One of the main purposes served by an organized society with rules (whether it's a modern civilization or a Neolithic tribal group) is to break the "cycle of revenge." No one and nothing can prevent you from having the feeling of outrage and hatred that comes from seeing a loved one killed willfully. It's genetically programmed in all social species, and in ALL warm-blooded animals when it concerns their own family.
If you catch someone killing your kin and you react violently out of instinct, most of us would cut you some slack. But if due to circumstances you get past those first moments and society is able to intervene, it's their duty to prevent you from exacting revenge.
Because what happens if you kill someone because of what they did to you? That person has friends and family, and regardless of what he did to you, they will feel the sense of instinctive outrage and they will want to seek revenge against you. It's the "Hatfields and McCoys," where ten generations later people are still killing each other and nobody knows or cares how it started.
Society -- whether an industrial civilization or a tribe of pastoral nomads -- must step in and apply the rule of law to the situation, to ensure that a culture of violence does not overwhelm their attempts to create a peaceful environment where people in neighboring societies can live safely.
If society abdicates that responsibility -- if the people who are supposed to be enforcing the rules engage in acts of revenge -- the whole system breaks down.
People who are entrusted with the care of prisoners -- the care of people who are suspected of committing acts of evil -- have the key responsibility to break the cycle of revenge. They must be stoic and neutral and wait for their society to rule on the guilt of the suspects and on their punishment. If jailers indulge in vengeance-taking -- even if, as in this case, it is less than lethal vengeance -- they are literally destroying society.
Yes, I'm sensitive to the argument that they saw their own brethren treated like livestock, something that one doesn't expect to see in a human settlement that dares to call itself a "city." Yes, I understand that these people are soldiers who were deliberately trained to be less sickened by violence and quicker to commit acts of violence than most of us would be expected or permitted to be. Yes, I know that jails are supposed to be run by people who are trained to run jails, not by MPs who are trained to break up bar fights and drag home drunken soldiers.
So I'm not prepared to sit in judgment on the individuals who perpetrated these atrocities. Let a court martial deal with it. Let the facts and extentuating circumstances be known and let some people who failed abysmally to execute their responsibilities and thereby humiliated our country be judged by people who are qualified to make that judgment. I won't second-guess them.
After all, as a nearly unwavering pacifist and foe of capital punishment, I can't help whispering, "yeah, but they didn't kill them."
What I do sit in judgment of is a society that allowed this to happen. We knew long ago that the US was going to have to administer Iraq in the role of an occupying force, not just a friendly bunch of helpers. We knew that would include having to administer jails located in places where the local population might be hostile to us and the inmates might raise the ire of even a trained and disciplined soldier. Why, therefore, in an operation so well organized that it provides hot meals, e-mail, and first-class medical service, didn't anybody foresee the need to provide trained jailers?
Whoever is responsible for that screw-up has a lot of explaining to do. It gives the impression that this occupation is run so as to only satisfy the needs of the occupiers, and that the people being occupied are, indeed, regarded as mere livestock. I don't want my country run by people who think that way.
