It was not good watching 4 Corners tonight while the net was active on my
computer ... or Lateline, either!

I was boggled to hear the mother of one of those patsy-soldiers suggest that it was okay that the Geneva Convention might be violated! If I hadn't been so cross I would have laughed at myself at the way I jumped on line and immediately went and checked out the wording of the Geneva Conventions online at the UN. Article three of the first paragraph covers EVERY BLOODY THING those soldiers violated!

Now you know why I am cross. The men of her town fought in a war sixty years ago so that the Geneva Convention could be drafted and supposedly complied with by CIVILISED NATIONS. It really gets my goat that apparently the freedoms AND RESPONSIBILITIES that both the USA, Australia and the UK (among many others) signed to in those documents is being abrogated.

I feel for her. I keep trying to think how I would feel if it were my son in that situation, and I can almost hear her wail of "Why?" as it echoes in a black midnight of despair and fear for her son.
Yet I can also appreciate from various things I've read how easy it is for the veneer of civilised behaviour to fall away when one is under the stress of being in a war zone with inadequate leadership and strange political things happening, or perhaps being encouraged by 'their betters' to behave in a totally inappropriate manner. (So okay, this is seriously gilding the lily as to what I feel.)

I have read too much history and psychology not to be aware of the fact that each day, just like Captain Kirk said in "Taste of Armageddon" (and isn't that an appropriate title) "That's all it takes. Knowing that we are not going to kill today".
It shows up even more when ginmar, a serving US soldier, keeps posting about how she and members of her unit make that choice to make things better and uphold their honour, and are let down by those who do not achieve that choice.

These ordinary soldiers are at the bottom of the chain of command. Who had responsibility for them, and who had ultimate responsibility for allowing this to happen?
Who allowed/permitted/encouraged the chain of command to break down to such an extent that it is clear as mud (deliberately I fear) that those nice clean-cut links between directing the deployment and activities of soldiers and the responsibility for those orders being carried out have been obscured by the employment of civilians, rather than appropriately trained military interrogators and the lack of identifying the people who really are of interest from innocent just caught up in a sweep?

If it weren't so concerning, it would almost be funny that the civilian
organisation is called CACI (pronounced "kaki" by the presenter ) ... and it is amazing what that stuff sticks to when it gets tossed around - I don't think a sufficient quantity of it is being tossed around at the moment. And those to whom it is currently sticking are just patsy targets, chosen because they were easily conned into behaving in such an immoral way.

It is not necessarily why one does things. It is that one is responsible for the things that one does. These soldiers who have done these terrible things have to take responsibility for the things that they have done. Wimping out will only make them as guilty as the people who led them into 'temptation'. The ones who are really responsible for this abbrogation of honour and behaviour

I should calm down about all this ... but I think I am going to have to start writing dead wood missals to people soon - or bust!