<DIV>Leigh,</DIV> <DIV>I appreciate your comments, but it seems to me that the differences you point out are abstract and subjective. We have no way of know way of knowing whether Sheehan was in fact really "responsible" when compared to England; nor do we have any way of knowing whether Sheehan was also a "dungeon master." In fact, the only indicator in making these decisions appears to be the relative privilege of Sheehan vs. the poverty of England. In this light we can be well assured that those with more privilege in capitalist society ALWAYS can afford a higher moral ground, just as Gingrich and other conservatives were fond to inadvertently point out in their "personal responsibility" speeches in the 90s. (It should be well noted that Sheehan pointed out the prisoner abuse in her missive yesterday, in a manner timely with England's sentencing.)</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>We can theorize and argue all day on what was really going through the minds of England and Sheehan, and whose actions were morally correct, and whose were not. At the end of the day, the material realities stand: working class women and men, regardless of their relative levels of privilege, regardless of whether they are from the rural south or California, are taking the fall for capitalists' policies. If England got three years, then her commanding officers should have gotten three hundred, and THEIR commanders-- ultimately the heads of state bureaucracy like Bush, Rumsfeld, et al., should have gotten three thousand-- TOO BAD, right?  But by that point we've superseded the abstract notion of individual responsibility and duty, haven't we?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>And there should be no more or less sympathy for England than the millions of soldiers who have, through little real choice of their own, fought and died violently for the accumulatory drools of the capitalist class. Torture, rape, and pillage, and protest, strike and repression have ALWAYS been among the spoils of war, and they will continue as long as class society does.</DIV> <DIV>--adx<BR><BR><B><I>Leigh Meyers <leighcmeyers@gmail.com></I></B> wrote:</DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE class=replbq style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid">From: "Leigh Meyers" <leighcmeyers@gmail.com><BR>To: "lbo-talk" <lbo-talk@lbo-talk.org><BR>Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2005 06:58:34 -0700<BR>Subject: [lbo-talk] Lyndie England<BR><BR>amadeus amadeus:<BR><BR>Meanwhile<BR>> sister Lynndie England was sentenced, an event that Sheehan's arrest<BR>> seems to have overshadowed among liberals... England was nicked for<BR>> no reason other than the fact that she is a poor working class woman<BR>> from <BR>> Appalachia, whose choices were apparently to get court-martialed for<BR>> not following orders, or court-martialed for following them, with an<BR>> additional court martial by the media. <BR>> In both cases, we see that working class women have taken the fall<BR>> for the interests of the bourgeoisie, a policy which has been a "good<BR>> idea" for capitalists for the last couple centuries. This is, as<BR>> Lenin would have said, "bullshit." <BR>> --adx<BR>> <BR><BR>There's a significant difference beteeen Cindy Sheehan and Lyndie<BR>England. Cindy Sheehan takes responsibility for her own actions, and my<BR>guess is, Lyndie England never has at any point in her life... Just another <BR>girl who wanted to be dungeon master but forgot that you aren't supposed <BR>to smile quite that broadly while holding the leash.<BR><BR>That's what got her convicted, she looked like she was having<BR>"too much fun". She was... <BR><BR>No sympathy for torturers, no matter what the excuse, social<BR>background, or orders... She had a DUTY, personal or Geneva<BR>Accords, to refuse illegal orders, and she didn't. TOO BAD!<BR><BR>www.leighm.net<BR><BR>Have you seen my newsfeeds?: http://leighmdotnet.blogspot.com/<BR>Got RSS?: http://www.furl.net/members/leighm/rss.xml<BR><BR><BR><BR>___________________________________<BR>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk<BR></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>"Mary Poppins is alive and well in Argentina, she sends her regards."<br>- Rod McKuen, The Mud Kids<p> <hr size=1>Yahoo! for Good<br> <a href="http://store.yahoo.com/redcross-donate3/">Click here to donate</a> to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.