THE MORAL CRISIS IN IRAQ - By Richard Reeves

[NNN0LHI]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ucrr/20040508/cm_ucrr/themoralcrisisiniraq

HANOVER, N.H. -- "It's really a shame that just a handful can besmirch maybe the reputations of hundreds of thousands of our soldiers and sailors, airmen and Marines," said Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, commenting on the stories and photographs of young American soldiers brutalizing and degrading Iraqi prisoners.


Yes, that really is a shame. But it is not only men and women in uniform who have been shamed. All of us are shamed. This has something to do with what kind of people we are. I happened to be at Dartmouth College here when the pictures were published. In fact, I was talking about another time when photographs shamed and then changed the nation, the Kennedy years when the president and the people saw the treatment of black Americans in Alabama and other parts of the South. snip


Or perhaps it is President Bush who is the symbol of that contempt for the opinions of mankind. He is going to have to try to explain one more time what we are doing in Iraq -- and this time he has to do more than just say he is absolutely sure he is right, do more than say God is on our side, do more than talk about his own resolve. In fact, he was wrong from the beginning and now has to tell us about the end of this.


We are a great people -- and want to be a good people -- but we are deep in our own mistake. Forty years ago when we were sinking in our own past, President Kennedy sided with the oppressed and said: "I think we owe them and we owe ourselves a better country."


We owe it to ourselves now to press President Bush to tell us how and why to be better and when to get out of there, before we fail, not militarily, but morally.

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[Alpharetta]

1. A "handful"? denialist talk.

Denies a larger pattern of abuse.
Denies the Red Cross warnings of a systematic problem of abuse.
Denies Rumsfeld's warnings that the worst is yet to come regarding pictures, videos, and accounts of torture rape and murder.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Also from the article: contrast in moral leadership --

"....On June 11, 1963, John F. Kennedy watched television images of Gov. George Wallace standing in a doorway of the University of Alabama blocking the entrance of that state school's first two Negro students. The president turned away from the set and said: 'Get me television time tonight.'


Kennedy did not have a full text when he appeared before the country at 8 o'clock, sitting behind his desk in the Oval Office. He spoke for 18 minutes. This is what he said, part of it ad-libbed:


'I hope that every American, regardless of where he lives, will stop and examine his conscience about this and other incidents. ... This is not a sectional issue. Nor is this a partisan issue. This is not even a legal or legislative issue. ... We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and as clear as the American Constitution.'


Kennedy was never a great champion of civil rights. He wanted, frankly, for it to go away and come back when someone else was president. But when the time came, he put his government on the side of the minority, no small thing in a democracy...."


I really have no words to express my feelings on being reminded of this moment in history, and reflecting on America today.

[kentuck]

3. This is true, isn't it?

"There is every reason to believe that the military and the administration would have continued to cover up and deny the truth if there were no pictures. We should examine our consciences about that."