But now that punishment has been meted out in some fashion, and changes to systems and ideas surrounding prisons and the military have been put into operation, we can now look back and see, more or less, the bigger picture; we can look at it with 20×20 vision, and think about it more thoroughly.
I can’t realistically hope to touch on every point in the whole situation effectively-such an attempt could conceivably take months and thousands of pages of written work-but I will try to make you think about it in a perhaps a different light than you originally saw it.
The following hypothetical situation (commonly called the ‘Ticking Bomb Case’) I’m about to present to you has been used before by others during the controversy following the release of the pictures and other material into the public square, but I show it here in my own words so that I might ask you a few questions along with it-
Our intelligence agencies have discovered a serious threat: terrorists have smuggled and assembled the parts to a nuclear device inside the borders of the United States, and in a heavily populated area; if it detonates millions of innocents will die instantly.
However, we’ve had a lucky break: our intelligence agencies have captured a terrorist(s) that has information as to the bombs location, how to disarm it, and that it has time detonator. The prisoner(s) has revealed that the bomb will go off in 24 hrs. but will not reveal its exact location or how to disarm it.
Several attempts to interrogate the prisoner(s) and extract the vital information have failed-and it is concluded that the only conceivable way to disarm the bomb in time and save countless innocents is to put the prisoner(s) through real, physically painful and psychological torture-would you condone such torture to save those innocents?
A hypothetical, unlikely, worst-case scenario, I admit. But think about it-if you were against the interrogation and prison keeping methods used in Abu Ghraib, the presence of women soldiers when denuding Middle Easterners (or denuding them period), the pictures, etc., would you have been against those same methods and actions if the prisoners there had been involved in the ‘Ticking Bomb Case’?
I ask this question because many people who cite this occurrence in Abu Ghraib as an all new low for America and the Western world will not give a clear answer to this question. The people who regularly condemn and point fingers at our military as torturers and scum-of-the-earth for what happened refuse to consider this alternative scenario seriously.
If we’ve reached a new low, folks, it’s that we’re willing to say something is wrong sometimes-and when the situation changes, we change our opinion on that same thing we said was ‘wrong’ not a short while ago and say it’s ‘OK’; just so long as we look good, anything goes. It’s more commonly-and accurately-called ‘Situational Ethics’. Our ethics and morals change according to the situation.
Do the events at Abu Ghraib show a real problem with our society and military? Yes, but not so much as our reaction to those events does. Some say that it was all alright, others say it was completely wrong, some have mixed views: whatever your opinion on the situation was, we can’t even agree on what’s right or wrong anymore-we have no standards left in our country to decide the issue by.
How can I say that, you ask? Simple. The populace, the mob, our democratic society, called for punishment; and only two of those involved were chosen and used as scapegoats, while the other 40 or more kept their careers. And yet, in a ‘Ticking Bomb Case’ we might be willing to condone such actions?
How dare we sit and point the finger? How dare we say “this sort of thing is alright under these conditions, not alright under those conditions, and alright when we’re in that situation”? Either something is right-or it is wrong. I don’t agree with everything that happened in those prisons, but I won’t condemn our troops when we cry out against it at one moment, or we’re willing to go that far or farther just because we might find a nuke in our backyards. Either torture is right, or it’s wrong. Either stripping imprisoned people is right, or it’s wrong. The list goes on and on, but we can’t flip-flop on issues just to appease our own pathetic consciences for a little while, because when you open the door to something evil, you rarely ever shut it again.
We need a standard on all the issues and questions that we’re raised at Abu Ghraib: something that will apply every time we’re faced with a situation like this. Instead of pointing fingers at our troops abroad, let’s sit back and think why we get to point those fingers-because those troops are willing to die for us. The military as a whole did not commit these acts, neither did only two soldiers. Everyone who was involved should have been punished, and those who were not should be thanked for doing their duty to defend this land and its people because there is something here worth fighting for. Instead of condemning the men and women who had nothing to do with Abu Ghraib, let’s get back to the standards that made this nation great, and the virtues that guided the Founding Fathers when this nation was born.
Next time, instead of pointing fingers which-way-and-that, lets think about why it happened-there maybe more than meets the eye; in fact, we might even be a contributor.
Who knows? Maybe next time we’ll be quiet-and stick our hand back in our pocket…
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