Nothing can justify it” “

Distancing ourselves from the USA or renouncing our mission in Iraq: this would seem to be the ultimatum given to the Prime Minister Tony Blair by his own Labour ministers, worried that the scandal of the abuses in Abu Ghraib prison and other Iraqi jails may lead to the Labour Party losing the next elections – even though a question mark still hangs over the alleged involvement of British troops in torture. Here are the views of both a Catholic and an Anglican bishop seeking the truht. The Catholic archbishop of Birmingham, Msgr. Vincent Nichols, on hearing news of the torture, speaks of a “shocking misuse of power in the prisons of Iraq”. “Nothing can justify that behaviour, which so degrades human beings, made in the image and likeness of God”, said Nichols in a sermon during a special Evensong for magistrates in Birmingham. The archbishop also criticised the decision to photograph these horrors: “the photographs taken of that degradation cannot be excused. Something has gone wrong within those army units. The power over others that comes with military victory has been abused and it is right that such events be brought to light”. “Now the proper steps are being followed: apology, investigation, prosecution and punishment. These steps are built on the strength of our Christian heritage. They can never excuse what has happened. But the exercise of justice is a hallmark of a decent society”, added the archbishop. Nichols also raised questions about the decision to publish the photographs of the tortures suffered by Iraqi prisoners. “Does the search for justice – he asks – continue to be the real motivation for the relentless publication of these photographs? Might it not be also to do with the selling of newspapers and the seeking of political advantages? I do not think it is right to continue the public degradation of those men through the repeated publication of the photographs for such motives. Politicians and newspaper editors bear a heavy responsibility”. The archbishop of Birmingham ended with a prayer “for all those who are seeking to establish a society of lasting justice in the turmoil of Iraq”.   “UNDERSTANDING IS ALWAYS IMPORTANT”. For the Church of England, it is important not only to condemn but also to understand what has happened. The Anglican Bishop of Worcester, Peter Selby, explained that “British soldiers were sent to Iraq by our government and consequently we are all responsible for their conduct”. He also said that the tortures inflicted on Iraqi prisoners are “the consequence of an unjust war”. “This treatment of prisoners of war is unacceptable”, said the bishop, “but right from the start it could have been guessed that that is what would have happened. The investigations are indispensable and the reactions of horror of politicians and the public are justified”. “Understanding is always important. If we try to imagine for a moment what it means to live in a country in a state of occupation we will immediately realise that those who suffer the occupation will have recourse to all the terrorist techniques at their disposal to drive the occupying troops out. This places psychological pressure on British and American troops in Iraq at unacceptable levels. However disciplined these troops are, it is inevitable that there will be those who exceed the level of tolerance and act towards prisoners in a deplorable manner. We will see if this is what has happened”. “If that’s the case – he added – disciplinary action will follow, but we must remind ourselves at the same time that this is a war in which the government we have elected has pledged us. Even if some soldiers have exceeded the limits of acceptable behaviour, they remain human beings, a part of us”. According to Selby, shock and horror may be “a reaction of rejection of what has happened”. “There’s a moment in which such investigations and horrors lead us to dissociate ourselves from what has happened. ‘It wasn’t I’, we say, and so we condemn what has happened and consider the persons who perpetrated the horror as monsters, a species of person different from us”. A further justification exists for this reaction. “Many of us are by now accustomed to the idea that war can be fought with technology, at a distance, in a clinical way. They think that we can go to war without horrors”.