Jeanne d'Arc has an enlightening post building upon a piece in the WSJ. It's clear that our expectations of what constituted abusive treatment of prisoners were different - stunningly, gigtanticly, titanicly different - back during an era when it was American soldiers who were being abused, and her post deals with some of the facts of that era. We are holding ourselves to a standard that's so much weaker than that we which we expected Japanese to uphold that it's close to impossible to compare the two. I pray that the actions of the Bush administration on this topic won't come back to harm US troops in the future - though it seems a close to a certainty that they will.
Posted by armand at April 8, 2005 02:05 PM | TrackBack | Posted to International AffairsI guess I sort of knew about the unfair comparisons this would make, but hadn't had it explicitly pointed out to me. That's a really interesting post. Of course, it's a truism that throughout history, the winners get to make the laws and punish the losers however they see fit. In that sense, it doesn't surprise me.
Posted by: baltar at April 9, 2005 12:14 PM | PERMALINK