Of accidental judgments

Six US MPs now face court-martial for abusing Iraqi prisoners captured during the invasion and occupation of Iraq, CNN reported on Wednesday.

The charges included dereliction of duty, cruelty and maltreatment, assault and indecent acts with another person.

In addition to those criminal charges, the military has recommended disciplinary action against seven U.S. officers who helped run the prison, including Brig. Gen. Janice Karpinski, the commander of the 800th [Military Police] Brigade,

which was in charge of Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, where the cruelty took place. Incidents included stacking prisoners in a human pyramid, writing slurs on their skin, and in one case forcing a man wearing a hood and with wires attached to his hands to stand on a box and telling him that he would be electrocuted if he fell off.

Amnesty International, the London-based human rights group, said in March that many former detainees in Iraq claimed to have been tortured and ill-treated by coalition troops during interrogation.

Methods often reported, it said, included prolonged sleep deprivation, beatings, exposure to loud music and prolonged periods of being covered by a hood.

Meanwhile, US Army command is shocked, just shocked at the revelations.

"We're appalled," [Brig. Gen. Mark] Kimmitt said. "These are our fellow soldiers, these are the people we work with every day, they represent us, they wear the same uniform as us, and they let their fellow soldiers down."

Well, frankly, just what did they expect? You train people to kill, you train them to think of the "enemy" as somehow not quite human, you throw them in kill-or-be-killed, dominate-or-be-destroyed situations, and then feign bewilderment when the results of your own practices produce bad PR?

And what of the other "casual slaughters," the deaths not worthy of controlled outrage, the disgraces not felt to require political ablution?

During the first two weeks of this month, the American army committed war crimes in Falluja on a scale unprecedented for this war. According to the relatively few media reports of what took place there, some 600 Iraqis were killed during these two weeks, among them some 450 elderly people, women and children.

The sight of decapitated children, the rows of dead women and the shocking pictures of the soccer stadium that was turned into a temporary grave for hundreds of the slain - all were broadcast to the world only by the Al Jazeera network. During the operation in Falluja, according to the organization Doctors Without Borders, U.S. Marines even occupied the hospitals and prevented hundreds of the wounded from receiving medical treatment. Snipers fired from the rooftops at anyone who tried to approach,

says columnist Orit Shohat in the April 28th edition of the Israeli daily Haaretz.

Recall first that the assault on Fallujah was a retaliatory strike for the desecration of the bodies of four dead Americans, a price that has been repaid at least 150 fold. And then ask where are the denunciations? Where is the outrage? Where are the trials, the judgments? Why is General Kimmitt not "appalled" by decapitated children, by people shot down in the streets for approaching a hospital?

Why not? Because those atrocities were expected, they were justified, they were "within the rules of engagement," they were soldiers doing what their higher-ups expected of them. So long as the brutalization does not extend beyond the limits desired by the institutionally brutalized, it is not to be condemned.

Even the military recognizes the effect of what it does, enough to consciously take steps to prevent it from being aimed at the "wrong" targets.

Ft. Hood, Texas (Fox News, April 22) - Going from a world of war to one of peace creates a psychological challenge for every soldier.

But adjust they must, often in a matter of days, from war to peace and from one country and culture to another.

Such extreme life transitions are the basis for Ft. Hood's Iron Horse University, which offers reintegration classes that every returning veteran must attend.

Courses at the Army base include "Stress: On and Off the Battlefield," "Anger Management," and "Conflict Resolution."

The brutalization of war, of occupation, is very real, as even the military recognizes.

The fact is, My Lai was not an aberration, no more than it was the isolated incident we tried (and still try) so hard to believe it was. Rather, it was the natural outgrowth of what those soldiers were taught, of the situation they were put in, of the training they received. So, too, was/is Fallujah. So, too, will be the "carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts" that will follow in their time. And again, momentarily stirred from our reverie of innocence, we will be shocked, shocked, as if it had never happened before - that is, until, our flare of outrage spent, soothed by reassurances that our very outrage is proof of our goodness, we can drift back to sleep.

While the casual slaughters continue.

Set the date and get out.