U.S. officials are trying to whitewash these crimes by attributing them to “rogue” individuals, “lack of training,” or other excuses. They hope they can simply give a few officers a slap on the wrist and get back to business as usual.

But as the facts come out, they confirm a pattern of torture and degradation of prisoners as a routine practice, not only at the notorious Abu Ghraib dungeon but throughout the U.S. military prisons in Iraq. Several thousand Iraqis, picked up in random military sweeps and at highway checkpoints, have been locked up indefinitely with no charges against them—just like the 600 men imprisoned at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo, Cuba.

In face of the international outrage, George Bush declared his “disgust” at reports of mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners and said, “That’s not the way we do things in America.”

But Bush can’t speak for “America” because there is no such thing. There are two Americas: that of the handful of billionaire families that rule this country, and that of workers and farmers. These are opposing classes with irreconcilable interests.

George Bush, John Kerry, and other Republicans and Democrats in the White House and Congress should be ashamed of their America—the one they are responsible for running. They have utter disrespect for human dignity.

Working people in the United States, on the other hand, are not responsible for Washington’s brutalization of our brothers and sisters in Iraq and elsewhere. In fact, the U.S. rulers’ conduct abroad is an extension of their daily brutality against workers and farmers at home. Their record can be seen around the world: from the imperialist occupation of Afghanistan (facts about the torture of prisoners by U.S. forces there are beginning to come out too) to the widespread sexual abuse of women by the U.S. military around their bases, from Korea to Kosova.

The ruthless assault by the imperialist rulers worldwide has its domestic counterpart in their war on working people on the home front. It includes the broadening use of the political police in frame-ups, wiretapping, and disruption operations. It includes the daily police violence against working people. It includes the bosses’ increasingly savage job speed-up, disregard for safety, layoffs, and attempts to cut Social Security, Medicare, and other hard-won social gains.

Some spokespeople of other imperialist countries have feigned indignation at the reports of torture in Iraq under the U.S. boot. But Paris, Madrid, London, and other imperialist powers all have had a similarly heinous record of oppression and violence for more than a century. Just ask the peoples of Algeria, the Western Sahara, and Ireland, who have fought to be free from their claws.

Washington and other oppressor powers are confronting the fact that widespread abhorrence of torture and the death penalty is a growing historical trend. This tendency is part of the long-term strengthening of the working class, which makes it easier to expose the nature of the imperialists when they use such barbaric methods of rule.

The labor movement should protest the brutal treatment of Iraqi prisoners by the occupation forces. We should demand: U.S. and all occupation troops out of Iraq now! U.S., NATO, and UN troops out of Afghanistan, Korea, Yugoslavia, Haiti, Colombia, and Guantánamo!
 
 
Related articles:
U.S. torture of Iraqis sparks worldwide outrage
Brutal, systematic abuse shows face of American imperialism  
 
 
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