Monday, October 17, 2005

Guantanamo POWs: Nothing new going on there

As news of a prisoner hunger strike (http://tinyurl.com/clz92) finally begins to trickle out from Guantanamo, rest assured any wrongdoing will be pinned on a few bad apples. However, even a cursory glance at U.S. treatment of enemies captured during military interventions will demonstrate that the goings-on at Gitmo (or Abu Ghraib for that matter) are standard operating procedure for the home of the brave.


During the Second World War, for example, it required a mouthpiece none other than prominent racist Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. to expose American tactics in the Pacific. His sentiments are summed up in the following journal entry:  “It was freely admitted that some of our soldiers tortured Jap prisoners and were as cruel and barbaric at times as the Japs themselves. Our men think nothing of shooting a Japanese prisoner or a soldier attempting to surrender. They treat the Jap with less respect than they would give to an animal, and these acts are condoned by almost everyone. We claim to be fighting for civilization, but the more I see of this war in the Pacific the less right I think we have to claim to be civilized.”


(Lindbergh receiving the Service Cross of the German Eagle from Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering)

“When Lindbergh finally left the Pacific islands and cleared customs in Hawaii,” says author John Dower, “he was asked if he had any [Japanese] bones in his baggage. It was, he was told, a routine question.”


(Check this out: http://tinyurl.com/b3ajj)

While the treatment of Japanese POWs was commonly little more than making sure there were no Japanese POWs, those Axis soldiers captured in the European theater often learned firsthand how good the good guys were.

To read the complete article, please click here:
http://tinyurl.com/bl3bg

(This post is presented in solidarity with the Progressive Blogger Union: http://www.pbu.blogspot.com.)

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Arundhati Roy sez:
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

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What’s in my CD player today: Bob Dylan’s “Desire”

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Posted on 10/17 at 04:56 AM
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