I finally saw the torture / abuse pictures taked by US troops at the Abu Ghraib military jail near Baghdad. Very disgusting. Not disgusting in the same way that pictures from WW2 Nazi concentration camps are disgusting — most if not all of the victims in the Abu Ghraib pictures are probably going to get back to their normal lives before long. But to think that Americans, seemingly decent Americans serving their country, were sexually humiliating their detainees just for a good laugh … I always thought we were above that. Sure, the Baathist elements were disgustingly brutal to the four Americans captured and killed in Fallujah not long ago. But I thought we went to Iraq to set the better example, to restore civilization, and not to engage in an eye-for-an-eye, old-fashioned blood feud.

If you are an American, try reversing the picture in your mind and see how you would feel. Imagine those naked bodies belonging to young Americans, and the soldiers in the scenes are dark-skinned Arabs with big moustaches. If you’re a red-blooded American, your blood will probably start to boil at the thought. So imagine what millions of Arabs in crowded streets in Jordan and Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Yemen and Pakistan, etc. are thinking. What they may well be thinking is this: the Americans are truly at war with us Arabs, and not just with the bad element as they like to tell us (e.g. Osama Bin Laden and Sadaam Hussein). The zealots are right when they say that America is our enemy.

In a few days, most of us Americans are going to forget about those pictures. But what about poor Arabs in Karachi and Amman and Duabi and Tunis and the West Bank? How soon will they forget? If it does any good, I offer my own apologies to the Arab and Moslem world for what my fellow Americans did, and for what my President did not do (i.e., have the guts to take the blame and apologize). I hope that you can somehow forgive the incredible weakness that sometimes follows from our incredible wealth and military might.