Profound Regret?
The mind boggles at the sheer stupidity of people, their incapacity to fully understand the results of their actions. Even while they mouth the repercussions that result from actions undertaken in the innocence of egotistical stupidity, it is as though they are incapable of taking possession of their responsibility.For every action there is reaction. For every intelligent person on this earth there exists a bellowing horde of seriously stupid humanoids.
The Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq where so many Iraqi detainees were sent for interrogation, and which - in the unsavoury revelations of the sophomoric idiocy of the ill-trained and incapable soldiers of the U.S. army in Iraq - caused the United States so much embarrassment comes back to haunt them time and again.
The country which considers itself the conscience of the world, the country with inestimable high ethical and moral standards found itself defending military morons.
Instead of behaving beyond reproach in its professional behaviour as a trained corps of military personnel, those installed to guard Iraqi prisoners - many of whom were not enemy combatants, but simply there on suspicion, innocent perhaps of any malfeasance, but frightened prisoners of an invading army - entertained themselves at the expense of their country's already tarnished reputation.
Some of those accused of mistreating prisoners are still dining out on their fleeting fame. Lynndie England, so anxious to be accepted as 'one of the good old boys' that she happily succumbed to mortifying abuse of helpless men, submitted to an lengthy interview with the German magazine Stern. As reward for her scandalous conduct she was court martialed, and sentenced to 3 years' imprisonment.
"I can say I killed all these people", she said in the interview, estimating that the abuses at Abu Ghraib, in which she played such an outstanding personal role, was responsible for a bitterly violent backlash that resulted in the deaths of thousands of people.
"After the pictures [of prisoners being abused] came out, the insurgency picked up and Iraqis attacked the Americans and the British and they attacked in return and they were just killing each other", she said. Does not her command in understanding the extent of the fallout of the situation she helped structure compel readers to admiration?
Not that the United States enjoyed such a great reputation in the Muslim world to begin with, but with the desecration of Muslim sensibilities, the abhorrent behaviour of young uniformed Americans toward cowering, frightened prisoners, the contempt unleashed toward America in the mind-sets of violently outraged Muslims no doubt swelled the ranks of retributive Islamist militias.
Passions unleashed are not readily pacified. Her stupid, unthinking, egoistical antics, along with those of her Abu Ghraib cohort, were indeed responsible for a bloodthirsty backlash, one that is still resonating with a critical level of violence. Albeit now minimized, still sufficient to qualify that country as one of the world's most violently dangerous.
"I feel bad about it", she said. Well then, that's all right.
How bad? Remorseful? How badly can one feel to reflect on one's responsibility in an increased death toll in an atmosphere of hell on earth? She was a functionary in an occupying force. Her presence and her level of intelligence bespeaks the quality of the recruits representing that most powerful country on earth.
"Feeling bad" and "feeling nice", are such unqualified and simperingly-innocuous, meaningless descriptives. Bespeaking a mentality too dense to comprehend cause, effect, reality.
Labels: Realities, That's Life
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, March 20, 2008
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