Mr. Lieberman, we are Americans, not terrorists. We respect personal liberty and dignity (usually). For you to compare our obligation of contrition for the abuse of prisoners in Abu Gihraib prison to that of the September 11 perpetrators and planners is to negate our stature in the global community. It is almost akin to saying that the United States adopts a much milder variation of Sharia law. Eye for an eye, apology for apology.
True war is hell, and all is fair, etc. But when fighting a war of the hearts and minds, you don't gleefully display a lack of concern for your objective. The U.S. Armed forces aren't part of a repressive regime. They're supposed to be liberators, right? The images and nuance of the abuse these Iraqi citizens endured under control of the American liberators is not only troubling because of the sexual and humiliating type of abuse, but because it illustrates the systemic lack of structure in the operation over there. To say that these were an aberrant few is to elevate naivete almost to the level of that our President possesses. Anyone who has studied the Stanford prison experiment understands that this dynamic between prisoners and guards isn't unusual.
Some of our right-wing fanatics have likened the scenes depicted in the images to secret society or sports hazing incidents. At first mention, one might be extremely offended by the comparison, viewing it as an excuse, but if you think a little more about it, it isn't that far off. After all, we've taken college-age young men and women, placed them in an unsupervised situation where they have absolute power over their subjects. These were obviously considered no more than pranks by the perpetrators. Given time and leeway, just what would you expect? Now I'm not saying that college-age men and women are prone to such behavior, but I do think that differences in maturity are still evident from that age to the next. There should have been more adult supervision.
What is deeply troubling here is that Senator Lieberman is towing the "war is hell" line, and allowing those in charge to do the next stanza of the Unaccountability Rag. What happened in Abu Gihraib happened because there was no supervision. There was no supervision because there is no comprehensive management plan. There is no management plan because that structure is lacking. Structure is lacking because the Bush Administration operates on emotion only. "This is a moral war, the world will be better off, Iraqis will welcome us with open arms", so to hell with planning for any other contingencies.
Senator Lieberman is a bright man, but he too has let emotion push out the intellect. It was positively imbecilic for him to mention that we never received an apology from the September 11 planners in context with the discussion of these abuses.
Maybe Senator Lieberman is seeking an opening in Rush's EIB network lineup for his retirement years.
