How civilised can western society claim to be?

By Sandrea:-MYGRIPE

Western society model itself and how civilised we are, how we are so democratic in our behaviour that we detest nations that made their citizens into subservient being, torture them, and suppress them in ways that the west tend to find disgraceful.

We have send our armies into far remote countries to fight and die for what we believe is the rights of the citizen of those countries to act and be treated the way in which human beings are suppose to be treated.  We defend the weak and the infirm and because of our resolution we have had many graves of soldiers who have died, many parents who have lost their children because we believe that wherever despot and tyrant threaten the ideology of democracy it is our right in the west to seek them out and destroy them, hence the death of Saddam Hussein.

However, if the Wikileaks document that have been published over the last few days is anything to go by, then our servicemen have destroyed the concept of democracy and have undertaken atrocities that is very hard to believe that any civilised individuals could even contemplate.

Where did we go wrong?  The atrocities committed by the Iraqi that have been stated, in respect of the Beatings, burnings and lashings surface in hundreds of the documents, giving the impression that the use of cables, metal rods, wooden poles and live electrical wires to torture detainees was far from rare. Although some abuse cases were investigated by the Americans, most in the archive seem to have been ignored, make me feel disgusted.

How could civilise soldier watched such inhumane atrocities that were being undertaken by the Iraqis, they were there to protect individuals lives.  Irrespective of the fact that there may have been insurgents that were capture the fact that these fanatical terrorist had no respect for human lives there is no way that we should have watched these individuals being dehumanised in the manner which the leak documents suggest.

The moral standards of western society should have been very high because we know what freedom meant, we know what democracy meant and as the report states the death toll of civilians is in stark contrast to President George W. Bush’s words in 2003, when he said “new technology meant troops could go out of their way to protect Iraqi civilians” what protection – ludicrous.

I am disappointed in our society but even more disgusted with our governments.  If our government knew of the atrocities that were committed, and if Wikileak documents are anything to go by then they not only knew what was happening but that they systematically cover-up the whole appalling episode.  How now can we trust our government with decisions to go to war in countries that they believe that are abusing the rights and lives of their citizen when we are no better than the so-called terrorist that we are trying to eradicate from our society.

What is the point of going to war to assist these countries when the very atrocities that we are suppose to fight to stop are happening right before our eyes and when they are reported the authority that should make sure that they are investigated and deal with effectively turned a blind eye to them and then work very hard to cover-up their disgraceful behaviour.

The vast majority of decent individuals are not stupid; we do believe that in any war situation there are going to be some kind of atrocities that are committed.  We are aware that human being have the propensity to be cruel and downright disgusting, as we can remember from what history has told us about the great atrocities that Hitler undertake against the Jews during the second world war.

There are no surprises that these things sometimes happen.  What I believe that we find hard to swallow is the fact that our government would try to cover-up their involvement and their inability to effectively resolve these situation when they arise.

We cannot, if Wikileak is anything to go by, honestly believe that we did give the Iraqi people protection, we cannot believe that we aid their suffering, we cannot believe that our soldiers being there did anything to allay the fears of the vast majority of Iraqi citizen, not if these allegations are to believe.

There must be a public inquiry into this sordid affair because when the British organisation that has monitored civilian deaths since 2003: States “These Iraq logs … contain information on civilian and other casualties that has been kept from public view by the US Government for more than six years … The data on casualties is information about the public (mainly the Iraqi public) that was unjustifiably withheld from both the Iraqi and world public by the US military, apparently with the intent to do so indefinitely.” We have to take this very serious.

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