We should hope that if Iran captures our pilot, they don't reciprocate with how we treat prisoners.

First of all, I wish the downed pilot good health and good fortune. But we must acknowledge the outcome effected on innocent Iranians from the bombs that he was there to drop on them as he now finds him/herself at their behest.

The statements by the Council on Foreign Relations President Emeritus once again display a hubris that forms the mindset that causes us to make bad foreign policy and military decisions. He said that the type of treatment Iran gives the downed pilot, if captured, will be a signal to the world to change its impression of the regime.

We should be honest with ourselves. Only indoctrinated Americans believe that we are the bastion of humane treatment, either now or in the past, towards our prisoners or others. We have the propensity to do wrong, no less than Iran, and by body count, much worse than Iran. Let's recall just a tiny few.

• Chattel Slavery that lasted for centuries

• Indigenous genocide

• My Lai Massacre

• Panama invasion (10,000 dead)

• Abu Ghraib prison

• Trump's concentration camps and abuse of immigrants

• ICE thugs’ attacks on citizens and immigrants

• American complicity with Israel in flattening Gaza

We need to display some humility and finally attempt to atone. It will set us free instead of being the pariah the world fears. We are currently the most violent country externally and internally on the planet. We just do ot antiseptically and with better marketing.