Robert Kagan addresses the Iraqi prisoner abuse in a very lucid, clear-eyed, and sober analysis. What his piece points to is an untenable position for the Kerry Campaign and the American Left (morons and their oxymoronic petri dish). I'll admit, it is rather unseemly for me to criticize Kerry for something he didn't do (especially when these instances of abuse reflect on all Americans and will lead to a tectonic shift in the Global War on Terrorism), but what's salient here is not Sen. Kerry's similarity to a character from the Lord of the Rings, but he, emblematic of the American Left, is incapable of doing anything to ameliorate this horrible event, and if anything, will only exacerbate the situation with his short-sighted, amoral, and dissonant strategies for politically expedient gain.
Kagan contends that John Kerry's response to the philosophical question:
Does the responsibility for wartime atrocities lie with their immediate perpetrators or does it lie within a "system" that permits and even encourages such depredations?
Is pure Kerry, schizophrenic, opportunistic, and profoundly shallow:
On the one hand, the candidate faults "some American troops [who] under some circumstance have engaged in behavior that ... is absolutely unacceptable." On the other, he assures that "if I were president, we'd have a very different set of activities going on in Iraq today"--the none-too-subtle implication being that the abuses amount to an authentic expression of American policy.
Notice, says Kagan, that Kerry cannot be critical of the troops -- because, after all, he "supports" them -- and with weak numbers on national security, it would be suicide for him to do so. Instead, to understand Kerry's dissonance, we have to turn back to (what else?) Vietnam, and since we are talking about soldier misconduct, specifically to the My Lai massacre.
(NOTE TO BABY BOOMERS EVERYWHERE: VIETNAM IS OVER. YOU DIDN'T GET THE MEMO BECAUSE YOU WERE TOO BUSY GETTING HIGH. LET IT GO ALREADY.)
So, Lieutenant William Calley, the commanding officer in charge of this war crime was court-martialed, and 79% of the American people disagreed with the verdict, including one John "Effing" Kerry. Kagan:
As it happens, one of the voices raised in Calley's defense belonged to John Kerry. The responsibility for My Lai, Kerry said in congressional testimony, rested not with Calley, but "with the men who designed free fire zones ... with the men who encourage body counts." Lest anyone miss the point, Kerry told an audience at the New York Stock Exchange, "Guilty as Lt. Calley might have been of the actual murder, the verdict does not single out the real criminal. Those of us who have served in Vietnam know that the real guilty party is the United States of America."
We've noted before that Kerry is
a self-admitted war criminal who murdered non-combatants because he was just following orders (and whose political philosophy equates communism, democracy and benevolent dictatorship on the basis of their status of a welfare state). This is why Kerry cannot deal with this issue: he himself is complicit in such behavior, has apologized for it in the past, and thus, cannot address this issue as it should, a moral question.
The American Left has long been known for their allergic reaction to any morality other than theirs. Their value system is constructed around deterministic materialism and the fetishization of victims as symptoms of the inequities of the world, expiating any and all of the responsibility that they bear for their actions. (It really is one of the truly vicious and terrible ironies of the modern world: the ideology of the Left, which purports to seek justice for the marginalized of society is fundamentally impotent to hold anybody accountable for their actions and promote responsibility.) To this end, they have invented the Vietnam Veteran Myth® -- the war was evil, the actions of soldiers were evil, but the veterans were innocent -- because the government made them do it!
The VVM® was necessary to innoculate the Left from accusations of being "un-patriotic" as well as justify their claim to the levers of power in Washington. When we marched with those North Vietnamese flags and spat on veterans calling them baby-killers, one can almost heat them say, it's because the Nixon administration made us do it -- after all, we loved the sinner, but hated the, er, uh, nevermind. In fact, there are numerous myths which have cropped up in the public discourse to innoculate the Left for their anti-American activities, among those the "Dissent is patriotic" bullsh!t. Dissent is neither patriotic, nor is it un-patriotic. Dissent is subversive, however, and while it has nothing to do with patriotism, the conflation of dissent and un-patriotic actions are understandable, given that there is a significant overlap between a desire to change government policy and institutions and undermining national objectives. But I digress.
The post-Vietnam Left has embraced the VVM®, so that they can remain consistent with their core beliefs, viz., society is resonsible for man's ills, war -- all war -- is bad (some more than others), and yet not alienate large segments of the electorate. Which pretty much explains the raison d'etre of the Kerry candidacy, viz., that as president, he wouldn't put Americans into "atrocity-producing situations" only to be criminalized, unlike his own hero/criminal past. Kagan:
Kerry's insistence that none of this would have transpired "if I were president" blames the mission that filled Abu Ghraib [sic] with prisoners as much as it blames the soldiers who betrayed that mission. Again, this makes perfect political sense. But it hardly provides an adequate response to the moral questions raised at Abu Ghraib [sic].
Moral questions? Morality cannot exist without responsibility. This is the rot at the heart of the American Left -- we are all determined by society, made and shaped by our conditions such that, we do not truly bear any guilt for our actions, because, the devil/government/society/television/rap music/lead paint made me do it. I'm not responsible for my actions, because I've been institutionalized, even when the very institutions which are seen as culpable have laws which specficially proscribe those kinds of actions:
The candidate's blame-the-mission-more-than-the-perpetrators stance relieves the guilty of the burden they so clearly bear, and, to the extent it identifies any moral agency at all, locates it in a supposed policy that--whether measured by the Uniform Code of Military Justice or the Old Testament--it is every soldier's duty to disobey.
Which brings us back to morality. "I/he/they/we was/were just following orders" is not the position of a moral man. It is how it is possible for the guilty to look themselves in the mirror, kiss their wives, and raise children. What has transpired in Abu Gharib prison is immoral and monstrous and calls for certain and swift justice. If we cannot accomplish punishing sexual abuse by our citizen-soldiers against the citizens of another nation, we cannot claim to have the moral stature necessary to promote democracy, justice, and peace throughout the world, much less in our own country.
How can you have democracy, justice, and peace, if you are not absolutely responsible for your own actions? We cannot leave this task to the American Left -- they are incapable of this charge because they do not understand it. Which is why the American Left feels it must blame the Adminstration for these crimes. Which is why the American Left is unaccountable. Which is why the American Left is amoral. Which is why the American Left is un-American.
Kerry cannot find a proper solution to this problem precisely because he has made the Vietnam Veteran Myth® the moral ground of his candidacy. We should fear anybody who claims that no one is responsible while simultaneously seeking the greatest responsibility of all. Yes, he did horrible things, you can almost hear a spokesman say, but it's okay, because he was just following orders, so you can feel confident choosing him, because you'll just be following his orders. Big Brother Kerry has no moral center, and neither will you.
Let us pray that Bush is a greater man than Kerry. Let us pray that he can live up to his own rhetoric, and punish the "evil-doers". Let us see if he is as moral a man as he claims. Let us pray that American President does not "feel our pain" and sweep the human wreckage under the rug, rather that he initiate the ruthless pursuit, prosecution, and punishment of those responsible. And, if he is reponsbile, then God help us: We will all just be following orders.
