Whether it is invading Iraq, torturing suspected terrorists, imposing long prison sentences for low-level drug crimes, looking the other way when police officers shoot unarmed black men or building jails for babies in Texas, there is always someone to argue that the government action was necessary, automatic, because of something someone else did.
If the victims of our overreaction, our bad judgment, our need to punish, didn’t want to be attacked, tortured, jailed, shot or subjected to institutionalized child abuse, then those people — or their parents — shouldn’t have done what they did.
Well, no, in many cases they shouldn’t.