The Ox-Bow Incident

The Ox-Bow Incident is about a bunch of cattle men in the wild west who track down and lynch three men for murder and cattle-rustlin', only to find out that the cattle weren't rustled and the murdered man ain't dead (warning: there was a spoiler in that last sentence). The book takes its own sweet time, letting the members of the lynch mob stew over their deed before the actual hanging takes place, then contemplates the effect of the ordeal on the consciences of the men involved - some of whom end up offing themselves because of it.

Walter Van Tilburg Clark wrote The Ox-Bow Incident in 1937/38, and when asked about it, said he was trying to expain that he "was most afraid ... not of the German Nazis, or even the Bund, but that ever-present element in any society which can always be led to act the same way, to use authoritarian methods to oppose authoritarian methods."

About four years ago, you can bet there was a young Afghan man going about his business when the American tanks rolled through. In the wrong place at the wrong time, he got caught up in a huge net and shipped off across the sea to wait for his fate to be determined. Unlike the Ox-Bow Incident, this young man was not given the time or even the paper to jot down a quick note to his young wife and children, but handcuffed and blindfolded and herded into a plane and whisked away. Over the last few years, you can bet this young man has been treated pretty harshly in the hands of a country that defined an entirely new category of prisoner for the express purpose of lawyerly circumventing laws governing the humane treatment of prisoners; a country that routinely ships prisoners to torture-friendly countries, in effect outsourcing our torture services; a country whose leader makes blanket statements about good and evil and whose sense of justice allows him to say things like this about someone who has never been tried:

"There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt," Bush said. "We know he's guilty."

You can also bet that there's a young American man who was going about his business four years ago, doing his time in the National Guard to pay for his education. In the wrong place at the wrong time, he was rounded up with his buddies and shipped overseas to dispense justice, American-style. Over the last few years, this young man has seen and done things that, hitherto, he had not even experienced in his worst nightmares. But if it was done as part of his assigned role in a rigid chain of command, who was he to ask why? He may have been holding the leash of the dog as it growled and barked at the naked shell of the formerly proud Afghan man, but he wasn't the one running the show, he was just doing his job.

In the Ox-Bow Incident, the lynch mob's commander ended up falling on his sword out of shame. So did the young man, his son, who served as an unwitting and unwilling accomplice to the lynching (Oops, spoilers). The cruel irony in all this is that at the top of the chain of command, George Bush couldn't give two shits about the innocent Afghani "collateral damage." As a matter of fact, he's going to veto the entire military appropriations bill just because it says he can't treat American prisoners in the "cruel, inhuman or degrading" fashion he's become so comfortable with. Then he'll throw back a glass of whiskey and fall straight to sleep on his gilded pillows.

Meanwhile, a young American will scream himself to sleep into his pillow, unable to speak with his young wife about the horrors he has seen and/or committed. A young Afghan man will be unable to return to his home village today, tomorrow, or ever. Neither will ever be able to explain to their children how everything went so horribly so quickly.

Walter Van Tilburg Clark explained:

"What I wanted to say was, 'It can happen here. It has happened here, in minor but sufficiently indicative ways, a great many times.'"