Joe Nation wrote:This is the same rightwing radio ploy tried when the Abu Ghraib prison photos came out, Rush and O'Reilly making out like these activities were just hyjinks caught on tape.
Hazing is a voluntary process one elects to participate in. Hmmm. So far no connection to imprisonment. A failure to make it through a session (one day, three days, whatever) of hazing will not result in your death, just your inability to use the local frat house's hot tub. It will be embarrassing to have to say that you didn't complete your pledge but you more than likely will not have lost the use of either hand or leg.
To equate hazing to torture is to believe that burning your finger tips when putting out a candle is the same as being punched in the kidneys until blood flows out of your anus and down your legs.
Joe(there is a difference in the tone of the screams)Nation
I do not think hazing is necessarily more benign...nor is participation in it always voluntary...
For example, "hazing" in the Australian military has certainly been found to be criminal in nature at times, and seems to persist despite stated "brass" intentions to curtail it.
The point is more basic, I think...which is that the Geneva conventions are designed to operate in a particular sphere and situation, so Okie's whole premise is simply stupid and dishonest. So what else is new?
If "hazing' turns into torture and abuse in universities, the military etc., presumably there are laws within western democracies that exist to address it, however imperfectly.
However, while many victims of it are rendered relatively powerless by their desire to remain in whatever organization is allowing it, (a number of Australian trainee soldiers are known to have killed themselves because of it) their situation cannot compare with that of utterly helpless prisoners being abused...(another example of Okie's stupidity or dishonesty)....
Just as one example, military trainees and university students are not cut off from all communication with the outside world and deliberately denied recourse to any law or appeal.
Nobody, despite Okie's silly claims, is denying the seriousness of acts of abuse and torture committed by people other than allied soldiers against prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and in formerly secret prisons in other countries.
I have no idea how often hazing in American universities reaches such levels, seldom, I would hope...but certainly the original intent of the right in comparing Abu Ghraib with such behaviour was to attempt to deny the seriousness of the abuse at American hands, and to ridicule the very proper and fully justified concerns of those who condemned it.
It is therefore quite amusing to see such as Okie now attempting, very unsuccessfully, to use the right's callous and dishonest tactics in such a way.
