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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Whether Graner is "receiving exactly what he doled out..." is not the point.
The point is, that NO ONE from the Bush Administration has lost even so much as his executive bathroom privileges as a result of the sanctioned-from-on-high abuse and torture of prisoners.
Who is OK with that?
If Donald Rumsfeld, and others in Graner's chain of command, had been prosecuted and imprisoned, which clearly should have happened, I would not feel too much sympathy. This has not been the case and it seems most unlikely that this will happen now.
I suggest that, considering the harshness of his confinement, simple fairness would now requires some relief.
Bush is no Truman.
If you don't want to be a scapegoat and patsy for Uncle Sam, don't enlist.
After reading this ridiculous piece of writing I was looking forward to writing a brilliant letter about how the actions of one Charles Graner were not related in any way with the actions of his superiors. But I need not do so as my predecessors here have already admirably pointed out the folly of this story and of this man.
That he clearly either obeyed an unlawful order or that he has exhibited behavior no better than your local gang banger shows conclusively that he is deserving of whatever angst or pain he is currently enduring. How do we ask innocent individuals in Guantanamo to endure what we are giving to them if we do not with the same equivalence hold our own innocents to the same flame of idiocy and judgement??
The fact that the perpatrators of this inanity remain unpunished is apparently for the gods or perhaps the history books to resolve. But in no case does their escape from this pile of excresence dismiss or otherwise mitigate the inhuman and sad things that Charles Graner did.
And is it just me, or have I noticed a complete lack of understanding on his part of why what he did is so reprehensible- notwithstanding anything else whatsoever. His life sucks because he did things that were inhuman and pathetic- and he had the good fortune and the ability to say: NO!!! (Unlike the prisoners in his care...)
So here I say NO!!! To Mr. Graner- and those who would do what you did: I do not accept your actions, and if I were so unfortunate as to have been in your shoes in Abu Ghraib I can only hope that I would have done better. And if I did not do better I can only hope that I would be more graceful or less pathetic in my own downfall.
Mr. Graner please go away- somewhere along this collective journey of ours I lost the ability to care about you or your life. You are a reminder of why otherwise good Americans cannot always be trusted to make important decisions- and this saddens me greatly. You are also a reminder in far to vivid detail of the inability of Americans in today's world to take and assume responsibility for thier actions. In sum you are an embarassment, and this article does nothing to further your cause. (Except perhaps to make you look like a hapless victim- which I do not believe you to be.)
I guess I did have something to say after all...
Cheers!!
dce
The issue of fairness here isn't that Graner got caught and sentenced. He is a war criminal and lucky he didn't get the death penalty.
What is unfair is that nobody else, particularly his superior officers and the architects of this policy, got prosecuted.
And why didn't they get prosecuted? Because the higher up you are in rank in the US, the less the law applies to you.
For example: Bush. He lied America into a war, he obstructed audits into government spending, he instituted a policy of torture, if there was a corrupt thing a president could do, he did it - right down to making contracts with the government dependant on which party you voted for.
But he didn't even get a stern word in Congress. Heck, he told the Democratic Congress to jump, they were in the air before asking how high.
Graner, on the other hand, was just a grunt, and hence subject to the full weight of the law.
Another example: Scooter Libby: The guy was implicated in treason, a death penalty offence. He got away with a book deal.
Again, if you look at lower ranked people who did crimes, well they didn't get off so lightly.
And you see it in the corporate world. If you poison someone's water, you get tried for attempted murder, if a big corporation does it? The most they will get is maybe a fine, chances are the Republicans will even argue against that - saying they want to protect people's jobs.
These bailouts: If you got sick and went broke, you would have your assets stripped from you and you would have to start again from scratch. Now if it is the big three auto manufacturers, or a major bank, well the worst you would get is a golden parachute.
About the only way a really rich guy can get into trouble is by non-tax fraud - because that is normally stealing from really rich guys. Stealing from everyone else? Hey that is capitalism.
The moral of the story? America, if you are rich or of high enough government rank, is the land of the free-to-do-anything-you-want without consequences.
If you are not, well you better watch yourself.
The original idea of America was to avoid this, because this is essentially what feudalism was about, but because dumb-ass Republican pond-scum-sucking inbreeds felt that their religion, or their right to damn people for disagreeing with them, or their fear of science, or their wish to stick it up the noses of the people who happened to live in cities was more important than maintaining even vague equality before the law, you now have a society where you have an established nobility.
Have fun with it.
There is more to this than the "He was given orders from above," and "I was just following orders," narrative that frames this issue. There is a psychological reordering of soldiers in the boot camp process, that breaks down their natural inhibitions to kill, torture, and accept the grotesque realities of war as normal. Everyday soldiers, not necessarily sadists, are susceptible to allowing an authority to usurp their own dormant moral code, resulting in war crimes. All American conflicts show evidence of war crimes. The actions at Abu Graib pale in comparison to many during the Vietnam conflict. We are too quick to point the finger of individual responsibility (i.e. Granger, Bush, Rumsfeld..,) and should realize there is a system that creates these scenarios of war crimes. Understanding the confluence of events and conditions necessary to incubate these crimes, will help us avoid them in future conflicts. Sweeping war crimes under a rug by 'holding the individual accountable' or avoidance, as we as a nation have done during all conflicts, only results in the continuation of the problem.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
