Today's Baltimore Sun has a
profile of Spc. Joseph M. Darby, the 24-year-old reservist who blew the whistle on the atrocities being committed at Abu Ghraib.
Three soldiers - of how many who had contact with that prison? Three soldiers stood up for what was right. Spc. Darby wasn't swayed by the praise and attention of MI and civilian interrogators, like his NCO Chip Frederick was. The unnamed dog handler doesn't seem to have needed a copy of the Geneva Conventions on hand to know that he shouldn't sic his animal on a helpless prisoner.
These three guys did what anyone should have done - but the fact that there were only three of them suggests that the sense of common decency which motivated them was far from common among their fellow soldiers.
Bernadette Darby lives in Cumberland MD, a town of 24,000 people who are
heavily invested in supporting the 372nd Military Police Company. I hope the Darbys are being treated well there. Certainly, he's the man that Cumberland should be proudest of, but I suspect it doesn't work that way. So does Mrs. Darby.
Bernadette Darby said she is a little nervous about how other military families will react to her husband's role in uncovering the scandal, but she said she is proud of him and would do the same if she were in his situation.
"It sickened me whenever I saw those pictures," she said. "Trust me, his whole unit, they're not all like that. The community is in an uproar about it, and it's just - they're not all sick like that. They're a good bunch of guys."
The wife of one of the only Americans in Abu Ghraib with a moral compass is afraid that people will see
him as the enemy. She's been an Army wife for a long time, so I doubt that she's worrying without cause. She knows these people. She's seen them rallying around their boys, even after the news came out from Abu Ghraib. She's probably seen these
angry letters sent to 60 Minutes after they broke the story.
There's a reason why soldiers don't talk about war. Not always what they saw but what they did. Some do behave honorably--the people who came forward to expose this are some of them. But Bush sent them over to kill. They already saw the Iraqis as what? Enemies, animals...whatever it takes to kill them. Now we find this evidence of torture, but to me it is not suprising. Sad as hell, and disgusting, but it's war and that's the problem in the first place.
The big picture, the ones ultimately responsible are the people who started this war.
