Friday, May 07, 2004
Prison Abuse
Up till now, I've resisted commenting here on the prisoner abuse scandal. Amy Welborn referenced David Morrison's blog and I thought I should set the recoprd straight.
Mr. Morrison seems too ready to dismiss this inhumanity as a non-military sin. The Church has long realized the danger of doing violence to other human beings, even for an honorable cause. It wasn't for nothing that theologians came up with silly rules associated with Just War that even Faithful Traditionalists (TM) have set aside. Rules like no fighting on Christian feast days, no fighting with crossbows or other weapons that took you out of contact with your honorable adversary, stuff like that.
I've been told the slaughter of 100,000 Iraqi troops retreating from battle in 1991 was a tactical necessity. Perhaps from a military standpoint it was. But isn't it convenient that a fighter pilot is flying too fast and too high to see white flags or the faces of defeated soldiers getting pounded into a pulp of sand and blood? Was this somehow less a torture for the wives and children of these poor saps, losing their men in a hopeless fight? Did the winning pilots high-fiving and celebrating back at the base have a civilian root, too? They got it from Joe Montana and Michael Jordan, so it can't be military, right?
This kind of torture is exactly what SOA students brought back to their own countries after their sojourn in Georgia. Perhaps Mr Morrison can read a distinction between "true" military honor and "deviant civilian" behavior. But this is the same military culture than slapped fannies in Tailhook, and every odd-numbered year or so seems that it can't keep its hands off female cadets at the academies. And if some soldiers cannot honor their own comrades (despite being the other gender), how can we be surprised that they will resist the urgings of CIA spooks to have a little fun.
I'm glad this incident makes people feel uncomfortable. It should. It shows some people have something more valuable than a spine. It's called a conscience.
