"My companions on this flight", Iran Speaker Ghalibaf tweets with snaps of victim children of a school ::: But can it show mirror to Americans who ill treated Iraqis in 2003 ??

"My companions on this flight", Iran Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf posted on X, referring to the victims of the brutal air strikes carried out by the US on a primary school in Minab around Feb 28 during the start of the West Asia conflict. 

The attack on the Shajareh ​Tayyebeh School consisted of two missile strikes ​in quick succession that killed 168 children, mostly ⁠girls. 

A Reuters probe had found that the school had a years-long online presence, including dozens of photos of the children and their activities, raising questions on how the American military vets and reviews strike locations.

The Iranian delegation led by Ghalibaf, along with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, would participate in the Islamabad talks slated to begin later Saturday.

The visiting Iranian delegation was received upon its arrival by Deputy Prime Minister/Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, along with National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq, Chief of Defence Forces and Chief of Army Staff, Syed Asim Munir, and Minister for Interior, Syed Mohsin Raza Naqvi. 

Iranian delegation in Islamabad : Red Carpet welcome 

Mirrors often show what people we 'look like' and not who they are in reality.

Americans do not have right calibre and nature to do genuine soul searching. Hence, the death of 168 children may or may not move Americans and especially their president Donald Trump - whose misadventures called 'trumpism' has already brought so many casualties and destruction in various parts of the world. 

In June 2003, Amnesty International published reports of human rights abuses by the U.S. military and its coalition partners at detention centers and prisons in Iraq.

These included reports of brutal treatment at Abu Ghraib prison, which had once been used by the government of Saddam Hussein, and had been taken over by the United States after the invasion. 

Leash Display 

(Lynndie England holding a leash attached to a naked male prisoner, known to the guards as "Gus") 

Prisoners had also been tortured, with the methods including denial of sleep for extended periods, exposure to bright lights and loud music, and being restrained in uncomfortable positions. 

Major General Antonio Taguba asked to investigate the allegations in his Report in February 2004, stated "... numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees. This systemic and illegal abuse of detainees was intentionally perpetrated by several members of the military police guard force."

The report stated that there was widespread evidence of this abuse, including photographic evidence.  

The pillar of anti-Muslim hostility in the United States is structural and institutionalized racism.  

Although Muslims do not constitute a racial group, Muslim identities have undergone a process of racialization as a reaction to discrimination and prejudice. 

Islamophobia and structural racism against Muslims peaked with the beginning of European colonialism in the 1900s. 

There goes another argument. Racism alone does not sufficiently explain the roots of anti-Muslim hostility in the United States. 

Another problem is the strongly held white supremacist belief that being American means being Christian.  

In Guantánamo prison, which became “a haunting symbol of Islamophobia,” all of the approximately 780 detainees, including 22 who were children when first detained, have been Muslims. 

Built on foreign soil, the detention center allows the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques or, more accurately, torture measures that many consider “the product of systematic U.S. government abuse".

The incident of 9/11 affected Muslims’ image very badly at the same time and it posed different challenges to the subsistence and sustenance of the Muslims of America, in particular, and the Muslims of the world in general. 

American POWs in North Vietnam lining up for release on March 27, 1973.

The Other side:

Tables were turned in Vietnam.

The US prisoners of war in North Vietnam were subjected to extreme torture and malnutrition during their captivity. 

Although North Vietnam was a signatory of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949, severe torture methods were employed.

The aim of the torture was usually not acquiring military information. Rather, it was to break the will of the prisoners of war, both individually and as a group.

The goal of the North Vietnamese was to get written or recorded statements from the prisoners that criticized U.S. conduct of the war and praised how the North Vietnamese treated them.

Such POW statements would be viewed as a propaganda victory in the battle to sway world and U.S. domestic opinion against the U.S. war effort.

ends