Best of the Web Today - May 10, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO
Abu Ghraib and American Prisons
Not all Arabs are appalled at the lurid pictures from Abu Ghraib. "The abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of U.S. soldiers draws intense reactions from some who left Iraq to find freedom in Washington state, but prolonged outrage isn't one of them," the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports from Everett:
Imad al-Turfy . . . shows no sympathy for the prisoners, saying their treatment paled when compared with the horrors inflicted under Saddam Hussein's regime.
"They raped our women. They killed our kids. So there's hatred between us, the people here, and the people in Iraq," he said, referring to the Shiite Muslims who emigrated and the Sunni Muslims who ruled Iraq under Saddam.
"Anything coming to them would make me happy." . . .
So to view photos of prisoners in humiliating positions--one month after seeing another chilling image, the charred and mutilated corpses of Americans hanging from a bridge over the Euphrates River--was "worth it, because they did the same to us," al-Turfy said, a comment echoed by several other Iraqis.
The desire for revenge, and the inclination to see a sort of rough justice in the prisoners' suffering, is an understandable human reaction. But it's also a dangerous one. If a civilized society fails to establish and enforce decent standards for the treatment of criminals, civilization itself is imperiled.
It's worth noting that prison abuse isn't exactly unheard of here in the U.S. "Physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, similar to what has been uncovered in Iraq, takes place in American prisons with little public knowledge or concern, according to corrections officials, inmates and human rights advocates," notes Fox Butterfield of the New York Times:
The corrections experts say that some of the worst abuses have occurred in Texas, whose prisons were under a federal consent decree during much of the time President Bush was governor because of crowding and violence by guards against inmates. Judge William Wayne Justice of Federal District Court imposed the decree after finding that guards were allowing inmate gang leaders to buy and sell other inmates as slaves for sex.
Yet liberals shouldn't feel too smug about prisoner abuse in the tough-on-crime Texas of George W. Bush. This is a national problem, one that also affects the bluest of states. Massachusetts' criminal justice system is best known for turning Willie Horton loose, yet consider this September 2003 Reuters dispatch from Boston:
Patterns of prison abuse that paved the way for defrocked pedophile priest John Geoghan's murder can be stopped only if Massachusetts' prison culture is scrutinized by outsiders, a prisoners legal aid group said on Tuesday.
"We have heard from inmates that guards have encouraged prisoners to beat up people like Geoghan," James Pingeon, a lawyer with the Massachusetts prison system, told Reuters. "What we have here is a systemic problem that cannot be solved by adding a few more guards to the staff."
In a September 2002 Washington Times op-ed, Pat Nolan of the Justice Fellowship quoted a Bay State official on the issue of prison rape:
As troubling as the incidence of rape is, equally disturbing is the attitude of many government officials who are indifferent to it. When asked about prison rape, Massachusetts Department of Correction spokesman Anthony Carnevales said, "Well, that's prison. . . . I don't know what to tell you." In that offhand remark, he was expressing what many feel in their hearts but are loathe to admit--"they deserve it."
Which is rather similar to what that Seattle Shiite said about the Abu Ghraib prisoners. Nolan's response: "They don't deserve it. Regardless of the crimes they have committed, no offender's sentence includes being raped while in the custody of the government." That's true, and yet sympathy for such victims still doesn't come entirely naturally. After all, they're not innocent; some are even guilty of worse crimes than the ones being committed against them. So what's wrong with shrugging off prison rape and other forms of abuse as "rough justice"?
The answer we find most compelling is found in one of the Abu Ghraib photos published last week in The New Yorker. (Before we link to it, we should warn you that the photo is pornographic, though not explicit; the naughty bits are blurred out. That said, here it is.) "Two American soldiers pose behind a pyramid of naked Iraqi prisoners," the caption blandly says. The infamous Lynndie England stands arm in arm with a man news accounts identify as her boyfriend, Charles Graner, both giving the thumbs-up sign. As for the Iraqis, only their backsides are visible.
What makes this a picture of sheer evil is the grins on the faces of the soldiers. They're doing this just for kicks, using the prisoners to satisfy their own depraved desires.
The administration of criminal justice is a solemn duty of a civilized society. We hold criminals to account for their actions because they are human--because they can tell right from wrong and are responsible if they choose to do wrong. Criminals deserve to be punished, sometimes harshly. But stripping them of their humanity--treating them as objects for the perverse gratification of others--is an affront against the foundations of civilization.
