The US government denounced Abu Graib if I recall.
Yes the US did. Then it proceeded to prosecute some low level individuals directly involved and to demote a general that arguably had little or nothing to do with the problems. It did not institute a review of the conditions that had allowed problems like this to happen nor did it do anything to restrict its mistreatment of prisoners in other venues. It certainly did not do anything to Rumsfeld or other high ranking officials that were pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable practice with regard to the treatment of prisoners.
Conceding to Iran's blackmail should be the last thing anyone should do.
I assume that you mean things like North's trading arms for hostages. I think we agree that in this case giving into blackmailers was a disastrous policy with far reaching negative consequences for which the ramifications are still being felt to this day.
But I think there are many differences between this situation and the hostage situation from the eighties which for me suggest strongly that some face saving concessions to the Iranian government are a good idea.
First, the US has been threatening an attack on Iraq for four years or so. This fact alone could have led to a belligerent act by an entity of the Iranian government. So, getting the Iranians to do something like this is almost the expected result of a policy like the US has implemented with regard to Iran. So now that the US policy has resulted in a hostile act by the Iranians, should this be used as a pretense to start blowing up other Iranians that had nothing to do with this incident? I don't think so. This approach wasn't all that successful in Lebanon when the Israelis tried it in Lebanon last year.
Second, when Ollie North was handing out weapons to the Iranians to get hostages released it was easy to predict that the Iranian clients would just go grab more hostages to keep the process going and that is of course what happened. There was nothing that could be done to stop that. In this case, it is the illegal capture of some soldiers that is at issue. If some concessions are made here, it is very unlikely that the Iranians would capture more soldiers to keep the game going. For two reasons: It's not that easy to capture soldiers and the Iranians would realize that the patience shown the first time would probably not be repeated.
Third, it is likely, that the Iranians have used the US saber rattling as a means of strengthening internal support for their fundamentalist regime. Capturing these sailors was probably something of an extension of this approach. If the US or the UK now engages in an out sized response to this incident the damage done to US and UK credibility in Iran may last for generations and it may actually help the cause of Iranian extremism.
Fourth, ratcheting this incident up and into a war so the likes of Bill O'Reilly and Pardalis can sit back and not feel like the west is being humiliated is guaranteed to cost the lives of hundreds if not thousands of Iranians. I don't want my country to kill innocent people for the expedient of gratifying the hungry for war set.
Fifth, even if one doesn't give a crap about the lives of thousands of innocent Iranians the potential for an Iranian war to disrupt the flow of oil and thereby the western economies is huge.
Sixth, the US is the one that has been farting around in Iranian internal politics for sixty years or so. Not the other way around. Much of the US interference with Iranian internal government is judged by the Iranians to have had very negative consequences on their lives. I think it is reasonable to cut somebody a little slack when they see your actions as having been callously harmful to their country.
Seventh, It is the US that has two aircraft carriers floating around Iran with the continuous tacit threat that if the Iranians do something the US doesn't like the US is going to blow some of them up. So right now the Iranians are not making any direct threat on the territory of the US or the UK and yet it is the US which continuously threatens Iran. I am prepared to cut the Iranians a little slack if they don't react exactly correctly to the continuous threat of a US invasion.
Eighth, any military action to secure the release of these sailors will likely result in their death. So, whatever justification is ginned up for an attack on Iran as a result of this incident saving these sailors is certainly not one of them.
ETA:
This item should have been included. Others have alluded to it, but I'd like to add it to my list:
Ninth, the US has 150,000 soldiers that are roughly allied with the Shiites in Iraq. Any attack on the Shiite Iran is likely to galvanize, the already, touchy relationship between the Iraqi Shiites and the US into total hatred. Exactly, how this plays out, who knows. But it is hard to see how it would be good for US credibility or safety in Iraq.
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