lornamatic |
4.30.2004
Watch that last one, especially; we'll be hearing his name more in the weeks to come. So, about those photographs of Iraqi civilians. How should the American soldiers be punished? How could anyone torture others in this way, much less an American soldier. Are you confused? Are you outraged? Maybe you shouldn't be. And perhaps the soldiers who abused their authority as guards shouldn't be held completely accountable for their actions. They are victims, in their own right. Now news reports are coming out, with reports that the soldiers had never been trained properly, nor even educated about adhering to the Geneva Convention. Were they educated about the psychology of imprisonment? Controlled psychology experiments have been performed on healthy American civilians, to observe the frightening changes that take place when people are granted power over their peers. The Stanford Prison Experiment is perhaps the most important example. After five days: At this point it became clear that we had to end the study. We had created an overwhelmingly powerful situation -- a situation in which prisoners were withdrawing and behaving in pathological ways, and in which some of the guards were behaving sadistically. Even the "good" guards felt helpless to intervene, and none of the guards quit while the study was in progress. Indeed, it should be noted that no guard ever came late for his shift, called in sick, left early, or demanded extra pay for overtime work.Reading all these studies and articles, I can tell myself that these soldiers, just kids, really, stuck in the desert, are lost and without guidance - that they were simply doing the best they could given the circumstances. I can almost convince myself that it's just a function of human psychology, and that the majority of the blame needs to be placed further up the chain of command. Almost. Out of everything I've read, the following quote is by far the saddest, because it makes me realize that the smiling Sally Fields lookalike (shown pointing at naked captives, and posing with her thumbs up), was brought up by an ignorant mother with no sense of ethics, responsibility, or compassion. From MSNBC: A Sun reporter on Thursday showed a photo of one of the nude prisoner scenes to Terrie England, who recognized her daughter, reservist Lynndie R. England, 21, standing in the foreground with her boyfriend. It makes me remember that our soldiers are just regular people, a cross-section of our whole country. They're not necessarily people we should call heroes, no matter how much we might try. They're just people. Some of them are even thugs, and jerks. When we can convince ourselves it's OK to dismiss war crimes and sexual assault as "kid pranks," we've crossed a line. At least we can still look up to Pat Tillman. As long as you're willing to overlook the felony assault charges. The only hero in this story is the soldier who was brave enough or scared enough to break the silence, and speak out. And our leaders? "I didn't like it one bit," Bush added. "But I also want to remind people that those few people who did that do not reflect the nature of the men and women we've sent overseas. That's not the way the people are. It's not their character, that are serving our nation in the cause of freedom."History would disagree with President Bush's comments, and my expectation is that over the next few months, more accounts of similar misdeeds will be everywhere. This is a war, and this is the sort of thing that goes on during a war. Bush has my sympathies, really - getting re-elected now will be a challenge, when nearly anyone can tell their story instantly, to an audience of the whole world. Truth will be heard from a chorus of voices. There's no more holding it back.
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