Meanwhile, on the other side of the world in a place that's not exactly a democracy, the country of Turkey sentenced 104 people to life in prison the same day we went to the polls in Arkansas.
Turkey has had a series of mass trials lately, to punish those who participated in an attempted coup in 2016, or maybe just thought about it. For how can you fairly prosecute hundreds of people at a time? Call it the Turkish way of doing things.
Those 104 people convicted in the latest trial were given what the Turks call "aggravated life," and you can say that again. Dozens of others were given only decades in jail. Those include all those active and retired military leaders the government accused in the plot, along with regular grunts and some cadets thrown in for fun. The cadets were reportedly ordered out of their barracks the night of the attempted coup, and they followed orders from real officers. For any American soldier who was once a cadet, the word of real officers--especially those field-grade or above--was like law handed down from above. You didn't question it. And now these cadets will spend the best part of their lives behind bars for doing exactly what the Turkish government trained them to do.
We'll not trade our democracy for Turkey's government. We don't do coups here--or show trials when coups fail. We do, well, what we did Tuesday.
Editorial on 05/24/2018