News & Features - Many U.S. soldiers endorse torture - ArcaMax Publishing
What has our nation and culture become when soldiers of the U.S. Army endorse the mistreatment and torture of individuals as a means to get information, or in other words: to win? According to the article, about 1700 soldiers were polled, and the many favor this type of treatment.
How can this attitude be justified in a military that purports to denounce torture? Has our society changed so much that it is lending a blind eye and a deaf ear to this issue? Are we condoning this treatment as a result of our ethnocentrism toward Middle Eastern, Islamic, and Iraqi people?
How many innocent men, women, and children have been mistreated? How many have been charged with a crime--specifically a war crime? Even so, how can soldiers from a nation proud of its system of justice watch as other human beings are treated less than respectably, injured, and even killed? (I have historical flashbacks to our own era of pre-Civil rights when black Americans faced the same inhumane treatment).
As an American, I am appalled; as a former U.S. Army Cavalry soldier, I am angry. I served my country to defend it from wrongs and injustice perpetrated by an enemy with intentions to destroy our values, our way of life. It saddens me tremendously to watch as we have become that same kind of enemy.
A.F. Castronuevo
former soldier, U.S. Army
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