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Robert Knight, director of CWA's Culture and Family Institute, also blames pornography, which he says gave the soldiers "the idea to engage in sadomasochistic activity and to videotape it in voyeuristic fashion." But he doesn't stop there. Knight also blames "putting women into combat areas," "'gay' publications," homosexuals, gay marriage, "violators of [broadcast] decency rules," school "recruitment schemes into early sex and homosexuality," liberals (whom Knight says are "systematically aiding and abetting the cultural depravity that produced the Iraq scandal"), opponents of courtroom displays of the Ten Commandments, and politicians who have "pressed for higher and higher taxes."

That's quite a list, but it seems that Knight really means it. The abuse of prisoners didn't happen by accident, he says. "It is directly due to cultural depravity advanced in the name of progress and amplified by a sensation-hungry media."

Concerned Women for America has also reposted Gary Bauer's piece where he describes the abused prisoners as "murderers and thugs [having] a bad time of it in prison." A summary of the Bauer article has also been posted on the American Family Association's web site, where it is so far the only article about Abu Ghraib.

The Family Research Council also in part blames pornography for the prisoner abuse, adding MTV to the list of culprits. "The photos coming out of Iraq cannot be ignored," says FRC president Tony Perkins.

But it is ridiculous to suggest that the Bush Administration or military boot camps are responsible for teaching our young soldiers this behavior. We must be willing to look deeper — we must be willing to look our culture in the mirror and ask some hard questions about what kind of society our children are growing up in.

As a former police officer who spent time working inside the prison system, I am saddened but not surprised at some of the abuse I've seen in these photos. But what is surprising and what should shock our nation's conscience is that these U.S. soldiers took photos and home-made pornography of the abuse as 'trophies' for their actions.

As Chuck Colson pointed out at FRC's inaugural Pastors' Briefing yesterday, when you mix young people who grew up on a steady diet of MTV and pornography with a prison environment, you get the abuse at Abu Ghraib.

America is in a perilous situation. In the eyes of these Muslims we are the enemy because we are Christian, but in many areas of our culture, our conduct as a nation is anything but Christian.

Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, has his own theory. "This is not a breakdown in the system. This reflects a breakdown in society," he told the Associated Press. "These people's moral compass didn't work for some reason. My guess is because they've been infected with relativism."

Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, reflects earlier Christian commentary on scandal when he blames the fallen human heart. "While others speculate about the cause of such manifestly evil actions, Christians know that the human heart is capable of almost limitless evil," he wrote in his daily commentary today. "The tragic photos from Abu Ghraib prison remind us that even a war with noble goals can bring out the very worst in those who fight. This lesson is too expensive to waste."

Meanwhile, Roman Catholic Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, the Vatican's foreign minister, has further comment, saying the torture at Abu Ghraib is "a more serious blow to the United States than September 11."

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May (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48