Subj : Re: BSG
To   : alt.tv.farscape
From : John I
Date : Wed Sep 28 2005 18:49:07

From Newsgroup: alt.tv.farscape

TNW7Z7Z7Z12345 wrote:

> John Iwaniszek wrote:
>> 
>> TNW7Z7Z7Z12345 wrote:
> 
>> > Yes, all sorts of bad things happen in the chaos of war. But as I said
>> > above, the one place where we actually have the power to stop those
>> > things from happening is in the controlled atmosphere of a prison.
> 
> 
>> My Lai.  504 subdued and unarmed civilians (women and children) gunned
>> down systematically over a period of a few hours.  It was a war crime and
>> it was a controlled setting.  The soldiers made a choice and they chose
>> murder.  Not every American in attendance approved and, like at Abu
>> Ghraib, there were some who were shocked by the barbarism and tried to
>> stop it.  Good for them.  The ones who did it and the people who covered
>> it up and make excuses for it are criminals.
> 
> 
> Oh, I agree that My Lai was a war crime, and yes, it was controlled in
> that it didn't occur in the chaos of a battle. But that isn't what I
> meant when I referred to prisons being a controlled atmosphere.  
> 
> The abuse at the prisons happened within confined facilities where many
> layers of management were there all the time to monitor what was going
> on.  And it happened day after day over a long period of time -- there
> was plenty of time for a superior to step in, stop it from continuing,
> and then monitor the situation.  But no one did because the superiors
> thought the behavior was appropriate.
> 
> 

Ths is driven by the ethical requirement that persons under state care be 
protected from harm.  But I don't see a distinction between the 
responsibility held by custodians in a prison, jail, school, etc. to care for 
thier charges, and the responsibility the command hierarchy in a military 
unit has for civilians in its imeddiate sphere of influence.  It is tempting 
to adopt the loutish attitude that the people were in the wrong place at the 
wrong time or that prisoners don't deserve protection because they have been 
convicted or are accused of a crime, but that's why we have ethics.  To keep 
the louts from ruining civilization.

.