I am not a great Dilbert fan: sure, at first it was funny, because it was covering topics that had not previously been scrutinised by mainstream comics. But, Like Doonesbury, Calvin and Hobbs, Zits, it's gone on too long, and is now repeating itself endlessly.

That said, I have to credit Scott Adams with one of the most perceptive ideas in comics. Dogbert, noting how formulaic news has become, decides to save a lot of trees by printing a fill-in-the-blanks paper, with all the set-piece stories, from local disaster to political scandal, simply leaving blanks for the names and places to be filled in.

Of course, being Dogbert, he plans to sell it for $US1500.

I am reminded of Dogbert's newspaper a lot recently. Reminded by the coverage of the Iraqi prison abuse scandal, although as revelations continue, it is clearly a misnomer to confine it to Iraq. Everyone is rushing to be on the record as shocked and appalled. Everyone is ready to do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of this foul abuse. Everyone is ready to sacrifice whatever grunts they can find to ensure that the world believes it goes no higher up.

Can you remember My Lai? Does the name William Calley mean anything to you? Do you actually remember Viet Nam? Not just as something you have heard older people refer to, but as something you witnessed, hour after hour, on your television?

Because, if you do, and most of the quoted surely do, you have no excuse for being shocked at all -- unless perhaps by the unwanted discovery that you still get a profoundly negative reaction from the US public to in-your-face pictures of brutality in the name of democracy. Jeez, I thought we had trained them better than that!

What on earth did everyone expect when the most powerful nation in the world, lead by a cabal of religious fundamentalists who deeply believe in their own righteousness, exempts itself from international law and announces it has the moral right to use force against anyone it does not like? When a President who has never been to war announces he "is willing to pay the blood price"? Did we think he would do the bleeding?

Where on earth did everyone think it was leading when the authorities in that most powerful nation suspended basic civil and human rights at home, rounded up thousands of immigrants - who are still being held, let us not forget - and began arresting foreign nationals for their skin, names, ethnicity, holding them without consular assistance, or deporting them to nations in which it was known the hapless deportees would be tortured? What did we all think was going on at Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay? Tough love?

I am not saying that Spc. Sivits does not deserve to be in prison. He and a lot of others could, and should, have refused those orders. Could, and should, have done what the unnamed soldier who blew the whistle did. Nor do I have any doubt, regardless of denials, disclaimers, and public shedding of crocodile tears, that the corruption will trace to very high, if not the highest, levels.

What I am saying is that none of us, whether US citizens or not, should be surprised. We know what happens when one bully gathers a gang around him/her and starts beating up those who don't kowtow. We've read about it in the press, we've seen it our streets, yards, schools, in the US, in Canada, in Europe, in Africa, Asia, all over the world. We cannot plead ignorance as to how this world works -- we live in it. What on earth makes us so convinced, against all evidence, that things will work differently when the bully is a nation?

If the highest levels are prepared to abuse nations, to break every law and demand impunity for some self-perceived moral exceptionalism, to punish the slightest disagreement with trade retaliation or the arrest of passing citizens of the offending nation, how on earth can we expect that the individual citizen, let alone the individual soldier, is going to react when faced by a real person who stands up to him/her, who embodies the demonised Other, who disagrees with the Bosses' position?

He's just going along; he's just following orders. Or maybe, like the unsung hero who slipped those pictures under the door, he's terrified for his own life. After all, soldiers who resisted the SS's commands were sent to the Russian Front. Or shot summarily. Or, like the National Guardsman who refused to go to Iraq, peerhaps s/he feared being court martialled and sent to prison.

If I had seen what was happening at Abu Ghraib, I, too, would have been terrified of going to prison. The wonder is that someone still had the courage to blow that whistle, even anonymously.

I suppose we ought to be grateful, in a way. Perhaps all this shock and outrage means Michael Moore is not wrong. Maybe the majority of Americans really still are decent, caring people after all. Maybe.

I will be more convinced when I see them in the streets, demanding the impeachment of those responsible.

I will be more convinced, much more, when I see them in the streets, watching the soldiers come home.

I will be more convinced when a US administration apologises to the world for the past three-plus years, and humbly requests readmission to the community of nations.

And I will be most convinced when one or more high-level US officials are voluntarily surrendered to the International Criminal Court for trial.

What will it take? Who will do it? Are we going to leave it to other fundamentalists to fight back? What kind of world will it be when "the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; the best lack all convictions, while the worst are full of passionate intensity"? Do you know that line? Do you know when it was written? And why? Yeats may have been a genuine fruitloop when it came to the spiritual, but he saw farther ahead than he knew.

It's not up to some poor grunt to decide to torture people. That happens because there is a context in which s/he thinks this kind of behaviour is okay. Nor is it up to some other poor grunt to try to stop it.

So, who will it be? Mmmmm?

©Copyright the author.