Imagine it was your son. Stuffed with 200 other young men into a steel container and left to die a slow, horrifying death of dehydration and suffocation, pounding the walls of his airless tomb and begging for mercy, but receiving none from his captors. Newsweek's August 26 issue documents this terrible story of the Taliban surrender at Konduz, Afghanistan last year. It forces us to examine our own moral authority in this brutal war.

The surrender at Konduz had been carefully negotiated by Taliban and Northern Alliance leaders, with American Special Forces troops in attendance. Afghan and Pakistani fighters were to be allowed to return home. Arab Taliban soldiers were to be questioned first by Americans. But, Northern Alliance General Abdul Rashid Dostum apparently had different plans for his enemies.

Ignoring the Geneva Conventions on prisoners-of-war, Dostum's troops sealed hundreds of Taliban prisoners in airtight containers until they died agonizing deaths. Cynically violating the surrender terms, General Dostum betrayed the Taliban with the utmost cruelty. Not that any of this is unusual in Afghanistan. The Taliban had used the same method to kill captured Northern Alliance soldiers.

I am always stunned by the ability of human beings to treat fellow human beings with the most extreme inhumanity, particularly in wartime. When greed and lust for power drive human behavior, human rights suffer. We Americans, proud bearers of the banner of human rights, are far from blameless ourselves.

Look at the history of America's Westward Movement. Indians fought fiercely to protect their lands. The U.S. Army and would-be settlers fought just as fiercely to take those lands for themselves. Both sides acted with remarkable cruelty, as if their opponents were less than human.

One of Colorado's most infamous massacres occurred at Sand Creek, where Colonel John Chivington's troops ambushed a Cheyenne encampment, killing 133 Indians, mostly unresisting women and children. As Dee Brown reported in his classic book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Colonel Chivington screamed, "'Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians! I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God's heaven to kill Indians.'"

That is exactly what he did at Sand Creek, despite the Army's promise to the Cheyenne that gathering under the American flag, as they did, would guarantee their safety. One survivor reported that the victims were scalped by the soldiers and "'mutilated in the most horrible manner-men, women, and children's privates cut out.'" Clearly, depravity and betrayal are not just practiced by others.

But, today, we Americans abhor such inhumanity. Today, we must ask, what did we know about what was happening to the Taliban prisoners-of-war and what will we do about it? If we are fighting for democracy, human dignity and human rights, what do we do about allies who murder prisoners-of-war? It was easy when it was Slobodan Mlosevic, our enemy, who could be brought to justice in an international war crimes tribunal. Will we push for such a tribunal in Afghanistan, where we are struggling to build a democratic state among violent, warring factions?

If we do nothing, what does this mean for American prisoners-of-war captured in a potential conflict with Iraq? And, how do we deal with future internal power struggles when our intervention enables our allies to treat soldiers and citizens with unspeakable cruelty?

For the Cheyenne massacred at Sand Creek, there were no human rights activists to seek justice. But today, such inhumanity is unacceptable. If we are to be the world's human rights leader, we have to live by our own standards, even when the politics are extremely fragile, as they are in Afghanistan. While we may feel little sympathy for Taliban soldiers whose leaders harbored terrorists attacking our shores, their betrayal and murder should nevertheless horrify us all.

If we don't seek justice for others, we have no moral ground for demanding humane treatment and justice for captured Americans. If we aren't advocates for humanity and decency everywhere, we must wonder what we are we fighting for.