Tuesday, May 04, 2004
Sparring again - if only we were debating a point of importance.
Golly, I didn't think I made an argument against sticking to our ideals. In fact I didn't. I'm just acknowledging that the path toward attainment of our ideals will inevitably be marred by serious misdeeds. Acknowledging that these are going to happen is quite distinct from "resigning" oneself to it and certainly from countenancing any abandonment of our goals or ideals. Cops will tell you that they expect crime to occur, even as they undertake every active measure to prevent it. To tell them that they have resigned themselves to crime is to insult them. The only great distinction here is that the criminals in this case were not civilians.
Nor was I making the case that this is the consequence of the ugliness of war, and I do wish my post had been read more closely. I was making the more basic argument that any army is going to have people in it who are capable of this kind of barbarity. In wartime or in peacetime. US troops over in Okinawa are under no fire whatsoever, but there still have been numerous rape cases attributed to them. It's a grim and ugly fact. I support our troops as much as anyone, but no army can ever be entirely composed of saints. Not in this era.
By all means, prosecute them to the fullest extent and investigate every goddamn prison we have there. Actually, raze Abu Ghraib to the ground and put a city park there - that we were using it at all is really distasteful, like setting up a postwar prison camp at Treblinka. Ensure that our soldiers know what is proper, what isn't, and what the penalties are. Tighten the penalties if need be. But have a plan for dealing with cases where the precautions failed. Not planning for the worst case scenario got us into this mess. I see no reason why we should repeat that error. Understanding basic human fallibility will get you a lot closer to attaining your ideals than assuming otherwise.
Golly, I didn't think I made an argument against sticking to our ideals. In fact I didn't. I'm just acknowledging that the path toward attainment of our ideals will inevitably be marred by serious misdeeds. Acknowledging that these are going to happen is quite distinct from "resigning" oneself to it and certainly from countenancing any abandonment of our goals or ideals. Cops will tell you that they expect crime to occur, even as they undertake every active measure to prevent it. To tell them that they have resigned themselves to crime is to insult them. The only great distinction here is that the criminals in this case were not civilians.
Nor was I making the case that this is the consequence of the ugliness of war, and I do wish my post had been read more closely. I was making the more basic argument that any army is going to have people in it who are capable of this kind of barbarity. In wartime or in peacetime. US troops over in Okinawa are under no fire whatsoever, but there still have been numerous rape cases attributed to them. It's a grim and ugly fact. I support our troops as much as anyone, but no army can ever be entirely composed of saints. Not in this era.
By all means, prosecute them to the fullest extent and investigate every goddamn prison we have there. Actually, raze Abu Ghraib to the ground and put a city park there - that we were using it at all is really distasteful, like setting up a postwar prison camp at Treblinka. Ensure that our soldiers know what is proper, what isn't, and what the penalties are. Tighten the penalties if need be. But have a plan for dealing with cases where the precautions failed. Not planning for the worst case scenario got us into this mess. I see no reason why we should repeat that error. Understanding basic human fallibility will get you a lot closer to attaining your ideals than assuming otherwise.
