The plight of the Mau Mau: A lesson in imperial brutality

As some of you know, I've already written extensively on what we'll call here The Torture Issue. Meaning: the allegations of torture, or other prisoner abuse, at American detention facilities like Gitmo and Abu Ghraib.

I've hit the U.S. hard on failing to live up to its principles and on engaging in practices that are clearly inhumane:

On the Amnesty International report, see here and here.
On Cheney's defence of Gitmo, see here.
On all the scapegoating, see here.
On "Korangate, see here.
On Dick Durbin, see here.

And I've even called for an apology from the enablers of torture (i.e., those in the Bush Administration who have created the culture of torture and who therefore need to be held accountable for prisoner abuse by America's hand, under America's watch, and with America's blessing): see here.

BUT: I've also criticized what I see as an effort to equate the United States with the true perpetrators of brutality, both the current insurgents in Iraq and the totalitarian regimes of the last century. Durbin, in my view, didn't make this argument for moral equivalency -- he was misrepresented and thus should not have had to apologize; indeed, he and his nuanced argument should have been taken more seriously -- but there are those on the left who seem to think that Gitmo is in fact a gulag or a concentration camp and that the United States is in fact akin to Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia. This, in my view, is both wrong and insulting. America may have committed a number of gross injustices throughout its history, and it may be committing injustices today as part of the war on terror, but there is no excuse for maligning it so unjustifiably.

Criticize what's going on at Gitmo, if you will, as I have done repeatedly, but don't mistake Gitmo for America. To do so is like mistaking a malignant tumor for the entire body. You do what you can to rid the body of the tumor, but you don't rid the body of the tumor by destroying the body in its entirety. What would be the point? For just as the tumor doesn't define the body, so does torture not define America. Torture is America's tumor. Get rid of it and America will be healthier.

If I may return to today's L.A. Times for a second straight post, check out Max Boot's column on the Mau Mau, Kenyan insurgents opposed to British rule. Boot goes too lightly on America's prisoner abuse, but the story of the Mau Mau and their brutal destruction at the hands of the British puts even the worst allegations of that prisoner abuse into perspective. America has a lot to answer for, yes, but it's important to ask the right questions.