Wednesday, May 19, 2004

 
"Open Letter" sent to "olimu" tonight

"Bush Veldt Carabineer Barbarians"

-back to blogging-or more accurately: "hard transcribing, this"
It would be easier to provide a link to Grenier's "The Uniforms That Guard Us" or simply paste the whole thing onto nromirror, but the former would direct the reader to a fee required archive and the latter would surely run afoul of "fair use." Interest in the article may have already peaked, but can't resist tossing out some more:

"Thomas[the defense counsel for the Carabineers], who has had only twenty-four hours to prepare his case, destroys the credibility of witness after, but the court remains unmoved. Everything indicates that the three men are being railroaded.
Thomas rises at last for his final summation, delivered with great eloquence. 'War changes men's natures,' he says. 'The barbarities of war are seldom committed by abnormal men, but by normal men under abnormal circumstances. They live every day with fear and anger and blood and death,[Abu Ghraib was subjected to frequent mortar attacks and I believe the guards may have suffered some casualties at the hands of the prisoners-AND coalition soldiers had suffered many unanswered deaths from explosions set off by out-of-uniform enemies]*and when rules are departed from by one side, they will be departed from the other.*[emphasis added-(I always wanted to do that)]Soldiers are not to be judged by civilian rules. Their actions, viewed calmy afterward, often seem un-Christian and brutal, but if all men who committed barbarous acts in war were court-martialed, courts-martial would be in permanent session.' He closes quietly, with the stunning statement, 'We ourselves are not fit to judge such men.'"
Of "Breaker Morant" Grenier writes, "It burns with a white rage against societies as a whole, from military leaders and chiefs of state to (more common in our time0 comfortable civilians in easy chairs, who send rough men out to serve their interests brutally, murderously (what is war?), and then -when circumstances change and in the exquisite safety and fasitidiousness of their living rooms they suddenly find these rough men's actions repugnant and disown them."
I confess that I, in my position of "exquisite safety," am inclined to "vote" for conviction(or at least of Morant and Handcock-acquitting Witton, given events as depicted in the film). But (and am very much aware of the "Buts" that regularly accompany the not-so-often condemnations of terrorism by Muslims and leftists)one wishes that our current CIC(or somebody in the upper ranks of civlian or military leadership) had acknoweldged much of the above extenuating circumstances before going on to say something like, "None of this, of course, excuses what was done at Abu Ghraib, and however much we might feel that we are not fit to judge such men - we must -and we will."
*******
Before the publication of the Abu Ghraib photos, it has been common knowledge that sleep deprivation had been deemed acceptable in the interrogation of those in our custody. Other than fleeting thoughts along the lines of "Jeepers, couldn't that lead to psychosis or even death?" I thought little and wrote nothing about it -again- from my position of "exquisite safety and fastidiousness." It seems likely at least some of the guards were(shamelessly slopping out metaphors here)set on a slippery slope where the lines of what was lawful and what was not were indistinct. -however much we may believe that we know barbarism(like Clark knew civilisation, and Frankfurter knew obscenity)when we see it. I agree with Mr. Derbyshire that one is "morally blind" if one does not see "barbarism" or if one prefers, evil, in the world. I think that he would agree that we will not always agree as to what is evil, but that evil does exist, apart from our imperfect understanding of it, and that to not oppose it to the best of our abilities, is truly cowardly and barbaric.

(name withheld because of cow..er, prudence -yeah, that's it -prudence)