Nature of Man vs Nature of Policies

Pointing fingers is as old and embedded in mankind as is the nature of man to act without moral. You can witness this in the current story on Iraq prison abuses playing itself out in media.

Something really bad happened. A bunch of soldiers, barely beyond their parents grasp in years, were given responsibilities far beyond their moral maturity, and through innuendo and the calamity of the moment reverted into sordid and cruel bullies.

As a young Marine I can remember how I too felt untouchable. Young people in military service are given the greatest power of all. To take life. Anything less than that, at the time you’re living it, almost seems OK. But what they did was not.

Then you have activists and drama-mongers who must have someone to blame – and they’re pointing their finger at the evil leaders in the Pentagon and their ‘policies of terror’. “Of course,” they say, “People don’t do these kinds of things on their own. Someone made them/taught them/forced them to do those terrible things!” “These were just sweet innocent, God-fearing men and women that we sent to war and you corrupted them!”

And of course, those guilty jump at the chance to take the mantle of wrongness from themselves and place it on someone/thing else.

Abuse, cruelty and meanness is around us all the time. Mankind is quite capable of doing such terrible things. That is the way it has been since the beginning of time. The difference for those soldiers in Iraq? Someone took pictures.