Reply #12: We read about this episode [View All]

[gratuitous]

And we seem to have no trouble with trying this 16- and 17-year-old as adults. Drop 'em in the deepest, darkest hole we can find and be done with them. Hope they get beat up, too.

Yet, we read about horrific things done by our military in our names by folks a little older than 16 or 17, and we make up all kinds of excuses for why someone in uniform might behave that way, how it's all different in war, and we really can't hold the perpetrators culpable. We allow them to be turned over to courts martial, where their comrades in arms sit in a kinder, gentler judgment over their straying brothers from the band.

It's a curious thing to me, and I confess to having great difficulty understanding the disparate treatment of the offenders and the great difference in public opinion.