PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - (KRT) - Don't destroy the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Preserve it to remind of man's potential to abuse his fellows. Use it to caution against torture and murder by any state.

In May, President Bush said that he would destroy Abu Ghraib "as a fitting symbol of Iraq's new beginning."

Good idea, I thought. Raze the horrible place, which seemed to make its every warden depraved. Purge the uncomfortable memories of the American jailers who heaped dishonor upon their country. Help Iraqis to forget Saddam Hussein's far more ghastly crimes.

I thought that before I traveled to Cambodia and visited Tuol Sleng, the infamous interrogation and torture center, where the barbarous Khmer Rouge communists who ruled from 1975 to 1979 held 16,000 of their countrymen. Only seven prisoners lived to tell about it.

I changed my opinion about Abu Ghraib as I walked the haunted chambers where the Khmer Rouge pitilessly bludgeoned and electrocuted their victims. I realized that such emblems of man's inhumanity should be preserved so that future generations may learn from them and act upon their knowledge. So that the world won't forget. So that the truth won't fade.

Some people need to see to believe. They can visit Tuol Sleng and know that Cambodia's genocide was no fiction. They can tour the German concentration camp at Dachau and develop a deeper understanding of the evil that was Nazism. Soon, they'll be able to see the Navy Mechanics School in Argentina, where the former military junta exterminated 5,000 of its enemies.

By the very same token, they should be able to see Abu Ghraib.

Any Cambodian could have been so unfortunate as to end up in Tuol Sleng, but it was principally reserved for those with skills, educations and money and their families. As many as 2 million Cambodians died in the genocide - more than 20 percent of the population. The slaughter ended with Vietnam's invasion and occupation, which overturned the dictatorship of Pol Pot.

Making a museum of a Tuol Sleng or a Dachau is no guarantee that mankind won't disgrace itself again. The Serbian massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in the former Yugoslavia demonstrates that. So does Arab-led Sudan's ongoing proxy war against its black Muslim citizens in Darfur, which the U.S. government estimates has claimed 30,000 lives and which imperils many more.

Nor does it guarantee that societies always will seek justice for the dead. Most of the Khmer Rouge's surviving top leaders haven't been tried, including Tuol Sleng's chief jailer, Kang Kek Ieu, known also as Duch.

Still, such places help to sensitize people. No one could see the hundreds of black-and-white photographs of Tuol Sleng's helpless and confused inmates, and the nearly 9,000 human skulls on display at Choeung Ek, and remain untouched.

Though he has promised to tear down Abu Ghraib, I hope Mr. Bush allows the Iraqi government to decide the prison's fate for itself. He probably wouldn't like to see the evidence of U.S. mistreatment of Iraqis juxtaposed against that of Saddam Hussein's atrocities. I wouldn't relish the prospect either.

But it would be a small price to pay for remembering.

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ABOUT THE WRITER

Timothy O'Leary is an editorial writer and occasional columnist for The Dallas Morning News. Readers may write to him at the Dallas Morning News, Communications Center, Dallas, Texas 75265; e-mail: toleary@dallasnews.com.

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© 2004, The Dallas Morning News.