Jan 30, 2005 | Hunter hunted

While it is not my usual tendency to babble on about politics and the like, I find it somewhat important to address an issue that has been surfacing in Iraq about the abuse of prisoners. Now apparently this savagery is not limited to American soldiers, but British ones too. Is this new? Abu Ghraib is just one of the many cases no doubt, one of the few that have been seen in the media's eyes, and history has shown it: the My Lai massacre in Vietnam being a prime example.

But I'm not here to condemn or to impose my certain opinions on others. I'd rather dissect it, asking, why on earth is one compelled to do so? And believe you me, some of us condemning this act might be the very ones doing it if positions and roles were reversed.

You can probably trace the roots to the soldiers themselves, although I'm sure this doesn't apply to everyone involved. The soldiers are young and come from varying backgrounds, and their upbringing is not necessarily the most cultivated or refined. But upbringing alone cannot be an attribute of those who commit these crimes.

Then is it an innate character within some of us to expend our anger, hate, or stress upon the weak and helpless? It's true that a helpless 'criminal' (although many times it isn't a criminal but simply a suspicious civilian who will later be released) can seem a perfect means to display anger. Maybe it is the stress and the overwhelming feeling that accompanies the worries of perhaps being killed the very next day by some suicide bomber whose only intention is to kill as many people as possible? Indeed, the soldier who killed an injured Iraqi by claiming he was still alive and that he was a potential threat, even if he was on the ground and by all means helpless, shows how disillusioned men and women at the war front can become.

What is more worrisome is perhaps the return of these soldiers, many of them fresh out of college (or even perhaps haven't been to college yet) into the normalcy of society. Reports do show cases of increased psychological instability after these wars. Does it mean we can refrain from condemning these soldiers for having brutally tortured, dehumanised, or murdered helpless prisoners? I'd say no.

These soldiers aren't to blame, for we are incapable of putting ourselves into their frame, their situation, and weighing the scales of justice then and there. True, blatant murder is unacceptable, despicable, and cruel. Torture is even worse, dehumanising even more so. Photographing them, disgusting. However, the bloody hands don't belong to these soldiers.

I do believe that human character can show itself in the most hideous of forms during times of war. I do believe that the scarier truth is that this hidden side to humankind manifests itself in ordinary citizens who live in a whitewashed home in suburbia with a wife and a child and two SUVs. I am not trying to make an excuse for murderers in general. I just simply want to raise the flag in saying that, in spite of all this condemnation that has spread through the world like wildfire, some of us might unknowingly be harboring the very same hidden characters.

On another note, it is important to realise that on the whole, society has degraded, that humans have stepped one rung down from the ladder of moral behaviour. Whatever happened to the Geneva Conventions? To the fair treatment of prisoners? You read tales of humane prisoner guards who throw food over barbed wires to hungry prisoners. You hear about how a prison guard meets a former prisoner and how they embrace, overcoming all difficulties and realising that they were simple puppets of governments that molded them into the roles they took. After all, what controls whether or not you are a prisoner or a prison guard? The hunter may very well be hunted. The guard may very well have been in the situation of the prisoner.

Such idealism no longer exists, in my opinion. Such fairness in society, where the prison guard becomes abused and finally realises the extent to which his pain can lead to sufferance, such things have faded away. The guard remains the guard, the prisoner, always prisoner.

Also written on this day..

• 2011: Making sense of Facebook OAuth, Graph API
• 2010: The social network of driving
• 2004: Music!