When I was young and stupid, I married the wrong person.
The person I married was not and is not evil, yet she was the wrong person for me. I suffered for that bad decision, but it was purely a personal suffering, a consequence confined to myself and to those who loved me.
Today, I read about the verdict in the trial of Army Pfc. Lynndie England (as she is described in the news) as a result of her actions at Abu Ghraib.
The age she was during the commission of the acts for which she was convicted was roughly the same as I was when I made a poor choice in marriage.
This woman is now 22 years old, which although when I was that age would bristle at the statement I am about to make, is scarcely an age to fully understand the consequences of acts that are apparently endorsed by higher authorities.
In other words, the environment created by the actions (or lack of supervision) of her superior officers is at least as culpable in what occurred at Abu Ghraib as the actions that she herself committed.
Is the punishment that will be meted out to her superiors even potentially as grave as that she will face (a maximum of 10 years in prison), or is it limited to “ruining their careers”?
Somehow, I find the ruination of a career a wee bit less than a multiple-year prison term imposed upon someone who was 21 or less when the crime was perpetrated.
Accountability.
It depends upon how high up the ladder you are.
If you are the Secretary of Defense, you might suffer the indignity of receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
For a Private, you get to go to prison.
This is what we have come to.
I started another weblog, Radio Saigon, my “immoderate” weblog, to express my outrage upon matters such as this, but we have now gone beyond that, and even my “moderate” weblog Random Fate is insufficient, this has to stop NOW, and I don’t care who thinks this is “immoderate” when they cannot step outside their god-damned comfortable thinking-box.