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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (46251)	5/22/2004 3:08:55 PM
From: malibuca	Respond to of 50167

Iraq Prison Torture Was for Fun, Not Results Rudyard Kipling said: "East is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet!" In this era of globalization, one would have thought that Kipling's comment had limited relevance but your inability to understand why the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal is so offensive to most Americans is an indication that perhaps Kipling's axiom remains valid! Quite frankly, you show your ignorance of American culture, traditions and mores when you relegate the Iraqi prison abuse outrages to being of little consequence. We are a great nation that has an abiding sense of decency. There have been aberrations in the past - and there will be in the future - but the difference between the US and many other countries is that we reveal what went wrong, do some soul-searching, deal with the criminal element and then implement safeguards to prevent a recurrence. Do you know that the authorities in this country have prosecuted civil rights crimes dating back 40 years? It is our strong sense of justice that causes us to pursue wrong-doing dating back decades! All people in power - irrespective of the nation - seek to cover up, if they can get away with it. We have a free press that exposes the sort of outrages that we saw in the prisoner abuse scandal. It is not a pleasant process for us to bare our souls and expose our warts for the world to see - but in the long run we are strengthened by the exercise. We are a nation of laws - the laws may not always be fair but we have processes to correct the injustices. What does it mean to be a nation of laws? The best recent illustration - on a matter of significance - was when the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Bush against Gore. Gore and many Democrats disagreed with the ruling but they accepted that the Supreme Court was the ultimate arbiter. They accepted the results and got ready to fight another day! I have no doubt that if the ruling had been in favor of Gore, there would have been similar acceptance of the decision by Bush. If this had happened in your country between two parties, the most likely outcome would have been for the army to have taken a stand in favor of one or the other candidate - or quite possibly, it would have just installed another one of the army generals as a dictator! There are many other illustrations on issues of import that have torn the county apart but the rule of law has prevailed. Just look back on Brown v the Board of Education, 50 years ago, the forced integration of colleges in Alabama in the 60s', etc. We don't need to deal with a hypothetical situation - just contrast how we view court rulings with the way that your country does. The supreme court in your country recently ruled that a leader of the opposition be allowed to return to Pakistan but when he lands he is summarily deported in direct contravention of the ruling by your country's supreme court. What is more, your information minister explains away the deportation and then mocks the actual ruling saying "that he was sorry that Pakistani officials had been unable to show Shahbaz 'around town'." You like to refer to your country as a "quasi-democracy". It is a cop-out - because a country is either democratic or it is not. It may not practice democracy as we do in the US but if a country professes to be democratic, there are certain integral components - one of which is the rule of law. Your country is far from having reached that stage. You may as well refer to your nation being run by a "quasi dictatorship" - it would just be a gentler way of stating that it is a dictatorship! Your neighbor, India, is a real democracy - and that should give you hope that one day in the future, your nation might achieve the same maturity and system of government. It is not outside the realm of possibility given that the two countries have cultural and traditional similarities.