I'm not inclined to believe that these sorts of things are widespread. Put tens of thousands of young men and women in a hostile situation, give them near absolute control over people they learn to both fear and hate in equal measure, and awful things are bound to happen.

But looking at even the facts now on the table this doesn't sound like something entirely isolated. Nor does it seem like these folks felt they had a lot to fear from oversight from superiors. The fact that the Brits are now being accused of something similar points me further toward such suspicion.

Whatever the truth, these revelations deal the US a staggering blow to its credibity or, really, its authority. There are so many folks in the region inclined to believe the worst about our actions and intentions. And this challenges the assumptions of those inclined to believe the best.

There is a tendency to believe that people are by nature either heroes or villains, that heroic deeds, such as those of the firefighters who died trying to rescue people from the World Trade Center (and their actions were indeed heroic) indicate an intrinsic goodness that's basic and unchangeable, and that evil deeds, such as those of the ordinary soldiers who participated in the horrific doings at Abu Ghraib prison, indicate that they are instrinsically bad. I've never believed that.

There are exceptions, of course, people who really are so very much better or worse than most that it's legitimate to think of them as closer to saints or devils then ordinarily human, but for the most part, people do what they do for many, many reasons: situation, training, necessity, desire, discipline and, yes, their inherent nature. Just as there's no reason to think that every hero firefighter who died on 9/11 was otherwise a saint, there's no particular reason to believe that the soldiers involved in Abu Ghraib, or any other incidents of atrocity that may come to light in Iraq, are inherently evil.

That doesn't, of course, excuse what they did, any more than it means that we shouldn't celebrate the firefighters -- what we're responding to is what they did, not who they were. Nor does it mean that they shoudn't be severely punished for their deeds, because their actions were awful from every conceivable standpoint, and they stand in opposition to both our best interests and what we hold to be our ideals, but let's at least understand that these things probably happened for many reasons, and not simply because these soldiers were bad people. That's the kind of polarized "axis of evil," "you're either with us or against us," "dead or alive" thinking that is exemplified by the Bush administration, and which got us into this unholy mess in the first place.


Update: Billmon thinks that the atrocities at Abu Ghraib may not be simple an isolated incident, "the bad acts of a few bad apples":

Is this simply an aberration, the product of a small bunch of overstressed, undertrained reservists being allowed to act out some of their kinkier psychosexual fantasies on helpless prisoners?

I don't think so. I can't prove the coalition has turned Abu Ghraib into a kinder gentler version of its old self, but there's certainly enough evidence to keep an diligent press corps and an honest congressional investigating committee busy.

Which of course is why nothing concrete is every likely to come to light.

Read his post for the details, and check also his other posts on the subject.

Update: Also take a look at Dave Neiwert's post summarizing the circumstantial evidence that seems to indicate that Abu Ghraib may not be an isolated incident, but part of a pattern observable in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

Juan Cole has a summary of the reaction in the Arab world.

Update: (5/6) Read Billmon on the "Ghost prisoners" at Abu Ghraib -- a strong indication that the abuse of the prison system there is systemic and not isolated.