I know the left will call me an evil fascist, but I'm not outraged by the photographs showing Iraqi prisoners being mistreated and humiliated by American prison guards. Disappointed? Yes. I'm disappointed that such a breakdown of order and discipline occurred in the finest army in the world. The guilty parties should be punished for besmirching their uniform.
We should never condone such behavior, but by the same token, we shouldn't make such a big deal out of it either. Every group has bad apples. Saint John Kerry's most honorable Vietnam Veterans Against War had members who advocated assassinating members of Congress. The left would never allow that to paint the entire anti-war movement, though. Just ask them. Their mission was honorable and they were a force for good in this country. (Pardon me while I gag after writing that last sentence.)
As far as this behavior harming our reputation in the Arab world, give me a break. A big majority of the Arab street hates us anyway. Who cares if that majority goes from 65% to 75%? Anyone who TRULY believes we can make these people like us is living in fantasy land. In any event, Arabs treat each other worse than those few soldiers treated those men. Remember, this is a society that condones honor killing of a female family member who is raped.
We should condemn the behavior of these prison guards, but for the reason that we are Americans and we are supposed to be better than this. What should matter are OUR standards of decency. Yes, I said ours. International standards of decency shouldn't matter. The Geneva Convention shouldn't matter. All that should matter is the fact that our troops should always remember that they are Americans and that they represent an honorable country. They should behave accordingly.
I'm disappointed and aggravated that these soldiers didn't remember that, but I'm not outraged. Are you?
6 comments:
I am just wondering how far up the chain of command the punishment should go. I remember the Tailhook incident where senior military officers lost their rank, their jobs, their pensions and their reputations while at the same time the president of the US was doing worse in the Oval Office. Should the colonels and generals in charge of the camps be punished also? Until we know for sure just what training these guards received and who was responsible for that training or lack of same then I think that we need to shut up until we get all the information together to be able to make well reasoned decisions in the matter. Yes there should be punishment. I agree with you that disappointment is a better description of my feelings in the matter than what I see in the media. BTW on another topic why are the media not going after JFK when he testified to Congress that he committed atrocities. Just asking. I think I already know the answer.
I am not outraged one bit. A fine piece of work Steve. Send it to Cal Thomas. Ask him to print it for you.
Steve, if you are facist, so am I..I said almost the same thing about the prisoners being abused as you did. I said I did not condone it, but will not condemn our MPs who did it..And I am outraged, but at the liberals who are loving this..Shame on them!
I'm angry for the reasons you gave, and for the sheer stupidity of those troops, who knew they were also being scrutinized for any mindless error--and this went beyond that.
Even so, as General Kimmit, President Bush and even John Kerry stated, we should not judge our entire military on the reprehensible actions of a few.
I agree with you, what the MP's did was bad, but we don't need to make such a big deal out of it. The war issue is controverisal enough, do we really need to add fuel to the fire by putting all those photos on tv and in the papers. As a liberal i think what happened was wrong, but i'm smart enough to know that making this big of a deal of it will only make things worse. This kind of thing has happen many times before in war but we never made such a big deal of it (but then again, we didn;t care as much about human rights back then as we do today). I'll bet most Iraqis don't even know that that happened. I just hope that the guilty parties get punished accordingly for disgracing their uniform and treating prisoners in such an inhuman way.
What outrages me most is the carte blanche we have given to the mainstream media to solely decide which images are appropriate to publish and which images are "too sensitive". The MSM quickly stopped airing the images of American citizens jumping to their deaths from a burning World Trade Center, claiming that the images were "too sensitive"; they refused to show the video of Daniel Pearl being murdered by Islamic terrorists; they selectively censored the images shown of the American contractors who were burnt alive, dragged from vehicles, kicked, mutilate, decapitated and hung from a bridge over the Euphrates; yet we've seen non-stop images of the prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib, images which endanger the lives of our service members and all Americans, and promises of more prisoner abuse photos and video to come. I'm not advocating that the press be stifled, but simply that they report ALL of the atrocities equally - those committed AGAINST Americans as well as those committed by Americans; It's time we demand that the mainstream media stick to REPORTING the news, not censoring it to suit their agenda.
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