Red Cross saw 'widespread abuse' in Iraq over several months

I wish my return to blogging after a brief hiatus could be on a more pleasant subject. Like most of the rest of the world I have been reeling with shock regarding the awful stories we have been hearing of abuse of Iraqui prisoners.

Initially I was shocked, but disappointed that the photos were being published. Convinced that surely these must be isolated cases, I believed that those who had committed the acts should be brought to justice. Would giving all the gruesome details to every newspaper in the world really help?

Now we learn that according to a leaked Red Cross report confirmed as genuine they have been raising concerns with the UK and US authorities for some while. It seems that their reports are not normally made public. Perhaps they should be.

Unfortunately, so far this century is revealing much the same depressing human traits as did much of the last century. We see the same distressing tendencies towards evil that we all have.

Its easy to criticism the American and possibly British soldiers, but remember what they were facing. They had been told that they might face terrible chemical and biological weapons. They believed that in some way Iraq was linked to the horrors of 911. They faced the possibility of death on a daily basis from routine patrols.

Most importantly of all, they had become convinced that the prisoners they had detailed were ‘other’ to them. Tribalism and the identification of ‘the enemy’ as wholly evil is an endemic human tendancy and is extremely dangerous.

Surely if the soldiers had remembered that despite whatever their prisoners had done, they were still human beings- with parents, partners and children- they would not have treated them this way.

This is why it is so important at this time of great danger for the whole world (and who knows how much greater the risk is for us all now this news is out) that we try and remember that we really are one human race.

The way that in war, and other periods of stress the veneer of respectability can be removed, and the evil inside of ordinary ‘respectable’ men and women is shocking to us all. And yet we forget the results of the 1971 Stanford Prison experiment when ordinary students were asked to run an experimental prison. The investigators concluded “About a third of the guards were hostile, arbitrary, and inventive in their forms of prisoner humiliation. These guards appeared to thoroughly enjoy the power they wielded, yet none of our preliminary personality tests were able to predict this behavior.”

Americans, British, Iraqis, Lybians, we are all the same. When the constraints of society and mutual dependence are removed then the gloves may come off. History teaches us that all races are capable of great evil. It also teaches us that terrorists can become statesmen.

What should our response to this be? Surely to build solidarity with whoever we can. Every Muslim who has a ‘Christian’ reach out to him in friendship at this time is surely a Muslim who is less likely to sympathize with terrorists. Every Muslim who knows that not all ‘Christians’ act this way, and that in fact the majority of us deplore these acts is a potential friend of the West.

The acceptance of collective responsibility, the apologies on TV, the inquiries and the punishment of those responsible are all crucial acts right now.

Its time for some of the heat to go out of some of the rhetoric we hear about ‘the war on terror’. Its time for language that promotes peace and reconciliation. Its time for humility on the part of those nations (my own included) that like to think we are somehow morally superior to others.

True Christians should of course not be surprised by any of this. It is only Christianity of all the world religions that truly faces up to the problem of evil in the human heart-the evil in my heart. How to deal with it? Well I guess that is a subject for another post, but suffice it to say that God’s answer to this was found in an extreme example of torture- The Passion of Jesus Christ. Watchers of the movie might well ask why did Jesus Die?’. Ultimately, he died to deal with that evil in our hearts which we all share- that evil that sadly can lead at times to events like we have seen in Iraq.