The Rest of the Story

“How can the United States expect other nations to follow its lead in light of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal?” So asked one of America’s best and brightest—in high dudgeon and evocative self-righteousness—of America’s Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, after he delivered a speech at the prestigious Yale University. Cheers erupted on the heels of our questioner’s words, as a giddy and self-satisfied crowd let their views be known. Heads nodded and fists were raised. Everybody who was anybody knew the answer was the question, so why wait for the response? As Bolton looked on in despair, the valets of our morality threw down their gavel—a sentence cast before an apology aired. Premise assumed, conclusion foregone: game, set, match for our enlightened youth.

The assertion that Abu Ghraib renders America unfit as the world’s moral leader is often heard, yet rarely examined. We are told that a group of young American service men and women tortured and demeaned Iraqi prisoners, and we are told these actions prove that America is no better than her enemy. Abu Ghraib, we are told, was evil within embarrassment wrapped inside hypocrisy. That it occurred meant America should hide her head in shame, that it was photographed meant even worse. The existence of a bad act was, all by itself, enough to cast judgment on the global and pretentious hegemon. America, because of a crime perpetrated by a few, had relinquished the beacon of virtue and was sent into moral exile.

This is the conclusion sold by our elite. We are made to feel shame for crimes committed by a few. We are held morally responsible, as a country, for crimes that took place thousands of miles away in a gritty, unsupervised, and unscripted environment. Because evil deeds walked that prison, the society that unleashed them has been judged unworthy.

But let's back up a second. If we are to accept this conclusion—that the existence of a bad apple speaks decisively for the orchard—must we not first examine the premises of those who preach it? And what are the premises?

Well, one of the most obvious is the premise that the existence of a bad act somehow speaks poorly of the society from which the perpetrator sprang. An alternate way of saying this is that in a virtuous regime, no bad acts are possible; in a morally attractive society, there are no evil deeds. This is assumption number one.

Another assumption that flows from the first is that ultimate moral responsibility rests with society. If bad acts are possible only because of societal defect, man is no longer accountable for his immorality. Human beings are no longer morally autonomous agents—they are simply vehicles that expose the virtue, or lack thereof, of the polis. A truly virtuous society creates virtuous men; an immoral society creates immoral men. The two are inextricably linked, with the former a condition precedent of the latter.

More assumptions flow from this last: man is perfectible because society is perfectible; society corrupts man, instead of the opposite; man is a noble beast, his nature inherently good; crime can be completely eradicated; human nature is benign; utopia is possible. Etc., etc., etc.

But all of these assumptions are false. Utopia is not a place to go; utopia means literally “no place at all.” Human nature is not noble, benign, or inherently good, and neither man nor society is perfectible. Crime cannot be eradicated from the polis no matter how virtuous its people; evil deeds cannot be thoroughly purged in a society made of men. Even in the most virtuous society human frailty will remain. The most moral of worlds would see occasional crime, indecency, and inhumanity. If men are gathered together, bad acts are inevitable. It is inarguable that society can be improved and evil contained, but we must realize that human nature will always demand our attention, loudly and demonstrably. Society can limit and deter the more evil manifestations of our nature, but it cannot eliminate them. Any belief otherwise is naïve at best.

At worst, the false premises of our youthful elite are corrosive, and dangerous. The belief in perfectibility can go much further than mere moral preening over Abu Ghraib, and the idea of utopia can damage much more than America’s image and moral leadership. The belief that a perfect polis is possible—the belief that a virtuous society with no evil can truly obtain—is a pernicious and subversive faith that leads to only one place: totalitarianism. If one truly believes that evil can be eradicated, then the very presence of evil demands more regulation, more restrictions, more vigilance, and more oversight. If society is responsible for man’s corruption, society, it will be argued, should be finely tuned and heavily imposed so that corruption does not happen. Afterwards, when evil inevitably survives, the believers will argue for increased measures, and more power. Grips will be tightened, and shackles will be brought out of the attic. Evil, instead of being purged, will move up the organizational ladder, and in the void freedom will wilt and despair will reign. This is the end-game of perfectibility.

And so we arrive back at our question, but armed with truth, not with preening. Is it true that Abu Ghraib speaks to the heart of America’s worth as a moral leader? The question would be yes if the actions of Abu Ghraib were done on behalf of America—sponsored, advised, and supported by our policy—and the answer would be yes if the perpetrators were not held to account. If either of these two scenarios obtained, our moral authority would truly be lost.

But they don’t obtain. The deeds of Abu Ghraib were perpetrated independent of American sponsorship, without supervision, and in contradistinction to our policy. These were the acts of a few individual sadists, acting on their own, subsequently investigated and prosecuted by the same military that our enlightened elite decry and slander. The people that brought us Abu Ghraib are still spending time in prison, but now they are on the wrong side of the fence. When faced with the darkness of human nature, embarrassed in front of the entire world, America didn’t flinch. She investigated her own, apologized to the victims, and dispensed a painful justice on those who would perpetrate evil deeds in her name. Is this not virtue? Is this not leadership?

That Abu Ghraib happened was a terrible embarrassment for our country—that is without a doubt—and the actions of the soldiers involved were indeed despicable and immoral. But bad and evil acts will always happen, even in the most virtuous of societies, so something else must inform our analysis of a regime. Another way of saying this is that, in a society’s equation of virtue, evil is a constant, and constants don’t tell us much. Variables, however, do tell us much, for the value of their input can change the value of the output. The variable we must look to is not the existence of evil deeds, but the response of the society after they are committed. Bad acts are only part of the story, the first part, the inevitable part. It is the rest of the story where we must judge virtue.