Letter to the Editor

Subject: One Sided Outrage [at the Blue Stone Press]

So many letters --- so little time. Where to begin?

Let's begin with the "atrocities" (Ms. Katz's word) at Abu Ghraib. The
Bataan death march was an atrocity. The massacre at Malmedy was an
atrocity. The rape of Nanking was an atrocity. Auschwitz, Treblinka,
Buchenwald, and Bergen-Belsen were atrocities. Leaving a young woman to
drown in the back of your car while you scurry off to cover your own sorry
behind is an atrocity.

Being made to stand naked in front of a woman is not an atrocity. Having a
dog bark at you is not an atrocity. Being humiliated is not an atrocity.

Several of the people who expressed outrage about the treatment of prisoners
in Iraq mentioned the Geneva Convention. The problem with that is that the
Geneva Convention should not cover the people who were mistreated.

The Geneva Convention states in no uncertain terms that a party to the
convention, the United States, is obligated to extend the protections of the
convention to forces which are not a party to it, only if those forces are
operating under convention guidelines. Hostage taking is against those
guidelines. Executions without trials are against those guidelines. Those
guidelines also require uniforms or a designated insignia, which will
identify opposition combatants at a distance. If the terrorists (and they
are terrorists) wore a uniform or insignia, routine sweeps of civilians
would not be required.

As for being "stripped naked, shackled in 'distressful' positions and
photographed" - I'm sure that Mr. Pearl, Mr. Berg, Mr. Johnson, and Mr. Kim
would have gladly accepted that sort of treatment. In fact, I'm sure they
would have been happy to model the entire Victoria's Secret catalog on live
Al-Jazeera television. And that brings me to my point.

I've seen a great deal of outrage directed at the United States in the BSP's
Letters & Opinions pages over the last couple of months, but very little
outrage directed at the people who are beheading hostages and blowing up
innocent civilians in Iraq and abroad. I haven't seen a single word about
the 300,000 plus bodies that have been discovered in mass graves in Iraq.

This is not about who is in the White House. So many of the people
expressing outrage against the current president seem to have forgotten that
we were attacked three times by these terrorists when Bill Clinton was in
the White House - when we were "the most respected country in the world."
They've also forgotten that THE icon of the Democrat party, Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, pulled off the biggest denial of civil rights and due process in
the twentieth century. Ask any Japanese person who happened to be around at
the time.

By the time the next BSP is published, the Iraqi people will be in charge of
their own country living in a fledgling democracy. But the hostage taking
and the homicide bombings will not stop - because these terrorists don't
hate foreign or domestic armed forces. They hate the freedom that those
forces bring.

And finally, with the Editor's permission, because I just know that someone
out there is hopping out of their Birkenstocks because our vice president
told the gentleman from Vermont to go forth and multiply (although not in
those words) let me remind everyone what Mark Twain said, "Under certain
circumstances...profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer."

Richard Aronoff
Kerhonkson, NY