Following the revelations of torture and abuse meted out by US soldiers on Iraqi prisoners held at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and similar photos showing acts of torture being carried out by British troops of the Queen's Lancanshire Regiment, there has been much outrage and furore all over the Arab and Muslim world. The American and British governments in turn have been engaged in a furious damage-limitation exercise, insisting that these were isolated acts and that the conduct of their troops in Iraq have been respectable on the whole.

Yet this scandal has distracted our attention from one vital fact: that the war on Iraq was illegal in the first place and that American and British troops should not be there at all. What difference would it make if the American and British soldiers behaved in the most gentlemanly manner? Would it somehow make the war more legitimate? And would the American and British government be able to claim that there was no guilt or dishonour to their involvement in this terrible catastrophe?

In his novel 'War and Peace' Tolstoy gives us a rare and succinct account of the complexities of human guilt and dishonour. Following the disastrous invasion of Russia by the armies of Napoleon, the French begin their fatal march back to Western Europe just as winter looms over the horizon.

Caught in the train of the retreating French force is the protagonist of the novel, the idealist and romantic hero Pierre Bezuhov, whose love and admiration for Napoleon soon turns to hatred after he witnesses the destruction wrought by the conquering French. During the long march Pierre Bezuhov befriends a poor Russian peasant who was conscripted into the Czar's army. It is from the mouth of this unfortunate wretch that Pierre ultimately learns Tolstoy's simple philosophy of life: That we are all caught in the flow of time and history and that the good man must rise above vicissitude and uncertainty to assert his moral will to remain just and humane. But the unfortunate soldier ultimately succumbs to the cold and can no longer walk. The French soldiers who guard him are forced to do what they have been ordered to do: shoot all stranglers and do not allow anyone to escape.

After firing the fatal shot, the soldiers hurriedly rush past Pierre Bezuhov to rejoin their tattered column. As they run pass him, one of them shoots Pierre a glance that is full of remorse and disgrace, knowing that he had just committed an act of murder against an innocent man. So strong is the look of shame on the French soldier's face that even Pierre feels sorry for him.

Horrific atrocities

Shame indeed for with that shame and guilt comes the unstated admission that Napoleon's goal of 'civilising Russia' was nothing more than a vile and obscene lie, intended to conceal a thirst for power and wealth that was base and bestial in nature.

Shame is everywhere around us today, though no more so that in the imbroglio that is Iraq. From the outset of this vain conceit, the international community had warned of the folly and danger of America's latest foreign adventure. Even as Afghanistan was still smouldering in its ruins, the hawks of Washington chose to unleash their dogs of war on a country that had already been devastated by more than a decade of sanctions. Fought ostensibly in the name of 'freedom and democracy', never have those two words been so sullied as they have by the warmongers and profiteers of the Bush administration.

Now it has emerged that this 'crusade for freedom' has produced its own horrific catalogue of atrocities committed by the so-called 'crusaders' of the free world: With revelations and abominable photographic evidence of the routine torture, abuse and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by both American and British troops in the prisons of Iraq (which were used during Saddam's era but interestingly kept and used again by the Western 'liberators') we are seeing the truth behind the invasion of that country. The American and British governments and heads of their respective armed forces have come out to condemn these excesses, and have pontificated at length about how war has to be conducted in a gentlemanly way.

That politicians and military leaders could waffle in so pompous a manner beggars belief and numbs our senses, for it appears as if the warmongers in Washington are nave enough to think that wars can be fought in a clinical way, with the highest moral goals in mind. 'Tell me what cause can remain noble when you start hacking off limbs in its name?' asks Peter Schaffer in his play 'The Royal Hunt of the Sun'. Indeed, what cause can remain noble when it is fought for the sake of oil and strategic interests?

It is also a brazen lie to suggest that the actions of the American and British soldiers were 'aberrations' from the norm, for again history stands as witness to the countless instances of butchery, rapine and murder committed by these two armies for centuries. Since the colonial era the armies of Britain (and later the USA) have been involved in the senseless and bloody massacre of innocents. When the forces of the British East India Company were asked to restrict the production of muslin cloth in the Bengal region they had colonised, their methods were simple: The East India Company soldiers simply walked into the villages that produced the cloth and went about chopping off the hands of the children who were working at the looms. In India, Africa, the Arab states and Southeast Asia the armies of Britain had developed a reputation for its brutality and casual use of violence: from the use of mustard gas against the Kurds; to the mass slaughter of Africans with machine guns in Sudan and South Africa; to chopping off heads of peasants in Malaya and claiming them as trophies in the 1950s. So how is the conduct of the British troops in Iraq today any different?

Likewise the American army should be recognised for what it is: an imperial army of paid soldiers whose job it is to go all over the world to kill foreigners for the sake of securing American economic, political and strategic interests. These are not 'heroes' or 'patriots': Heroes and patriots don't get paid for killing civilians at the end of the month. In Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and other parts of the world such as Central America, Africa and the Arab states the US has been at the cutting edge of weapons technology, weapons of mass destruction and the persecution of innocent civilians.

No real sovereign powers

It was the US that bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki; that used chemical weapons in Vietnam; that trained and equipped the death squads of Central America. And it was American officers who helped to create the SAVAK secret police of the Shah of Iran as well as Ferdinand Marcos of Philippines. So how is what is happening in Iraq today an 'aberration' from the norm? If anything, the history books will remind us that what is being done to the prisoners in Iraq today is straight out of American military tradition.

So let us not delude ourselves any longer about the moral decay and structural collapse that is taking place in Iraq. From the outset the international community had condemned this war as an illegal action, undertaken on the part of a unilateralist power bent on projecting its military clout worldwide at whatever costs to global peace and security. The end result is a puppet Iraqi state with no real sovereign powers - the interim constitution has seen to it that ultimate power, as well as Iraq's currency reserves, remain in the hands of the US even after 1 June.

Let us also note that the administration set up now with Ahmed Clalabi at its head is anything but accountable: the Chalabi clan have been given control over vital judicial, political and economic institutions and Chalabi's nephew Salem Chalabi has been put in charge of the trial of Saddam Hussein. The company given the responsibility to protect Iraq's oil production is also linked to the Chalabi clan, which is in turn linked to American oil companies and other vested interests. This was and remains an illegal invasion of a foreign country, fought on the flimsiest of pretexts and with no long-term vision to sustain it.

If, in the course of the violence and bloodshed a few Iraqis are tortured and abused, then this is just a symptom of a deeper rot that has set in. Iraq as a whole is in prison, and it is the Iraqi people who have been abused by the hypocrites and warmongers who have invented this shameful 'war on terror' to serve their own interests. Shame on you, government of America!

Dr FARISH A NOOR is a Malaysian political scientist and human rights activist. His 'The Other Malaysia' column appears in malaysiakini .