The bad apples excuse

Reader question:

Please explain “bad apples excuse”, as in: Obama used a version of the “bad apples excuse” to support his decision, which is just what the Bush administration did...

My comments:

The bad apples excuse is an excuse authorities often use to explain away problems, saying, for example, even though many officials are found to be corrupt and fraudulent, the majority of officials are clean. Therefore, now that these few “bad apples” are punished, the system remains sound and good.

The upshot is, they’re probably going to keep doing what they have been doing.

Anyways, “bad apples” as a cliché comes from the proverb “One bad apple spoils the barrel”. This, in turn, comes from the observation that when one apple begins to rot in the barrel, others may soon go bad too. Therefore it is a good idea to remove the bad ones before others may follow suit.

Similarly, I’ve heard people say “One bad egg stinks out the whole basket”. It says the same thing.

Hence figuratively speaking, bad apples, or eggs, refer to people who are considered to be bad influences in a group.

Here are more media examples:

1. The British soldiers responsible for the death of an Iraqi detainee were not just “a few bad apples”, a public inquiry heard today.

Hotel receptionist Baha Mousa, 26, died in UK military custody in Basra, southern Iraq, in September 2003 after being subjected to humiliating abuse.

British troops in Iraq routinely used interrogation methods banned by the Government in 1972 and did not think they were illegal, the inquiry into his death was told.

Rabinder Singh QC, counsel for Mr Mousa's family and other Iraqis detained with him, said: “This case is not just about beatings or a few bad apples.

“There is something rotten in the whole barrel.”

The inquiry has already heard how UK troops subjected Mr Mousa and his fellow detainees to abuse, including making them scream in an "orchestrated choir" and forcing one to dance like Michael Jackson.

It was also played a short video showing Corporal Donald Payne screaming obscenities at the hooded Iraqi prisoners, including Mr Mousa, calling them “apes”.

Mr Singh said: “The official version of events was that nothing on that video was in fact illegal.

“What we saw on that video was a soldier trying to implement official policy, forcing detainees to get back into stress positions when they were clearly moaning and unable to maintain those positions.

“They are all shown hooded, again in accordance with orders, and again illegally.”

- Civilian death soldiers ‘not just few bad apples’, Independent.co.uk, September 21, 2009.

2. In April 2004, when we first saw the Abu Ghraib photos -- hooded Iraqis being tortured, menaced by dogs, sexually abused under the prods and grins of their American captors -- our outrage and disgust were just barely tempered by the notion that the U.S. occupation of Iraq could not, and would not, ever be the same. It seemed certain that the photos would change the way the U.S. handles detainees, and bring down the policymakers who made it possible for such behavior to flourish. But a year and a half later, with a handful of low-level soldiers from Abu Ghraib -- the proverbial “bad apples” -- behind bars, what has really changed? In September, Human Rights Watch issued a lengthy report detailing how troops in the 82nd Airborne routinely tortured detainees at Camp Mercury, a forward operating base near Fallujah, often in response to direct orders from military intelligence. Three soldiers from the 82nd Airborne, including Capt. Ian Fishback, gave a full debriefing to Human Rights Watch after numerous attempts to report the abuse through their chain of command were ignored.

However, when the Abu Ghraib story broke open, one higher-up in the military did get hung out. Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski arrived in Iraq in June 2003 with the understanding that she would be in charge of the 800th Military Police Brigade as it transitioned from guarding EPWs (enemy prisoners of war) to helping Iraqis retake control of their own prison population. Right away, Karpinski learned that many soldiers under her command who were supposed to be headed home were, in fact, being ordered to stay in Iraq for three to six additional months at least. She also learned that she would be overseeing 17 prisons, including the notorious Abu Ghraib, which was being used temporarily to house a few hundred felons and low-level criminals.