Stark Raving Mad
On Friday we wondered why 49 mostly left-wing Democrats had voted against a House resolution deploring the abuse of Iraqi prisoners and also supporting the "courageous and honorable members of the Armed Forces." Rep. Pete Stark of Fremont, Calif. (midway between Oakland and San Jose), has offered an answer of sorts.
KSFO, a San Francisco talk radio station, has printed a letter Stark received from a constituent, Daniel Dow, who objected to Stark's vote:
I urge you to stop your contemptuous display of bitter partisanship and your politicization of this War. Your actions are very divisive and destructive to the morale of our troops and the morale of our nation. I know that a majority of the population of the 13th Congressional District are very strong in their support of our soldiers and in their support of the War in iraq [sic]. Your "NO" vote today reflects that you are way out of touch with the people of this district.
In response, Dow, himself a veteran, got a phone message from Stark, which he supplied to the station. You can listen here (it's in WAV form), but we've also transcribed it:
Dan, this is Congressman Pete Stark, and I just got your fax. And you don't know what you're talking about, So if you care about enlisted people, you wouldn't have voted for that thing either. But probably somebody put you up to this, and I'm not sure who it was, but I doubt if you could spell half the words in the letter, and somebody wrote it for you. So I don't pay much attention to it. But I'll call you back later and let you tell me more about why you think you're such a great goddamn hero and why you think that this generals [sic] and the Defense Department, who forced these poor enlisted guys to do what they did, shouldn't be held to account. That's the issue. So if you want to stick it to a bunch of enlisted guys, have your way. But if you want to get to the bottom of people who forced this awful program in Iraq, then you should understand more about it than you obviously do. Thanks.
Beneath the bluster and contempt, Stark actually makes an argument, namely that the soldiers who abused the prisoners are victims (soldiers-as-victims is a staple of liberal-left ideology, as we noted last month), and all the blame rests with higher-ups: "this generals and the Defense Department."
Stark is kind of a nut, but The New Republic's Lawrence Kaplan notes that John Kerry has been flirting with the same argument:
On the one hand, the candidate faults "some American troops [who] under some circumstance have engaged in behavior that . . . is absolutely unacceptable." On the other, he assures that "if I were president, we'd have a very different set of activities going on in Iraq today"--the none-too-subtle implication being that the abuses amount to an authentic expression of American policy. . . .
To understand Kerry's reluctance to focus on the guards, we would do well to cast a glance backward, for this is hardly the first time the public has responded to a wartime revelation of this scope. Having been convicted in 1971 of premeditated murder during the My Lai massacre of 1968, Lieutenant William Calley became an overnight hero. . . .
As it happens, one of the voices raised in Calley's defense belonged to John Kerry. The responsibility for My Lai, Kerry said in congressional testimony, rested not with Calley, but "with the men who designed free fire zones . . . with the men who encourage body counts." Lest anyone miss the point, Kerry told an audience at the New York Stock Exchange, "Guilty as Lt. Calley might have been of the actual murder, the verdict does not single out the real criminal. Those of us who have served in Vietnam know that the real guilty party is the United States of America." . . .
Echoing as it does the cliché that Vietnam was an "atrocity-producing situation," Kerry's suggestion that Abu Ghraib was more policy than accident implies that the guards were not so much victimizers as victims who deserve a Nuremberg defense. But the notion, popularized then as now by the likes of Kerry and [journalist Seymour] Hersh, is risible. By all accounts, what happened at Abu Ghraib did not reflect official policy--indeed, the source of the photographs was a military investigation into violations of official policy. But even in the unlikely event that the photos reflect practices sanctioned, as Kerry puts it, "up the chain of command," the candidate's blame-the-mission-more-than-the-perpetrators stance relieves the guilty of the burden they so clearly bear, and, to the extent it identifies any moral agency at all, locates it in a supposed policy that--whether measured by the Uniform Code of Military Justice or the Old Testament--it is every soldier's duty to disobey.
It's possible, of course, that Kaplan is reading entirely too much philosophical consistency into Kerry's statements. The candidate may just be acting opportunistically, looking for a way to bash his opponent. But given the frequency with which Kerry talks about Vietnam, it wouldn't be surprising if his views of this war are informed by his experiences in that one. Given that we lost Vietnam and can't afford to lose Iraq, that's not a comforting thought.
Jumping off a Clift
Some folks just need to get a grip. Newsweek's Eleanor Clift has this to say about Abu Ghraib: "If ever there was a moment for John Kerry to come out swinging, this is it. It is the biggest story of the war, and he is essentially silent."
