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Planet Waves | for
May 4, 2005
Well, something remarkable happened today
... a military judge responded with considerable "nuance" [read that
-- he thought about it.] After listening to Lynndie England's testimony, he
called a mistrail. Lynndie, you will remember, is infamous for those Abu
Ghraib "leash" pictures that inflamed the world and shamed the United
States. She is accused of inflicting physical, sexual and psychological
abuse on prisoners in Iraq. The judge said she couldn't plead guilty to the
charges [the deal she cut with prosecutors] while presenting evidence that she
was not -- Lynndie believes herself innocent as do those she called on to
speak for her.
Is Lyndie innocent? Do we even
care? On the face of it, we apparently just want her slammed in the pokey
for a long time ... put away, out of sight, out of mind ... there! That
proves to the world that we don't tolerate torture ... although that's not what
the news tells us. [We don't do it here ... we have it "sent out,"
like dirty laundry. We send those we want information from to countrys
that DO torture, and they send back the transcript.]
Life isn't black and white ... it's many,
many MANY shades of gray. And there isn't just one Lynndie story,
there's several -- there's what Lyndee thought she was doing, what her superiors
said she should do, what the military expected her to do, what the nation
decided she shouldn't have done, what the world accused her of doing ... and
then there's the back-story. How'd little old Lyndee, a rail workers
daughter from a trailer park in the heart of the isolated and undereducated
Appalachian mountain range get herself in front of the eyes of the
world? What in her rather simplistic life experience prepared her to
assume the moral authority she would need for this kind of test?
Let me segue, a moment. One of our
cherished childhood movie's is Wizard of
Oz. It was the first motion picture to use color to achieve
dramatic effect -- one of the first to use color, period. In
WOZ, reality was black and white -- life in Oz was
jewel-toned. I recently had the pleasure of reading Wicked: The
Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
[which inspired the Broadway play.] It's a classic back-story -- Dorothy
doesn't arrive until late in the book. How did that Witch get so
cranky? What was the deal with the Wizard? Who was responsible for
those Ruby Slippers and how did the Witch's sister get them?
Turns out the Witch had every reason to
be out of sorts [start with being green,] she was a
likable character and somewhat altruistic political activist. Glinda
wasn't nearly as Good as everybody thought she was -- just shows you, "blonde
and sparkly" ain't always what it seems. The Wizard, not
the blithering old coot we thought of with affection, had been taking
lessons from Darth Vader. The Tin Man and the Lion were victims of
political intrigue. And Oz, itself? It had major
ethical challenges within its government, and an all-out donnybrook among
its organized religions. It had a population preoccupied with its pace of life
and economic challenges. It had natural resource problems that
left many of it's meandering pastures and poppy fields gutted
and scarred and those that lived on them bereft. It had
undercurrents of prejudice and incidents of "ethnic
cleansing.". Let's just say that Oz had a political back-story that put me
in mind of ... mmmm ... oh -- here, there, everywhere you look these
days.
The back story. It's where we find
the bigger picture, it's why we'd be rash to make a snap judgment, it's
where we discover that life is chocked FULL of "nuance." Just when we
think we've got it figured out ... here comes more
gray.
Is Lynndie guilty? Probably, since
ignorance is no excuse. Is she going to the slam? I'd think
so. Is she just a scruffy little disposable character in a much
larger back-story that we don't know about yet?
You decide ... you and your little dog too!
US judge declares mistrial in Abu
Ghraib abuse case http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050504/ts_nm/iraq_abuse_plea_dc
Peace ~
Jude
Eric Francis is on holiday. Jude, the editor of
Political Waves, is standing in for his daily blog this week. You can subscribe
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