Monday, May 24, 2004

No Big Deal?

Rob Daumeyer at the Cincinnati Business Courier writes on why Abu Ghraib became a bigger deal that he thinks it deserves:
Abu Ghraib, the Department of Defense, Wall Street and just about every other institution you can think of, are being derided as symptoms of a debased, faded civilization.

To which I reply, stop with the crazy talk. That argument is emptier than the soul food line at the Republican National Convention.

Look, I'm not saying things are super terrifically splendidly great, but let's get serious. The Abu Ghraib torture -- or fraternity hazing, as Rush Limbaugh calls it -- isn't anything we didn't do in other wars. I shudder to think what we did with the few Japanese we managed to get our hands on. We just didn't have tiny little digital cameras and the Internet to duplicate them a bazillion times.
I think Rob's point on how what was done by Hitler or Stalin was worse than Abu Ghraib is "true", but the difference that apologists for Don Rumsfeld miss on this point is that it was our military. Rob is wrong, this is a big deal. He agrees that the situation was horrid and Rumsfeld and Co deserve criticism, but even though attention has been focused on this one prison, it still does not take away that our soldiers did this and did it knowingly. Another person's crime is horrible, but a crime your commit yourself is then end of one's moral stature.

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