Bury Me Broken

WWII Prisoner Abuse Punished More Severly than Abu Ghraib

Jeanne at Body and Soul in analysis of a Wall Street Journal article points to the hypocrisy of minimalizing and excusing military abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib when these same offenses were intolerable according to U.S. military tribunals following WWII.

Living in a country whose soldiers literally get away with murder, in which beating a man to death is called "involuntary manslaughter," and only radicals dare to use the words "war crimes," I found myself gobsmacked by history today:

"In the annals of law, the case of Masatomo Kikuchi is all but forgotten.The former Japanese prison guard was tried by the Allies after World War II for war crimes. In 1947, a U.S. military commission, citing the Geneva Conventions and customary international law, convicted him of compelling prisoners of war to practice saluting and other military exercises for as long as 30 minutes when they were tired. His sentence: 12 years of hard labor. " [WSJ article]

Just try to imagine the warbloggers' reaction if an American were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for forcing Afghan or Iraqi prisoners to salute for 30 minutes when they were tired.

posted by niteskolar @ 2:24 PM