Wednesday, May 05, 2004

Damage Control: It's good that Bush is realizing the gravity of the prisoner-abuse scandal and has agreed to personally make an appearance on Arab TV. But I suspect even that won't quell the anger that those pictures surely cause. We're going to have to publicly rebuke and punish the American offenders. Then all we can do is hope that the outrage sufficiently lessens.

While the instances of abuse aren't indicative of the character of all our armed forces, I believe this is more widespread than has been initially admitted. What concerns me is the soldiers who were guarding and interacting with the prisoners weren't told ahead of time how to treat the Iraqis. That is a major failure of higher officers in the military, and the responsibility rests on their shoulders.

You wouldn't send a soldier into battle who isn't properly trained on not only battlefield tactics but also the rules of warfare. By the same token, you don't give prison responsibility to a grunt who hasn't been taught that abuse is illegal and won't be tolerated.

I've never served in the military, but I can imagine it's psychologically tough at times to distinguish right from wrong. You're job is to kill your enemy to protect yourself, your friends, and your country. To do that, you have to dehumanize your enemy to a certain degree in order to maintain your own sanity.

That's where officers should come in and set strict guidelines of what's appropriate and inappropriate. Apparently, somebody in the high ranks screwed up.