Gold, I don't think those stories will help or hurt either Kerry or Bush, but they sure will hurt America. The Arab media has been claiming all along that that is the type of folks we are, and they were wrong. Except now they have it on film. On film our military tried to cover up. And not only did our troops commit outrages, but it was of the most disgusting type to the Muslim world. White female perpetrators of sex crimes against Muslim men is the stuff their nightmares are made of. These folks are even prissier than Republicans about sex. In contrast, the American contractor who recently escaped seems to have been treated as well as possible by his Iraqi captors. This goes relatively unnoticed in America, but I think Osama is jumping for joy.
I don't pretend to have an answer. Just as I didn't have an answer to Mai Lai, and this is not nearly that outrageous. But it sure undermines our moral authority, the idea that we are liberators, and the concept that we just want to make them decent folks like us. I also think it is closely related to why we never hear the total number of Iraqi casualties, much less have them broken down by civilian and combat, in the US media. After all, they are camel jockeys, not human beings. We don't really believe that, as a nation (though many individual Americans do think that way), but I don't see how a Muslim can think otherwise. |
