To the families of the two soldiers tortured and killed in Iraq, my heart goes out to you.  I wish our country occupied the moral high ground in this case.  It would be much easier to point and declare such action abhorrent and against all humane reason, but sadly we can no longer do that.  We can be repulsed by such treatment, we can be disgusted by the torture and beheading of Americans, and we can be angered by the contradictory treatment of soldiers captured in a time of war, but we have absolutely no right to claim a moral superiority in this case.  After all, what example have we set for the enemy?

We detain captured persons indefinitely without hope for counsel, the opportunity to face accusers, a simple chance to answer to charges levied against them.  For that matter, we don’t even charge them; we just hold them and push them to suicide.

We torture prisoners, force dogs to attack them, smear them with excrement, take horrifyingly degrading photographs of them, strip them down and force them to engage in homosexual acts, and otherwise mistreat and abuse and humiliate them, and all contrary to the international laws and Geneva Conventions we swore to uphold decades ago in response to similar atrocities perpetrated against us by others.

We utilize “extraordinary rendition” to move prisoners and POWs to countries where they will most definitely be tortured and killed, and we do so surreptitiously and underhandedly while claiming we do not torture them ourselves; this is a cheap and transparent deception.

We wrongfully attack civilians, even going so far as to inflict intentional retribution against them for wrongs done by others.  We kill unarmed men, women, and children.

Given the example we’ve set with such actions, how dare we stand up and act insulted and disgusted by the treatment of our own soldiers.  It horrifies me, yes, and it breaks my heart to think anyone could be treated in such a manner.  Yet, what American can stand in good conscience and declare such actions inhumane while we do the same and worse?  What citizen of this once great nation can truly and genuinely disavow the barbaric treatment of our own brethren while we ourselves inflict similar and even more horrendous anguish on others?

Our government kindly placed us in this position.  We can no longer claim a superior moral code by way of the ethical treatment of our enemies.  Given this, how do we demand such treatment from our enemies without breaking into hysterical laughter at our own hypocrisy?  So long as we are being treated in the same manner as we treat others, we are left with no room to complain.  We should never have arrived in this place, lost to our own ideology, betraying all our country once stood for, and acting contrary to what we ourselves are demanding from others.

As Mom taught us so long ago, “Cast your bread upon the water, and after many days it shall return unto you.”  Our chickens are coming home to roost, America.  I hope you’re happy with the new world we’ve created.  Warfare will never be the same.