Flailing around

It's interesting watching continued conservatives response to the Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal. I mean the liberal position is pretty straightforward; that abuse was unacceptable, and should be investigated to ensure that it doesn't happen again.

The conservative response is that of course the abuse was wrong, but let's not pay too much attention to it. Oh, and apparently it's now time to get all the woman out of the military (or at least most of them).

That's Cal Thomas's argument today.

"The one dirty little secret that no one appears interested in discussing as a contributing factor to the whorehouse behavior at Abu Ghraib is coed basic training and what it has done to upset order and discipline."

Actually plenty of people have discussed it, but it's hard to talk about coed training causing this problem without analyzing exactly what happened. Several of the soldiers have claimed they were under orders to do some of the things they did. There is a New Yorker article that suggests that Rumsfeld might have written a memo approving of the abuse.

Such abuse might arise from another systematic problem; Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld's disdain for the CIA and, apparently, caution. Prior the war for Iraq, the CIA and the State Department made some wild predictions. Something about conquering the country with ease, but finding it difficult to hold on to? Rumsfeld believed instead what we might call the flowers and candy theory, which is that the Iraqis would be so grateful to us that they would give us flowers and candy.

Seems like the CIA and State Department were a bit more right than Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.

But getting back to the matter at hand; did woman serving in the military cause the Abu Ghraib Prison Abuses? No. Was it Former President Clinton's misbehaver with Monica Lewinsky that taught our soldiers that a little hanky panky was ok? No. Was it the constant negative news reports by the liberal media that disheartened our troops so that they would misbehave? No. Was it Cartoon Shows like Family Guy or The Simpsons that portray an anarchic and post modern world that caused abuse? No.

In fact we don't know for sure what caused the prison abuse scandal; although there are some indications that the rot may have climbed a little bit higher on the chain of command than Mr. Thomas would like us to consider. At any rate, certainly seems like it's worth investigation.

Of course it's hard to investigate and ignore at the same time, but I guess that's the price you pay.