Thomas Friedman
has supported the war in Iraq on the grounds that it has the potential to change the Middle East. In his
column today, though, he contrasts the Bush approach to prisoners to that of George Washington.
[According to a March 16 report by Douglas Jehl and Eric Schmitt] at least 26 prisoners have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 …
Only one of the deaths occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, … "showing how broadly the most violent abuses extended beyond those prison walls and contradicting early impressions that the wrongdoing was confined to a handful of members of the military police on the prison's night shift." …
The fact that Congress has just shrugged this off, and no senior official or officer has been fired, is a travesty. This administration is for "ownership" of everything except responsibility. …
Friedman contrasts this with the treatment our revolutionary army gave its prisoners. He quotes from a book by Brandeis historian David Hackett Fischer.
"Americans were outraged when quarter was denied to their soldiers." In one egregious incident, at the battle at Drake's Farm, British troops murdered all seven of Washington's soldiers who had surrendered, crushing their brains with muskets. …
Washington ordered that Hessian captives would be treated as human beings with the same rights of humanity for which Americans were striving. The Hessians ... were amazed to be treated with decency and even kindness. At first they could not understand it." The same policy was extended to British prisoners.
In concluding his book, Mr. Fischer wrote lines that President Bush would do well to ponder: George Washington and the American soldiers and civilians fighting alongside him in the New Jersey campaign not only reversed the momentum of a bitter war, but they did so by choosing "a policy of humanity that aligned the conduct of the war with the values of the Revolution. [emphasis added] They set a high example, and we have much to learn from them."
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