Most MSM papers and the European press are making much of Specialist Charles Graner’s court-martial and sentencing yesterday – saying it serves to highlight the debate over the morality of the U.S. intervention.
Quite the opposite. If there is a morality play on the question of the injustices of Iraq, it should turn on the difference between a self-correcting system that has brought dozens of soldiers and Marines to courts-martial proceedings (the great majority for non-capital crimes) and the lack of any such system on the other side. And lest someone suggest this is light justice, these are heavy sentences being handed down. The six year military jail terms handed out to several National Guardsman for pilfering un-tended equipment springs to mind – a ‘crime’ that would have put the con-men and scavenging crew of ‘Operation Petticoat’ away for life.
CNN and others like the fashion of scoreboards these days. One is reminded of the running ‘Days Since the 9/11 Commission Issued Its Report’ vs. ‘Number of 9/11 Recommendations the Administration Has Enacted’ tally – which mindlessly presupposed the infallibility of the commission’s recommendations and mendacity of those not implementing them right away.
I suggest a brought-to-justice-by-their-own-system scoreboard for Iraq. We can even equate the horrific capital crimes (including beheading of aid workers, etc) of the terrorists in Iraq with the lesser offenses of Americans and Coalition forces. By my count it is:
US and Coalition: 3 dozen or more
Salafist and Baathist Insurgents: 0
That’s the lesson to be drawn from Graner’s well-deserved court-martial.