Another View
Torturing enemy prisoners of war violates America's Christian tradition of humanitarianism
By Ted Sampley
Posted: 11:55 PM EST Wednesday January 04, 2006
(Editor’s note: Ted Sampley is a Kinston businessman and a Vietnam veteran who is active in the national POW/MIA movement.)
Killing and torturing enemy prisoners is an inexcusable outrage, a barbaric act that violates every humane principle from which America, the land of the free and liberator of the oppressed, was created.
Today, the United States may or may not be treating its enemy prisoners inhumanely. But the reports that have surfaced accusing the United States of mistreatment of prisoners by "beatings, purposely withholding medicine, long-term sensory depravation and being hidden away in secret torture camps" certainly makes the case that we may not be living up to the humanitarian Christian spirit of our founding fathers.
Even as King George's Red Coats and German mercenaries were conducting a deliberate campaign of atrocities against American Patriot soldiers and civilians, our Continental Congress and Army still resolved that the War of Independence would be conducted with a respect for humanitarian ideals.
"In 1776," wrote historian David Hackett Fischer in “Washington's Crossing," "American leaders believed it was not enough to win the war. They also had to win in a way that was consistent with the values of their society and the principles of their cause. One of their greatest achievements was to manage the war in a manner that was true to the expanding humanitarian ideals of the American Revolution."
This premise was even more remarkable because such respect for human life was not being reciprocated by the British Army, whose own officers were threatened with severe punishment if they gave any quarter to surrendering American soldiers. Captured Americans were either executed, or brutalized, starved and cruelly left to rot, packed aboard prison ships.
In European wars, quarter, according to tradition, was the privilege of being allowed to surrender and to be treated as a prisoner. European soldiers believed they had every right to either extend quarter or deny it, and that no captured soldier or civilian had an inalienable right to be taken prisoner, or to live if captured.
American Patriot leaders, for the most part, believed that quarter should be extended to all combatants as a matter of Christian duty and moral obligation. They were outraged when quarter was denied surrendering soldiers. In an incident, during the battle at Drake's
Farm, British troops were seen murdering General George Washington's soldiers who had surrendered, by crushing their brains with muskets.
Despite British atrocities, American Patriots behaved differently. "Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to Complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren ... Provide everything necessary for them on the road," Washington wrote in an order pertaining to British prisoners taken in the Battle of
Princeton.
After capturing 1,000 Hessians in the Battle of Trenton, again Washington specifically ordered enemy prisoners to be treated with the same principle of respect for human life for which our young nation was fighting.
America should follow the examples of our founding Patriot fathers, who during the darkest of times, when their army was barefoot and starving and all seemed lost, refused to abandon their humanitarian Christian spirit for compassion. It is this compassion that makes us different from the rest of the world.
By justifying the use of torture, America abandons its own fundamental values of democracy, freedom and human rights, ironically, the same values it claims is its most powerful weapon in the war against terrorism. |
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