The Prisoner Abuse Scandal: Should it be the end of Rumsfeld?

Few stories in my lifetime have caused me more personal disgust and shame than the current ongong revelations about prisoner abuse, torture, and humiliation at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Some Conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are quick to point out similar or worse cases of prisoner treatment by Sadaam, the Nazis, Stalin, or even the Fallujans who desacrated the bodies of innocent civilians by hanging them from a bridge. They completely miss the point that these others never claimed to be the moral arbiters and policemen of the world. It is awful when one human being abuses another - but it is far, far worse when it is done by a New York City policeman because that person is supposed to represent certain values and uphold certain universal moral standards. We claim to be the ambassadors of freedom, respect, and rule of law throughout the world, and now we are shown to have robbed people of freedom, respect, and defied the law to get what we want. How ashamed we must be. God forgive us as a nation for these sins!



This shame has lead to the natural question of who must be the figurehead to be punished as a sign of our repentance. Should President Bush resign? No, certainly not. But many are calling for the head of Donald Rumsfeld. But William Safire - a conservative who has not been very friendly to the present adminstration - says no:

The secretary testified that he was, incredibly, the last to see the humiliating photos that turned a damning army critique by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba into a media firestorm. Why nobody searched out and showed him those incendiary pictures immediately reveals sheer stupidity on the part of the command structure and his Pentagon staff...This was scandal with no cover-up; the wheels of investigation and prosecution were grinding, with public exposure certain. Second only to the failure to prevent torture was the Pentagon's failure to be first to break the bad news: the Taguba report should have been released at a Rumsfeld press conference months ago.

While I am uncertain as to the exact right move here, I tend to agree with Mr. Safire. The resignation of Rumsfeld as punishment for Abu Ghraib would be like cutting off the hand of your child, because his dog stole a bone from the local butcher. The boy is responsible to a point, but it is the dog who did the crime and the punishment itself is out of proportion to the child's wrongdoing. Rumsfeld deserves the current public humiliation he is recieving - it is just punishment - and the commander over that prison should be at least drummed out of the army if not formally put through a court martial. But going further is going too far... unless there is more that we do not know, which needs to be brought before the "jury" for a proper verdict.