> Many local residents were eager to point to the sacrifices made by
> U.S. soldiers seeking to bring stability to a country halfway around
> the world. Faced with daily attacks and a rising military death toll,
> residents say hard-working soldiers may just have snapped.
>
> "What they did was wrong. Maybe they kind of regret it. But maybe they
> just kind of lost it," said Glenn Rice, 55, another Vietnam War
> veteran who is a bartender in a local club. "Maybe somebody got hurt
> they knew."
An article in yesterday's NY Times basically the same interviews from various parts of the "heartland." ("Shock Over Abuse Reports, but Support for the Troops" by Andrew Jacobs <http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/08/national/08VOIC.html>)
E.g.: "In interviews with dozens of people across the country, many said that they were repulsed by the images but that they also felt protective of American troops, who have been under increasing attack by insurgents. Many were quick to offer understanding for the American soldiers who were pictured gloating over the naked tangle of prisoners or pulling an Iraqi detainee by a leash. " ...
" 'This is war. It's not right, but war's not right,' Mr. Neil said. 'Given the circumstances, I don't see how they would not do something — after seeing their buddies dragged through the streets. They're over there to give the Iraqis freedom, and they're getting killed every day.'
"Thomas Rhodes, 70, who lives in Cobb County, Ga., agreed, saying that the world was exaggerating the gravity of the prisoners' mistreatment. 'As far as I know they weren't hurt, they were humiliated,' he said of the Iraqi detainees. 'But think of the thousands of bodies in the mass graves over there and what Saddam did to them.' ...
" 'He should take the fall,' said Marilyn Winston, 58, a homemaker from Metairie, La., who described herself as a Republican and Bush supporter. 'Sometimes there has to be a scapegoat.'
"Once a solid backer of the White House decision to invade Iraq, Ms. Winston finds herself feeling more and more ambivalent about the war, and the president. 'I thought we were going there to get rid of Saddam, liberate the people and then leave,' she said as she window-shopped at the mall. 'Now that this has happened, maybe it's time to pull out and bring the troops home.' ...
"Some said the episode has been blown out of proportion. Standing outside a Starbucks in Fort Morgan, Colo., and sharing a chocolate iced coffee, Chuck and Roxie Dunning said they thought the media and Mr. Bush's Democratic opponents were turning one regrettable incident into an election-year weapon. 'It's an isolated case,' said Mr. Dunning, an oil industry worker. 'And it's not near as bad as what they've done to some of our prisoners. But that doesn't excuse it.'
"Mrs. Dunning agreed with her husband's comments, but then admitted that she had not seen the pictures. At her prompting, Mr. Dunning described the photos. Mrs. Dunning looked stunned. 'I don't know what I think,' she said and then added, 'They deserve some dignity. I guess I don't totally believe in an eye for an eye.' "
It seems to me that this is all classic cognitive dissonance, and what these quotes especially illustrate are the classic ways in which this dissonance is reduced (<http://www.ithaca.edu/faculty/stephens/cdback.html >): add more beliefs consonant with the one you want to hang on to (if you want to maintain the belief that "the war is right and the U.S. soldiers are good," add "Saddam and the terrorists have done and are doing worse things"), reduce the importance you attach to the dissonant belief or beliefs ("Yes, the pictures are bad, but not really that bad"), or even drop the beliefs the new evidence contradicts ("I used to be in favor of the war, but now I think we should pull out"). Some people, oddly enough, are even able to hang on to the dissonance: "It's not near as bad as what they've done to some of our prisoners. But that doesn't excuse it" and "I don't know what I think. They deserve some dignity. I guess I don't totally believe in an eye for an eye." But the latter group is probably on the way to resolving the dissonance in some way or other.
Obviously, we would hope that a large number of Americans would react by dropping their earlier belief in the rightness of the war, but it's not easy to reliably influence the way people resolve the dissonance.
Of course, we dissidents to the mainstream U.S. worldview have our own dissonances to deal with: we have to reconcile our view that the war in Iraq and the "war on terror" are totally evil, and (for some of us) all of our society is totally evil, with bits of evidence that there might be some not so bad aspects to these things after all (the attack on Iraq did get rid of Saddam, the 9/11 attacks were not so nice, the society has improved in the ways Doug has mentioned, etc.). So, for example, we can deal with the 9/11 problem by adopting the thesis that they were actually internal to U.S. society -- they were done by someone in the U.S. power structure, which of course is totally evil. But the subject of cognitive dissonance on the Left needs to be discussed on another occasion.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax