The Iraq prison abuse story keeps spinning out of control and it seems to highlight what is wrong with humans today.
From conservative pundits comparing the abuse to fraternity hazing to the family of one soldiers who is in the pictures telling the world that the soldier was just following orders to Secretary Rumsfeld sitting on the reports for months, it seems everyone involved or who have knowledge of the abuse don’t want to take personal responsibility.
The National Guard unit that lacked the proper training and who carried out the orders given by superiors who should have known better will end up taking the worse heat while the commanders in charge all the way to the Secretary will go on in their jobs as if the incidents were just bumps in the road.
I wrote the following in a letter to the editor of my local paper to express how I really feel about the issue:
I am writing today to comment on the Dispatch editorial “Keep it in perspective The U.S. will atone for its human-rights sin, but what of the world�s other sinners?” and the related Cal Thomas column “Keep despicable photos in context of a despicable enemy” that appeared in the May 7, 2004 edition of the Dispatch.
It is simply unconscionable for anyone to even try to rationalize the despicable actions of the soldiers who appeared in those Iraqi prison photos.
Humiliating and abusing prisoners, not just POWs, is dead wrong. There is no justification nor rationalization for those actions.
All though the build up to the war and even during the war the Bush administration took great pains to explain that our values and actions were better than that oppressive regime in Baghdad that we needed to remove. Was that a lie too? It seems it is to the average Iraqi, not to mention the other Muslims in the Middle East, who saw the pictures of the smiling and laughing Americans while “playing” with their charges. What better recruiting material is there than having proof that Americans are despicable people.
The argument used by the Dispatch and Thomas that they did it first or what about the other people just doesn’t hold any water.
Remember our playground days when the bully would cause you to lash out and hit him? You almost always got in trouble for hitting him yet you might say to the Principal, “He hit me first…” or “Why am I in trouble? They were doing the same thing…” Did such excuses work. Of course not and it doesn’t work here for this issue.
You leave the moral high road as soon as you start the “Yes, but…..” explanations. We should know better. That’s what we tell everyone else.
