This subject has been on my mind since the moment reports were released concerning the atrocities and abuses our American soldiers committed against the Iraqi prisoners. I've started to write this article at least a dozen times and stopped because I didn't know how to put into words what I feel about it. I am shocked, appalled, disgusted, ashamed and even angry at those soldiers for what they did, not because what they did reflects on me as an American or this country in general, but because I can't understand how any human being can do something like that to another human being. What they did was wrong in every sense of the word. If it hurts me this much to think of how depraved and inhuman people can be to each other, I can only imagine how grieved God's heart must be.
There is no excuse, no justification for what they did. I've heard some people defend their actions as justified because of what the Iraqi soldiers did under Saddam's rule, but that is not justification, it is only an excuse. I've even heard a few people quote the Bible, "an eye for an eye," as justification, which is even worse. As Christians, we are to follow Christ's example and Christ told us to love our enemies and to turn the other cheek in the face of their abuses. When Christ hung on that cross in absolute agony, he did not curse the soldiers who hung him there. He did not curse those who spat on him, mocked him, or beat him. In the worst of His pain, He cried out "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." Christ extended compassion in the face of evil, tenderness in the face of cruelty. Do we have the right to do any less?
Matthew 5:44, 45
Luke 6:27, 28
Romans 12:19-21
Yes, the Iraqi soldiers have done much worse, to our soldiers and even to their own people, but we must remember, most of those soldiers do not know any different. They were raised in a different world than we were. They were raised in a world ruled by men like Saddam and his sons, a world where they were shot if they didn't go along. They learned to kill or be killed, to torture or be tortured. They learned to do whatever was necessary to survive. They've never been taught a better way. They've never known freedom or compassion. They have never experienced even a fraction of what we Americans take for granted. Isn't that why we went there, to free them from their oppression? To show them a better way to live?
What kind of example have we set by doing what we've done? We've only shown them that we are no better than Saddam. We did not reach out to them and say "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." We only traded one set of fears and hatred for another. We failed the Iraqi people. We failed the American people. And most of all, we have failed God.
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