam's forces. The same US has now done something it had stood against for years. If this were a single incident, it might be easy to brush it off as an aberration. The troubling thing is that it is a pattern of US violation of international conventions and norms since the tragic September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. When it captured suspected terrorists in Afghanistan, it denied them the conventional process of law and set up what amounts to kangaroo courts to try them. It is holding some of these people in Guatanamo Bay along the Cuban coast in horrible conditions. Actions speak louder than words. The demonstration effect of American behaviour cannot be underestimated. The world's sole superpower is using its clout to make a case that it is all right to turn POWs and casualties of war into trophies to be displayed publicly as the fruits of victory. It is supplying the logic for turning wars into more brutal affairs. than they already are by denying captured combatants a fair trial. In all probability, it will be a while before America turns its back on its present slide back to the law of Moses. The world needs someone to step up and offer the moral leadership America has so irresponsibly abandoned. |
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