Howling

Last month the US Army completed the court-martial and sentencing of Army Reserve Spc. Charles Graner Jr. For his role in the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal he'll face 10 years in the stockade, at the rank of private, with no pay, and a dishonorable discharge when he gets out.

I didn't know what a "Reserve Spc." was, so I looked it up. They used to call it "Technician" back in WWII. And assuming it's in something like electronics, it seems to be roughly equivalent to an associates degree from ITT Tech. Now, as I understand it, the army has to invest a fair amount of time and money in it's "human assets." Even if they're in the reserves, these people don't get trained, outfitted and shipped all over creation for free. Since the military has to make do on a measly $420.7 billion in 2005, one would be curious about how its property, even damaged property is dispensed with.

The point I'm trying to reach is what level of investment the military has in its soldiers and how it can so easily write off one or two or ten of them. Of all the military mottoes I could find on-line, none of them said anything about "leaving the laggards," "ready to downsize our own," or "tribuo in turbatus vicis." And for all the claims about esprit de corps or unit loyalty, there wasn't much about scapegoats, abandoning the losers or leaving that one guy hanging.

This is not to say that I think that Army Reserve Spc. Charles Graner Jr. should not be punished. If you abuse someone who has been remanded to your care, you will earn very little respect or consideration from me. But that's not my point here. I'm curious why problems with groups are resolved with the excision of individuals. If there was so much wrong with what happened there, why is cutting out two or five or twenty bad apples enough? Why isn't the entire system for military imprisonment dragged out into the daylight and examined? If a few dozen priests were molesting children, why isn't the church vivisecting all of the procedures that surround the problem? If there is a problem within a system, why are only a few individuals separated from that system and strung up as if that would be the end of it?

Again, I don't think that systemic problems are excuses for individuals to act like animals. But it doesn't make any sense to me to take a person acclimated to a system, punish him for something he did within that system, then not look any closer at why and how he did what he did. The military has problems. Big, deep, metastasized problems. So does the Los Angeles police department, the Catholic Church, the UN peacekeeping organization and almost every government on earth.

All these monstrous aggregates of policies, red tape and devoted company men get to keep on ensuring their own continued existence. And I want to know why it's okay to value these rancid, tumor-riddled dinosaurs that keep enabling abuse, crime, cruelty and the on-going degradation of the individual.