Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Eat Crow, Patriot
I'm not entirely sure how "Eat Crow" means something, but whatever.
In today's Daily Planet, Brad Beldon comments on the frat hazing:
ABU GHRAIB COMES TO FRATERNITY ROW
Editors, Daily Planet:
The horrors inflicted on helpless prisoners by some of our military personnel at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and in other locations may have ricocheted around in our national consciousness and struck in Berkeley.
In Iraq some of our soldiers felt they could humiliate and abuse captives to get information because the captive was an Other, in that case an Iraqi.
On April 8th in a Berkeley fraternity, a young man was held captive. Because he was an Other, a pledge in this case, he was humiliated and abused to get information.
How different is this behavior from that of Abu Ghraib?
Since we as a nation have not managed to make a strong and effective condemnation of the heinous behavior of some of our military at Abu Ghraib, can we expect to see other instances of similar behavior among our own people here? Especially among the young, who are most easily influenced by what the media shows us to be allowable behavior.
Where is the voice of who we are as a people that can clearly say why such things are wrong both here and in other lands? And be heard?
Brad Belden
It seems like everything nowadays is caused by Abu Ghraib. I mean, come on, hazing is caused by acceptance of Abu Ghraib? Putting aside the minor detail that both hazing and anti-hazing regulations predate Abu Ghraib's media storm by a large number of years, and the other minor detail that the "victim" seems to have been relatively cool with it, arguing that "kids these days" will try to model their elders is pretty funny.
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