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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (41992)	5/3/2004 5:11:21 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793597

VDH on Abu Ghraib - Professor Bainbridge blog It's a pity Victor Davis Hanson's essay on the Abu Ghraib abuses is only available on the WSJ's pay site, as it is probably the best balanced commentary I've seen yet. On the one hand, Hanson makes clear that such abuses cannot go unpunished: These seemingly inhuman acts are indeed serious stuff. They also raise a host of dilemmas for the U.S. - from the pragmatic to the idealistic. We must insist on a higher standard of human behavior than embraced by either Saddam Hussein or his various fascist and Islamicist successors. As emissaries of human rights, how can we allow a few miscreants to treat detainees indecently - without earning the wages of hypocrisy from both professed allies and enemies who enjoy our embarrassment? In defense, it won't do for us just to point to our enemies and shrug, "They do it all the time." I think VDH is basically right here. Absent WMD, unseating a brutal dictator remains the strongest argument for Bush's intervention. As such, our own people must be purer than Caesar's proverbial wife. On the other hand, as VDH explains later in his essay, there is an important difference between the sort of systematic, yet often purposeless, policy of torture and brutality under Saddam's regime and what we may still hope will prove to be the unauthorized acts of a few rogue elements. The guards' alleged crimes are not only repugnant but stupid as well. At a time when it is critical to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, a few renegade corrections officers have endangered the lives of thousands of their fellow soldiers in the field. Marines around Fallujah take enormous risks precisely because they do not employ the tactics of the fedayeen, who fire from minarets and use civilians as human shields. Some Roman general or another supposedly said: "Let them hate us as long as they fear us." I doubt whether that policy has ever worked. Carrying that policy into effect today, moreover, would require a level of violence that would violate every norm of just war and human rights. Yet, conduct that inspires hatred, without inspiring fear, arguably is even worse. Such conduct not only violates those norms, but also ultimately proves self-defeating because it perpetuates the cycle of violence (as illustrated by the long wars in Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine). Put another way, even if one believed the ends justified the means, which I emphatically do not, that argument is especially inapt here where the immoral means seem unable to accomplish the immoral end. On the other hand, Hanson appropriately reminds us that there is in fact a double standard at work here: The Arab world - where the mass-murdering Osama bin Laden is often canonized - is shocked by a pyramid of nude bodies and faux-electric prods, but has so far expressed less collective outrage in its media when the charred corpses of four Americans were poked and dismembered by cheering crowds in Fallujah. The taped murder of Daniel Pearl or a video of the hooded Italian who had his brains blown out - this is the daily fare that emanates now from the television studios of the Middle East. Finally, Hanson takes a shot at those who cannot put it in context: We who are appalled in our offices and newsrooms are not those who have had our faces blown off while delivering food in Humvees or are incinerated in SUVs full of medical supplies - with the full understanding that there will be plenty of Iraqis to materialize to hack away at what is left of our charred corpses. War is hell, and those who do not endure it are not entirely aware of the demons that are unleashed, and thus should hold their moral outrage until the full account of the incident is investigated and adjudicated. One thinks of Henry V's decision to murder the prisoners at Agincourt. It is almost impossible today to judge Henry's decision because one cannot know the stresses battle imposed. To be sure, this does not excuse what happened (and I don't believe VDH intends it to do so). Instead, I suspect VDH intends to invoke the Christian balancing act of hating the sin while still loving the sinner.