Thoughts on our treatment of POWs, past and present

I was standing in line recently waiting to have my tires rotated and struck up a conversation with an old World War II veteran who was headed to Florida for the Winter. The man was a soldier in the 88th Infantry with whom he fought in Italy. He told me stories of growing up and learning to shoot dinner with a .22 rifle. And dinner was whatever they could find – whether it was squirrels, quails, or ducks (hitting little moving birds with a .22 rifle is quite impressive). Missing meant no dinner!

He also told me of a battle to dislodge a German unit on top of a mountain that lasted over twenty hours, and cost many American lives. Finally, the Germans surrendered, and the commanding officer ordered his men to escort their prisoners back to headquarters. The problem was that the base was several miles away from the front – and the commander only gave the men just a few minutes to hand off their prisoners and return to the front, which would have been nearly impossible.

Well, the soldiers headed towards headquarters with the Germans in tow. But they soon returned – without their prisoners. When questioned what happened, the soldiers’ response was that “the prisoners tried to escape, so we shot them.”

Maybe they did.

Now, to someone who wasn’t there – someone whose closest experience to war was coming across ‘Band of Brothers’ while flipping through the channels to get to the Keith Olberman show – that may not sit well with you.

But you know what? World War II would have been over twice by now, compared to Afghanistan, where things are starting to look a lot more like August 2001 – only now the Taliban have better roads and infrastructure.

The American officer who gave that order and the men who carried it out carried the burden for the rest of their lives. But the bad guys lost and the good guys won. The surviving German soldiers returned home and built a peaceful, economic powerhouse. Liberty survived because we did what it took – including making hard decisions.

Now contrast the ‘Greatest Generation’ execution of World War II with our current generation’s handling with the Global War on Terror:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5wXrDLLLaM

The countries that criticize the U.S. when it comes to treatment of prisoners of war should look to their own brutal history before wrongly criticizing others. We afford Constitutional rights to foreign combatants, while in some instances actually deny the same rights to members of our military. When our country captures mass murderers and terrorists and gives them better treatment than our own citizens and soldiers, it’s a sure sign that the system needs to be re-evaluated.