Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

There are many good lines in this article by Bill Bennett from notes in his speech before the Claremont Institute’s President’s Club. I can only say this is the clearest, least accusatory explanation I’ve seen.

Our enemy is horrid, wicked, inhuman. Those are the adjectives for 9/11, and for 5/11. Not “inhumane,” as some of our soldiers acted at Abu Ghraib. Inhuman. The moral equivalence, and the adjectival equivalence, needs to end now.

He spends a great deal of time talking about how the prisoner abuse relates to many other happenings in this war. In one instant he quotes Daniel Patrick Moynihan, one of the best UN Ambassadors we’ve ever had, and a Democratic Senator who was American before he was Democrat:

“Am I ashamed to speak on behalf of a less than perfect country? Find me a better one. Do I suppose there are societies which are free of sin? No, I don’t. Do I think ours is, on balance, incomparably the most hopeful set of human relations the world has? Yes, I do. Have we done obscene things? Yes, we have. How did our people learn about them? They learned about them on television and in the newspapers.”

He also makes very clear how root causes have no link to societal status or environment. Lynndie England is the woman in all the abuse photos. Joe Darby is the soldier who turned in her and the others:

We know little of England, save that she grew up fairly poor and in a trailer park. As if that general report explains anything. It doesn’t. Here’s what we know, now, of Specialist Joe Darby: “Darby lived in a coal town, in a household headed by a disabled stepfather. To make ends meet, he worked the night shift at Wendy’s.” Bad actions, wrong actions, even evil actions, have nothing to do with economics, poverty, wealth, or any other artificial construct any more than good actions do. They have to do with moral fiber. Those who attacked us on 9/11, as much as those who planned and trained them, were upper- and middle-class Arabs. Bin Laden is wealthier than any of us can hope to be. Mohammed Atta drove a Mercedes. Al-Zawahiri is a physician from an upper-class family. Let’s hear no more of root causes; let’s speak, instead, of right and wrong and good and evil.

I’ve seen comments on left-leaning web sites about “These guards probably had never heard of the Geneva Convention.” As if that really meant anything in this case:

What happened at Abu Ghraib was not a matter of poor training or bad supervision. These were humans acting inhumanely. When I hear that they were not properly trained or supervised, I wonder if those who say that have lost their common sense as well.

I agree. But to answer the accusation, Everyone in the military receives training in the rules of the Geneva Convention, and those deploying get additional training. MPs get additional, recurring training. To make that accusation is to claim people in the military are idiots, which may be exactly what the speaker wants to say.

For all the whining we hear on television about how the military was covering things up, remember the military found out, began an investigation, and held the first trial of those involved in five months. How long has the Kobe Bryant case been running? Or Scott Peterson’s trial? Some will say this was fast-tracked after release in the press. Wrong. The dates were set before the first article came out. And the military court system doesn’t waste time. Court-martial panels are made up of people with other jobs to tend to, and they have little sympathy for circus clowns. I’ve sat on them. I’ve been part of military trials where someone’s life is changed drastically because of choices they made. You want the truth. Period. You are dealing with someone’s life, and it is important to exactly understand the circumstances. Find that in a civilian court of law.

Bennet’s article is excellent, and heartily recommended.