Shaking head

With all the impending personal doom of the eviction, I got behind in the news and really haven't commented on the fiasco at Abu Ghraib. I did some of my catching up by reading Back to Iraq 3.0, which also has some commentary on some photos being put forth as real (but pretty certain to be porn, for reasons listed here.) Even if the latter are fake, it seems certain that the photos of the prison abuse are real, and it's the sort of spark that might touch off a powderkeg.

I've avoided most of the most graphic photos myself, simply because I'd rather not see anyone humiliated. I could certainly understand why this will only inflame Iraqi passions against coalition forces. But I have to ask...

Okay, so the argument is that the soldiers involved with this case were not trained to deal with prisoners? Although that may, indeed, lead up the chain of command, one also wonders what on earth would cause a person to so let go of their basic human decency that they would abuse another human being in these ways, revel in it, and most significantly, be stupid enough to have pictures taken to document it.

Some would argue that in wartime, regrettable things happen (although technically, isn't the war over, or so our President told us?) We look at things like the behaviour of some ordinary Germans during the Holocaust or US soldiers in incidents such as My Lai (and yes, see, I said some; some also performed heroically; the vast majority are somewhere in the middle, whether in society as a whole or in the military itself.) Those regrettable things are still wrong, and crimes that should be prosecuted, apologised for, and most importantly, the system that allowed it to happen should be fixed to prevent further occurrences.

I suppose the longer any conflict drags on, the more likely that things will get muddier, that noble rhetoric will be sullied by real-life horrors, that it gets harder to tell 'good guys' from 'bad guys', and in the end it takes its toll on everyone involved. It has amazed me how innocent many Americans have been about the war, as if it wouldn't have real consequences. You'd thinked they'd never watched M*A*S*H. Or seen images of children running through napalm. Or buried loved ones to the sound of 'Taps'. I suppose I could understand if the country were just full of people too young to remember messy wars. I'm 37. I remember not knowing if my daddy would ever come back from Vietnam. I remember not being able to touch him if he were asleep because he'd come awake violently. And even though I was little during the war, there are plenty who remember Vietnam, Korea, WWII, and all the various 'conflicts' too. Do people just conveniently forget history? Or how it impacts people's lives?