What really weakens America?

I will preface with this story from BBC and a warning to those who don't like to hear unpleasant truths: skip this post.

I wasn't blogging during the Abu Gharib scandal, and I'm glad I wasn't. Too little has been answered. There are basic questions that do not fit the facts. How does an enlisted national guardsman (a low ranking one at that) requisition a trained attack dog? Does it just take a library card? Or does it require at least a 2nd lt. to sign some form? Well, no officers were charged with a crime. Hundreds of photos were shown to the Senate, and they came out afraid. And that was after the first 8 or so that we saw. What was covered up because it was worse? A year later it comes out that secret unnamed prisoners were held there at Rummsfield's request? Isn't that coincidental for a site of so much controversy? These are questions intelligent people ask. But we don't want to know the answers.

Gitmo is worse. Abu Gharib is a hellhole in the desert, but we built Gitmo. Perhaps we only coerced people and never tortured them...but we coerced them into trying to take their own lives. At that point torture/coercion is really more a semantic argument. But really, we don't want to know.

There is plenty of data. Red Cross, photos, interviews, investigations. Those are the tip of the iceburg. We wouldn't know a tenth of this had a few people not been so stupid as to take photos. And that is good, because we don't want to know.

I don't want to know either, because I'm afraid the truth will shame us further. The failure of our society to face that fear comes at a price: it costs us the ability to fix our problems and the imperative to make things right. That weakens America more than the truth ever possibly could.