Why are there not protests in the streets over this? What is wrong with us? Have we become so complacent, so jaded and cynical that we can rationalize this away? Or are we just too scared to jeopardize what we’ve worked for to challenge anything in this budding fascism we call America?
And in the end, does it really matter?
I don’t have much affection for Islam, mostly because it wants to burn me at the stake, but this kind of treatment, even of an enemy, is just plain wrong.
Maybe many people are too stunned? I think that it’s going to lead to real fury very soon. The combination of the actual abuses and the responses of Bush and Rumsfeld especially are explosive. At least I hope so.
Start adding murder and rape to the list (which is already happening) and even the conservatives who feel the ‘context’ justifies a lot of it might back off. But perhaps that’s giving them too much credit.
A lot of true colors are beginning to show – even more clearly.
I’ve already written to my own congressman – and am looking for more to do.
Hi Susan,
I’d hope so but I very much doubt that it’s just that people are too stunned. There was an article about the town where the reserve unit responsible for most of the abuse is based in this past Sunday’s Washington Post. Here are a couple of paragraphs I thought were telling:
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Down the road at Pete’s, a bar next to the volunteer firehouse, a potato sack stamped with images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein hangs on the wall. “Terrorist Body Bag,” it reads. “Stuff wretched remains in and send to hell.”
“Why do we care?” bartender Lisa Llewellyn, 37, called across the bar. “We just had a guy come back without a head, and we’re worrying about [Iraqi prisoners] being naked?”
“I think it’s all a hoax,” said Kevin Pratt, 44, an air-conditioning contractor and volunteer fireman. “[President] Bush and Rumsfeld really didn’t care” about prisoner treatment in Iraq, he said. Now, “they’re blaming everything on the 372nd.”
“They thought they were being heroes, breaking these people down,” said Pratt’s friend, Jim Lough, 51, of Cresaptown.
“But because our people took pictures . . . they’ll come back in shame.
[snip]
In her home at the Garden City trailer park near town, Carmel Daniels put away groceries and admitted to mixed feelings.
“What I’ve read we supposedly did to them still doesn’t seem as bad as burning people alive, cutting them apart, dragging them through the street and laughing,” said Daniels, 48, referring to attacks on four American civilians in Fallujah on March 31.
“Yes, it’s wrong,” she said. “But look, we need to get out of there. Things are getting too out of hand.”
In a town where about a third of residents are unemployed, where poverty levels are among the highest in the state — where it seems everyone knew Brandon Davis — “I think it’s just a big deal over nothing,” said Jimmy Linaburg, who runs C&J Cycles on Warrior Drive.
“I’d rather be naked than dead,” he said. The Iraqi prisoners in the photos, he said, “are alive, just humiliated.
“Every stinking day I’m humiliated.”
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I think that there are a scary number of people who 1) actually believe that there is some connection between Iraq and the events of September 11, 2001, and 2) who believe that it really is OK to treat our “enemies” like this.
In some ways, I’m really surprised that this hasn’t happened sooner. Think about it: 450 loosely disciplined reservists most of whom are functioning in an MOS for which they were not trained guarding 7,000+ actively hostile prisoners; it’s a recipe for disaster.
I think, though, that in terms of politics the Dems are going to have to handle this very, very, very carefully. After all, not all of the troops over there are this kind of scum.