The Administration, and particularly Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, have been cavalier about American obligations under international law, including the Geneva Convention. International law and transparency, we are told, are unnecessary because, unlike all of the other countries in the world, we are Americans, and we naturally believe in human rights and the rule of law. We need no special incentives to be good. But if history teaches us anything, it is that when governments, no matter how well they think of themselves, decide to free themselves from constraints, they become unconstrained, and when they refuse to make themselves accountable, they abuse their power. The only thing that has been lacking until now has been the proof of what everyone should already have known: that unchecked power leads to hubris, hubris leads to corruption, and corruption leads to violations of human rights.

Americans are proud of their devotion to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. But these cannot exist without institutional preconditions: they cannot exist if government officials insist on complete secrecy, mock international covenants, and refuse to allow their actions to be tested and constrained by law.

This Administration wanted secrecy. It wanted to be free of legal constraint. It wanted to do whatever it wanted whenever it wanted without ever having to be called to account for it.

Now it is reaping what it has sown.

I think the other point that no one is making about the abuse photos is just the disproportionate number of women involved, including a girl general running the entire operation.

I mean, this is lesson, you know, one million and 47 on why women shouldn't be in the military.

In addition to not being able to carry even a medium-sized backpack, women are too vicious.

[FOX News Channel, Hannity & Colmes, May 5]

But one factor that may have contributed -- but which I doubt investigators will want to even consider -- is whether the presence of women in the unit actually encouraged more misbehavior, especially of the sexual nature that the pictures reveal.

The image of that female guard, smoking away as she joins gleefully in the disgraceful melee like one of the guys, is a cultural outgrowth of a feminist culture which encourages female barbarians. GI Janes are kicking around patriarchal Muslims in Iraq? This is [Feminist Majority Foundation president] Eleanor Smeal's vision come to life. Had Thelma and Louise gone off to Iraq -- and sexually humiliated some of Saddam Hussein's soldiers as payback for abuse to Jessica Lynch a few cities back -- the radical feminists could make a sequel. ...

Feminists are good at creating a culture that produces "equal-opportunity abusers," Donnelly says. What happened at Abu Ghraib is also happening in feminist America, she adds, pointing to an Associated Press article from last month on a "disturbing trend around the country. Girls are turning to violence more often and with terrifying intensity." ...

Perhaps in the eyes of feminists this isn't a crisis but a potential social program and these girls deserve ROTC credits.

Some Arab commentators are repeating the myth that the West has, once again, humiliated Muslims. If there has been humiliation, it isn't the fault of the West. It is Muslims' fault. They took trillions of dollars in oil money, and instead of building a culture dedicated to elevating their people, including women, they have squandered it on agendas and adventures that had the opposite result.

[T]he New York Times profiles some of the soldiers implicated in abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, and to be honest, they sound like a bunch of losers. ...

[I]ncreasing the quality of military recruits would probably help avoid future Abu Ghraibs. One constructive step toward that end would be for elite universities to drop antimilitary policies, so that the military would have an easier time signing up the best and brightest young Americans.

Many academic institutions have barred ROTC or military recruiters from campus for left-wing political reasons--first as a protest against the Vietnam War, and later over the Clinton-era "don't ask, don't tell" law. Whatever the merits of these positions, it's time the academic left showed some patriotic responsibility and acknowledged that the defense of the country--which includes the defense of their own academic freedom--is more important than the issue du jour.

I think that the single most egregious mistake that Bush has made in his presidency (among many egregious mistakes) is continuously asserting that we are "better" as a people than "the enemy," whom they have never adequately defined. His vaunted "moral clarity" continues to be nothing more that a puerile appeal to emotion that has done much more harm than good. Historically, nations have always done this, but in this age of global media, it is a very bad idea. It's much too easy for pictures and words to make their way around the world in seconds to contradict such assertions and destroy our credibility. As Bush himself says repeatedly, "it's a different kinda war" and indeed it is. It is much more a war of ideas than a war of military conquest. If there was ever a time when we needed someone with highly developed communication skills, it was now. Unfortunately, we were saddled with someone who speaks in the most simplistic terms possible and it is blowing back on us now.

Immediately after 9/11, Bush's braintrust framed this War On Terrorism as between "good 'n evil," "us 'n them" --- exactly as bin Laden did. Instead of using reason, strength and good will to continue the solidarity the world felt toward America after 9/11, we reacted like a hurt child, lashing out with inchoate rage at virtually everyone, all the while screaming about our superior characters. (We even went after the Europeans for Christ's sake.)

Had we emphasized our institutions and traditions rather than our alleged goodness, we might be able to get past this awful moment of Abu Ghreib by showcasing a system that resists brute power and religious judgments of character in favor of blind justice. Their scramble now to investigate and fact-find again completely rings hollow because we rested our entire argument on the character of Americans in contrast to everyone else. Our credibility is in shreds.

There were essentially three stated reasons for invading Iraq. The first was because Saddam had WMD. The second was because Saddam had ties to terrorists. The third was because Saddam tortured and terrorized his own people.

There are no WMD. There never were any terrorist ties. And by consciously undermanning the "liberation" we created the circumstances that have led to sweeps of innocent Iraqi people who are then dragged into a prison system with no due process and are systematically tortured --- by us, not Saddam. No decent person can believe that it is moral to "pre-emptively" invade a country and do such things in the name of liberation and our superior "goodness" as a people.

Now, I'm not saying that Americans are a bad people. We're just people, comprising the full range of human character from saint to psychopath. So are the Iraqis and so is every other tribe. That is why we have government in the first place. It's hard to tell who's bad or good and it's not enough to simply assert that one group is and one isn't. We need systems and institutions to sort these things out in the most perfect way we can find and those systems and institutions are imperfect indeed. If we ever had a strength in America, a source of pride and superiority, it was that we put our trust in the rule of law not men.

And that is precisely the opposite of what our president has been saying. He's said "trust us" because we are good. We don't need to provide any explanations or adhere to any laws, treaties or agreements because the character of our people doesn't require it. And that is why these pictures are being greeted around the world with both horror and glee. The president of the United States has been holding out the moral superiority of the American people as justification for flouting all laws and conventions and we've just been slapped in the face with the truth. Americans are capable of being just as depraved as anyone else. (I would have thought that anyone over the age of 10 would already know this, but apparently not.)

Once Bush is removed from office maybe we can drop this simpleminded drivel and start speaking to the world like adults again. Fewer self-righteous sermons about being "called to bring freedom to the world" and more talk about the rule of law would be a breath of fresh air. I have a feeling we might find that people around the world are more willing to cooperate if our president doesn't constantly lecture them about our superior moral character and instead leads on the basis of reason, law and justice. In the war of ideas, the latter is where the real firepower exists.