Firing Rumsfeld would show Bush is sorry

It sounded like a smaller version of a wishful subjunctive. What if Osama bin Laden had said sorry after the destruction of the Twin Towers? Would that have helped the Americans with their outrage at the despicable act that cost nearly 3,000 lives and shook the very foundation of their homeland security? The US soldiers have by now killed far more than 3,000 people in Iraq and Afghanistan to prove the dictum that the conquerors exact their revenge at a usurious price. The Romans crucified six of Spartacus's slaves for every Roman master they had slain.

Already some disturbing photographs of that usurious revenge have emerged, showing disgusting behavior of US soldiers. Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defense, told the US lawmakers when he testified before them last week, that they should be bracing for more photographs and videos in the coming days, depicting perverse humiliation of the Iraqi detainees and physical violence done to them.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

One photograph, already seen, shows a young woman in baggy pants holding a leash attached to a naked Iraqi man lying on the prison floor. Another picture shows the same woman offering a thumbs-up with one hand, while pointing the other at the genitals of a prisoner who is wearing nothing but a black hood over his face. The report prepared by Major General Taguba of the US Army says that some of the prisoners were even sexually abused and killed in cold blood.

But the photograph, which disgusted me most, is the pile of naked Iraqi prisoners, which reminded of Nazi concentration camps where the corpses of Jewish men and women were stacked up before mass burial or extermination. It looked like a formation of depravity created by sick minds. Some of the prisoners were forced to kneel down to bear the burden of other naked men arranged on them to erect that scaffold of madness.

Yet Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon, the same week these photographs flashed on TVs and newspapers across the world, that it was his impression that some abuse had taken place, which was different from torture. An Iraqi man would suffer flogging and starvation, but the real torture for him is to live in the shame of being stripped in the presence of others. In case Rumsfeld did not know, that is true for rest of the Muslim world, where honour is more precious than life.

Rumsfeld has apologized profusely, so did everyone in his chain of command. The US lawmakers and media expressed their outrage and repeatedly said that what was done in Abu Ghraib was against the nature of the American people. I would like to believe them, because I have lived and gone to school in a wonderful country where human dignity was of utmost importance.

Until, the Bushies came to power and tossed things around. If the prisoners in Abu Ghraib were treated like animals, it is because, as Senator Hillary Clinton pointed out in the Senate hearing of Rumsfeld, the juice of wanton behavior flowed from the top. After all, the soldiers conquered a country under false pretense. Who should know it better than them who went to find WMDs, and saw nothing? They also knew about the utter disrespect of their President and the Defense Secretary for the Geneva Convention.

I do not buy the apology, because it rings hollow. The Bushies went to war to destroy WMDs, and they found nothing. They went to war in Iraq because Saddam was linked to al-Qaeda, but they could not prove it. They went to liberate Iraq and bring democracy, the moral high ground, which was their last shelter, now lost in Abu Ghraib in the tears and blood of Iraqi prisoners whose bodies were used like a bunch of Lego toys.

Here is what George Bush said recently to justify the Iraq war, while his Defense Secretary and military commanders were already struggling to cover up the explosive stories of prisoner abuse. He said that removing Saddam Hussein put an end to a series of evils. "As a result," Bush said, "there are no longer torture chambers or rape rooms or mass graves in Iraq." If you believe what the International Red Cross said earlier and the pictures depict now, those torture chambers and rape rooms were never closed where naked prisoners were even thrown to the dogs. If George Bush didn't know about the abuses before he made his statement, he has slapped himself in the face.

But Donald Rumsfeld should have known better instead of hiding behind the momentous excuse of running 2.5 million soldiers around the world, two theaters of war in Iraq and Afghanistan and some 4,000 billion dollar defense budget. That load of rubbish does not exonerate him from his responsibilities for what happened, as he confessed, under his watch. In India, there is precedence of Railway Ministers resigning in Delhi for rail accidents, which took place in faraway provinces. The Minister of Human Rights in Iraq has resigned in protest of the prisoner abuse in his country.

That is because in democracy, every man is on his honour. And that honour requires them to behave in responsible manners. Perhaps that sense of honour is shifting at least in the White House, if not in the rest of America, where loyalty and friendship prevail over accountability and responsibility. President Bush has refused to let go of his Defense Secretary and praised him for doing a good job. Last Monday, he even visited the Pentagon to underscore support for his buddy. Vice-President Dick Cheney came to the defense of the Defense Secretary and asked his critics to back off and leave alone one of the best Defense Secretaries in the US history.

Perhaps Bush and Cheney have a stake in Rumsfeld like all conspirators have in each other. But one would question the honour of these men as more people are convinced that liberation of Iraq was an occupation indeed. Larry Eagleburger, the former US Secretary of State, made a cocky statement on CNN last week. He said that the reaction to prisoner abuse was too much of nonsense and that the two hundred years of reputation of his country could not be tarnished by the acts of a few men.

Nations are not different from people, in case Eagleburger did not learn in his years as a bureaucrat. It often takes the spark of one silly scandal to destroy hard-earned reputation. What happened in Abu Ghraib has scandalised America. And it cannot be erased with apologies and compensations. Some one has to take blame for it. Under monarchy it could have been passed to the soldiers. But in democracy it has to be the leaders.

Fire Rumsfeld. Else, George Bush, you owe Saddam an apology for taking his country to do what he was doing better.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.