Damon Agretto wrote:
And to do a little thread synthesis here, theHow strange that US soldiers misbehaving like they did in the Abu Graihb prison (for all I know also in all other totally shielded or even to us unknown prisons as well) are somehow exempted from this point of view. Probably because they are what they are. US soldiers acting under orders. So what made *them* do it. Are they also basically and intrinsically evil, like all German soldiers were evil, like the whole of the German population was assumed to be knowledgeble of the facts and thus basically evil? I mean the question stays the same, because the situation actually is the same. Abuse of imprisoned defenseless peoples for no other reason than that it was commanded by superiors, known to all who ever were near that scene and did nothing about it. Killing them is only the next step. The only difference this time is that pictures were taken, lots of horrible pictures, and that those got out into the world in mega speed time and onto a really big and interested audience.
discussions about Nazi Germany bear mentioning here as
well. We had already talked about German coercion with
regards to the Holocaust. The point is, that these
Germans KNEW what they were doing was immoral, but
chose to do it anyway (power and free will sometimes
are not the best combinations). If they had thought
kiling Jews was ethical there would have been real
consequences to a refusal to participate.
I wonder what would have happened if pictures of concentration camps had made it to as wide a public as the pictures of the Abu Graihb prison in as short a timespan, and before it really got abominable. Or more disturbing a thought, what would have happened if those pictures in Irak had never made it to the big public? Don't y'all wonder how things _really_ were in Vietnam and Korea and all them other little wars and bushfires, way back when pictures of inhuman or basically WRONG behaviour didn't have that easy and fast road back to the large public all over the world? I know I do.... wonder I mean. Would the bridge over the River Quay still have that nasty ring to it, that it does have now? Or how about the Taliban, would they have lasted as long as they did? The Polpot regime maybe? Would the world have cared more if pictures of massacres would have been on a live feed? Then agian Somalia was basically played out in front of cameras and nobody much cared for people being shot or being hacked to pieces back then.
Sometimes there is something to say for a world where ever person can be held accountable for all of their actions by everybody else during all of the time.
Sonja
ROU: Stages change, situations and choices to be made basically stay the same, outcomes differ
xROU: Similarities anyone?
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