Given that she acted as commander of the prisons, it would seem obvious that Karpinski was responsible for what happened at Abu Ghraib. But her case is complicated. Within months of her arrival in Iraq, Abu Ghraib became a holding pen for massive numbers of Iraqis swept up in U.S. military raids and held as “security detainees.” And while Karpinski was in charge of the military police at the prison, she had no control over interrogations being handled by military intelligence, the CIA or even private contractors. Karpinski contends that as the chain of command and the policies regarding the security detainees at Abu Ghraib became murkier and murkier, she tried in vain not to be sidelined. Ultimately, she says, she had no clue as to the horrific acts taking place inside the prison.

In her new book (written with Steven Strasser), “One Woman’s Army: The Commanding General of Abu Ghraib Tells Her Story,” Karpinski makes a strong argument that she was made a scapegoat by George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, her immediate bosses and military intelligence commanders. Frustratingly, Karpinski never steps up and takes responsibility, in any way, for what happened at Abu Ghraib. Yet, despite her lack of accountability or mea culpa, the book is an often shocking, guns-a-blazing indictment of the inept occupation of Iraq, and of the men who planned it and continue to run it today.

- Rummy’s scapegoat, Salon.com, November 10, 2005.

3. A dispute with BBC TV’s religious slot, Sunday Morning Live: would I join a debate on the pope? As president of the British Humanist Association, I was glad to – but there was a problem. Discussion was divided into a first debate on whether Catholicism was over-obsessed with sex, but I was to join a second: is the Catholic church a force for good? How could you answer that without saying that sex lies at the poisoned heart of all that is wrong with just about every major faith?

Repression of sex, banning contraception, gay rights, abortion, stem-cell research and IVF treatment cause untold misery. Not to the “liberal” Catholics who proclaim for reform and use contraception themselves – as Cherie Blair so distastefully revealed – yet support a church whose denial of it damages and kills poor mothers with no choice. As Ben Goldacre pointed out in this paper on Saturday, while this pope claims condoms “aggravate the problem” of HIV/Aids, two million die a year. Ann Widdecombe’s riposte that the Catholic church runs more Aids clinics than any single nation was like suggesting the Spanish Inquisition ran the best rehab clinics for torture victims.

Women’s bodies are the common battleground, symbols of all religions’ authority and identity. Cover them up with veil or burka, keep them from the altar, shave their heads, give them ritual baths, church them, make them walk a step behind, subject them to men’s authority, keep priests celibately free of women, unclean and unworthy. Eve is the cause of all temptation in Abrahamic faiths. Only by suppressing women can priests and imams hold down the power of sex, the flesh and the devil. The Church of England is on the point of schism over gay priests, women bishops and African homophobia. The secular world looks on in utter perplexity.

Trying to deny the primal life force has led to centuries of persecution, suffering, secrecy and breathtaking hypocrisy. Wherever male cultural leaders hold absolute and unscrutinized power, women and children will be abused. In western secular life this has at last been recognized: in schools, prisons, care homes and within families, wherever the powerless are unseen and unheard, horrors will happen without checks and transparency. Abusers gravitate towards closed organizations, and absolute power turns people into abusers. But the Vatican still talks of a few bad apples requiring internal discipline, the pope refusing to hand rapists over to secular law. Imams, gurus, priests, all hold sway over the vulnerable. As secretive madrasas and new religious “free” schools multiply while officials nervously respect their cultural independence, expect more abuse as bad as the Belgian Catholic cases now emerging.

The other dominion the religions control is death. Were it not for the faiths with their grip on hospices and palliative care, the law on assisted dying would be reformed. Religious dominance in parliament scuppered the last bill that tried to give the dying the right to depart when they can suffer no more. A survey in the Journal of Medical Ethics found religious doctors far less likely to keep the dying deeply sedated if that risked hastening death, forcing people to linger in the agonizing antechambers of death. Add up the millions of hours of human suffering the faiths inflict by their denial of choice over sex and death, and it far outweighs their Mother Teresa work.

- Sex and death lie at the poisoned heart of religion, The Guardian, September 14, 2010.

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.