The Cowardly Giant

“Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause… for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.” - George Washington, charge to the Northern Expeditionary Force, Sept. 14, 1775

There is a clamoring on the "left" for President Obama to release the photos of Iraqi women and children being tortured. The ACLU (having won its brief before the court under the FOIA) claims that as a democracy the public has a "right" to see what is being done in its name. But the American people are already fully aware of the atrocities that have occurred prosecuting the War on Terror and by a whopping per cent they approve.

Looking back I am stricken to know just how naive I was four years ago when I was proudly proclaiming that Americans would not sanction the kind of crimes the Tacuba report describes in the Abu Ghraib scandal.
Since then I have wanted to believe that the deafening silence was a leftover product of 9-11-- that the neocons had succeeded in filling us with so much hate and terror we could no longer think rationally.

But I was wrong on that one too. As David Frum, one of the War on Terror's main cheerleaders strains to remind us in: How We Got Here: The 70’s The Decade That Brought You Modern Life (for Better or Worse) Americans are no longer offended to see our military resort to torture and barbarism.

Frum: "My Lai is remembered as a turning point in the war, and indeed it was, but not in the way people usually think."

* In the 24 hours after the military court declared Calley’s guilt, the White House received more than i5,000 telegrams and 1,500 phone calls. The messages ran 100:1 in Calley’s favor.
* Congressional liberals like Senator Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut joined with conservatives like Georgia’s Herman Talmadge to condemn the verdict.
* Representative Don Fuqua, a Democrat from Calley’s home state of Florida, proposed inviting Calley to address a joint session. “We are his accusers. Let us invite this American serviceman here to tell his story.”
* The governor of Indiana ordered all state flags to be flown at half staff for Calley.
* The governor of Utah criticized the verdict as “inappropriate” and the sentence as “excessive.”
* Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia proclaimed “American Fighting Man’s Day,” and urged Georgia motorists to drive all week with headlights on.
* The Arkansas legislature approved a resolution asking for clemency.
* The lower house of the Kansas legislature demanded Calley’s release from prison. So did the Texas Senate and the state legislatures of New Jersey and South Carolina.
* The draft board in Quitman, Georgia, wired the White House that so long as the Calley verdict stood, it would not induct any more young men.
* Members of draft boards in Athens and Blairsville, Georgia, and in Elizabethtown, Tennessee, resigned.
* A Poughkeepsie, New York, radio station invited listeners to call in their opinions. It received more than 2,000 calls in just one hour. Only 36 defended the verdict.
* Governor George Wallace spoke at a rally in Calley’s defense at Columbus, Georgia, alongside Governor John Bell Williams of Mississippi.
* The Columbus rally was just one of a series of demonstrations across the nation; Jacksonville, Florida, Los Angeles, Kansas City, and Dallas quickly followed.
* By the end of the first week after Calley’s conviction and sentencing, 79% of Americans polled expressed disapproval of the verdict.
* Within the month, a Tennessee recording company announced that it had sold more than 200,000 copies of a song titled “The Battle Hymn of William Calley.”

Land of the "free" and Home of the "brave"? Not your daddy's America...