A Sign for Joe

Posted on August 17, 2004 in Courage & Activism Occupation of Iraq

It’s politics Tuesday!

Jeremy of Fantastic Planet called his readers’ attention to the plight of Joe Darby, the hero who blew the whistle on Abu Ghraib. America is supposed to be about reward for integrity, but Joe Darby is being kept captive by the military and by the American people who think that what he did amounts to treason:

There was the candlelight vigil in Cumberland, Maryland, to show support for the disgraced soldiers, including the ones who did the torturing, about a hundred supporters standing in the pounding rain, as if beating and sodomizing prisoners were some kind of patriotic duty. Or the 200 people who gathered one night in Hyndman, Pennsylvania, waving American flags to honor Sivits, the first soldier tried in the scandal. They posted a sign in Hyndman. It said JEREMY SIVITS, OUR HOMETOWN HERO. And the mayor told reporters that even though Sivits would sometimes do “a little devilish thing,” on the whole he was “a wonderful kid.”

I do not doubt that Jeremy Sivits was pretty much the average American guy. We’ve known at least since Hannah Arendt that evil acts don’t require a twisted upbringing. They only require someone like you and me, someone who when told to do the unthinkable checks first to see what his peers were doing. Go into any Taco Bell or cinemaplex or shopping mall and you will find plenty of boys and girls who can fill the place of Jeremy Sivits and Lindsay England. They’re ordinary kids like the ones who live on your street. Perhaps what is needed here — No, it is needed here. What is needed is a Nuremberg Trials of all who made this possible, beginning with Dick Cheney and ending wherever it must end in the Department of Defense and the State Department. The Jeremy Sivits of this world played only a small role in a larger madness.

Which brings me back to Joe Darby, another guy like the ones you see around your neighborhood. Except that Joe Darby did the unthinkable for the average guy. He didn’t go along with the torture and the sodomy at Abu Ghraib. He reported it to his superiors. Joe Darby is an American hero and any time he wants to break bread with me, I’ll happily pay for his dinner because he stands for what America should be about, about doing the right thing no matter how much those around you press you to do the wrong thing.

Joe believed in Just War. I don’t call him a pacifist. We may disagree on whether it was right or not to preemptively strike against Saddam Hussein, but there is no doubt in my mind that Joe has a conscience. His wife wonders where are the signs praising her husband. There’s one right here, Bernadette: JOE DARBY: AMERICAN HERO. Joe Darby whose name will stand in glory with the Vietnam veterans and conscientious objectors who brought our boys home, who ended that madness with their determination and their willingness to sustain the bombast and the arrogance of their peers to see that America did the right thing. My hat is off to you, Joe Darby, and my hand is out, American to American. Welcome home, Joe. You have what it takes to be a great citizen and a leader in the days to come. Unlike the legions of jingoistic cowards of our age, you didn’t just go along. You reached for and seized Principle.