When in doubt, blame the media.
I find it interesting how impossible it is for people to take personal responsibility for their actions. Whether it's a school shooting or other random outburst of violence, or a 12-year-old girl dressed in overly provocative clothing to fulfill the newest trend, the old standard of tragedy is always to blame: The Media.
Of course, it's never the fault of the gun store owner who sold an automatic weapon to a deranged psychopath, or the shoddy parents who allowed their daughter to dress like a prostitute. No, it can't be! It's the media. The media sold that gun; the media dressed that kid. Apparently, this philosophy also extends to war crimes.
Lynndie England, the Army private who was thrust into the harsh glare of media scrutiny when she was photographed abusing Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, apologized this week for the whole sordid affair. Oh, and she was also kind enough to explain that dragging Iraqi prisoners along the ground with a leash was really the media's fault:
In an interview with the weekly magazine Stern conducted in English and posted on its Web site Tuesday, England was both remorseful and unrepentant—and conceded that the published photos surely incensed insurgents in Iraq.
"I guess after the picture came out the insurgency picked up and Iraqis attacked the Americans and the British and they attacked in return and they were just killing each other. I felt bad about it ... no, I felt pissed off. If the media hadn't exposed the pictures to that extent, then thousands of lives would have been saved," she was quoted as saying.
Asked how she could blame the media for the controversy, she said it wasn't her who leaked the photos.
"Yeah, I took the photos but I didn't make it worldwide. Yes, I was in five or six pictures and I took some pictures, and those pictures were shameful and degrading to the Iraqis and to our government," she said, according to the report.
"And I feel sorry and wrong about what I did. But it would not have escalated to what it did all over the world if it wouldn't have been for someone leaking it to the media."
Oh, so I guess this particular incident of prisoner abuse was just a one-of-kind thing, something the media or the rest of the world shouldn't worry their little civilian heads about. Just a fluke that was completely overblown by the media, right? Sweet! But wait...
"I'm saying that what we did happens in war. It just isn't documented," she was quoted as saying. "If it had been broken by the news without the pictures it wouldn't have been that big."
Disregard what I said before, I think we have a new mantra: It's the media's fault -- but only if they use pictures!
How about this, Ms. England: Spare me the self-righteous attitude and just fess up to your bad decisions. You abused Iraqi prisoners. You took the American spirit of justice and due process -- purportedly values we'd hope to instill in an Iraqi democracy -- and ripped it to shreds. And then you have the audacity to say the media put our soldiers at risk by printing the pictures of your crimes. The reality is that YOU put soldiers at risk when you humiliated and abused prisoners and were stupid enough to take pictures. You're a sorry excuse for a human being, let alone an American soldier, and you disgust me.
Is that clear enough for you?
No comments:
Post a Comment