Doing Rummy's work? Taking either side in this skewed argument means doing Rummy's work. Think your hands are clean? Arguing (okay, you are not arguing so much as Ravi is asking) for absolution for Torture Girl doesn't in itself contextualize what she did or shift the blame to the system; it just minimizes the torture by way of special pleading. That's a special pleading almost any non-political criminal can make, with varying degrees of validity. Is every criminal a class criminal? No. Is English any less implicated in horror than were the murderers of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, whose guilty verdict we are now applauding more than forty years after the fact. That's what I asked you in the first letter. Is she any less culpable than were the Mississippi klansmen killers? When the young Bob Dylan wrote "he's only a pawn in their game," nobody took it to mean the killers were irrelevant, only that there was a bigger picture and a wider net of culpability that had to be cast, too. Is this case different? Are you (or is Ravi) casting that wider net or getting to the bigger, systemic picture. You are not if you gloss over the agents of torture or ask the kind of trial-lawyerly questions Ravi is toying with. Not only do you sound like an apologist for horror, you're not even laying a glove on Rumsfeld. Want me to put what I'm saying into a slogan, one you can spray paint on a wall? How's this? "Graner and English--Guilty as Charged. Next, Bush and Rumsfeld." I'd even accept "Al Ghraib: They tried the puppets. Now let's deal with the puppeteers."
As to Leigh's high horse. Remember what Gore Vidal said. He always keep his high horse handy, fully saddled and ready to ride. So do you, as I remember. But not me. Never me.
Best
Mike Hirsch
-----Original Message----- From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> Sent: Sep 28, 2005 4:13 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Lyndie England
Michael Hirsch wrote:
>So you get the creeps when somebody exhalts in the punishment Lyndie
>English will receive? Do you also quiver 'n shake when civil rights
>leaders join Mickey Schwerner's widow in saying hard time for the
>septogenarian killer racist of her husband is long overdue? If not,
>why not? That Mississippi fucker was just a pawn in their game, too?
>
>Of course she deserves punishment. And if there is justice in the
>world, it wouldn't be the US army trying her; it would be a world
>court if not a court of Iraqi victims. The fact that the army is
>using her and Graner as scapegoats to cover up systematic brutality
>and the logical outcome of an imperial adventure doesn't excuse her,
>or require you to think warm and fuzzy thoughts about a poor,
>abused, working class victim. There were plenty of poor, abused
>working class victims in Hitler's army, or in Lt. Calley's command.
>When you can't reach them, or when they can't be persuaded to turn
>the guns around, they become fair targets. Turn your guns around,
>Doug. You're not raising consciousness about imperialism by
>apologizing for the unspeakable.
Hi, Mike. Welcom. Nice rant. Hope it made you feel good.
Look, I said she's criminally guilty and should do time. But what I objected to was Leigh the Hippie's high-horse moralizing about her responsibility and all that shit. Her school psychologist, who knew her from kindergarten, said she was oxygen-deprived at birth and had trouble learning to read. She was chronically depressed and pliable, and fell under the spell of Graner. She was installed as a cog in a brutal killing and torture machine. Sure she's guilty, but in a minor way next to the architects and builders of that machine. Blaming her is exactly what Donald Rumsfeld would like you to do. And you don't want to do Rummy's work for him, do you?
Doug ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
________________________________________ `And these words shall then become Like oppression's thundered doom Ringing through each heart and brain, Heard again -- again -- again-- `Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number-- Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you-- Ye are many -- they are few.' --------Shelley, "The Mask of Anarchy: Written on the Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester" [1819]