The biggest story of the war? Bigger than the lightning-fast military victory last year? Bigger than the deaths in battle of Uday and Qusay Hussein? Bigger than Saddam's capture? For that matter, bigger than the continuing insurgency or the mystery over weapons of mass destruction?
Abu Ghraib is a big story, to be sure. But it's the biggest story only to those who are itching to discredit the war effort.
We Get Results--I
We published an item Friday noting that the New York Times Teachers Network had posted a "lesson plan" on "writing letters to protest American abuse of Iraqi prisoners." Three hours later, the plan was gone, replaced by this cryptic message:
This lesson has been temporarily removed. It will be back on the site the week of May 17, 2004. We apologize for the inconvenience.
It will be interesting to see how toned-down is the new version of the lesson plan.
Osirak Redux?
Here's an intriguing little report from the Jerusalem Post:
Israel may be preparing to attack Iranian nuclear facilities within the year, according to US administration assessments reported on Army Radio Saturday morning.
Officials say that the attempt to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons has been discussed at various levels, as well as the effects such an attack would have on US military and political efforts in Iraq and in the Persian Gulf.
The UPI news service says President George Bush and Prime Minster Ariel Sharon recently discussed the subject at their most recent meeting. Following the meeting, Bush said it was inconceivable for the Middle East for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.
When Israel destroyed Saddam Hussein's Osirak nuclear reactor way back in 1981, it was roundly condemned by virtually everyone except The Wall Street Journal's editorial page--even the Reagan administration. Most everyone now agrees Israel did the right thing. Should history repeat itself in Iran, it'll be interesting to see if Israel's critics are more circumspect.
The Best Defense Is a Good Fence
Here's some encouraging news from the Middle East: Agence France-Presse reports that there hasn't been a single suicide bombing within Israel (as distinct from the disputed territories) in more than seven months--to be exact, since Oct. 4, when a Palestinian Arab woman massacred 21 Jews and Arabs at a restaurant in Haifa. AFP attributes the lull to the completion of the northern section of Israel's security barrier, which in particular has blocked access from Qalqilya, "which used to be adjacent to Israeli towns and was often used as a launchpad for West Bank militants."
So will Israel get credit for taking steps to end the cycle of violence? Don't hold your breath. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, though, the United Nations has just endorsed Israel's actions. A U.N. press release last Thursday announces that "the United Nations is set to begin a slate of projects--including the construction [of] a new perimeter fence--to bolster safety and security measures at its New York Headquarters."
What Would We Do Without Librarians Who Married Terrorists?
"I Was a Fool, Says Librarian Who Married a Terrorist"--headline, (London) Daily Telegraph, May 8
Fear of Fox
The only thing more annoying than journalistic navel-gazing is journalistic arrogance. John Carroll, editor of the Los Angeles Times, displayed the latter last week in a speech on "ethics" at the University of Oregon, reports the Oregon Daily Emerald, which describes Carroll as an "esteemed journalist":
The media industry has been infested by the rise of pseudo-journalists who go against journalism's long tradition to serve the public with accurate information, Los Angeles Times Editor John S. Carroll told a packed room in the Gerlinger Lounge on Thursday. . . .
"All over the country there are offices that look like newsrooms and there are people in those offices that look for all the world just like journalists, but they are not practicing journalism," he said. "They regard the audience with a cold cynicism. They are practicing something I call a pseudo-journalism, and they view their audience as something to be manipulated."
In a scathing critique of Fox News and some talk show hosts, such as Bill O'Reilly, Carroll said they were a "different breed of journalists" who misled their audience while claiming to inform them. He said they did not fit into the long legacy of journalists who got their facts right and respected and cared for their audiences.
O'Reilly of course is not a news reporter but an opinionated talk show host. He is pushing a point of view, but he is no more a "pseudo-journalist" than is Michael Kinsley, the L.A. Times' new opinion editor. He is simply working in an area of journalism in which objectivity is not expected.
As for Carroll's broader attack on Fox News, his objection here seems to be that the network has a different point of view from that of the "mainstream" media. Carroll cites a "study" that purported to show Fox viewers were more likely to hold "misconceptions" about Iraq than viewers of liberal outlets. But as we noted in October, this study, by the University of Maryland, was itself a piece of propaganda, since it asked only about pro-war misconceptions, not antiwar ones.
Great Orators of the Democratic Party
"One man with courage makes a majority."--Andrew Jackson
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."--Franklin Roosevelt
"The buck stops here."--Harry Truman
"Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."--John Kennedy
"I'm like a long-distance runner who will finish the Boston Marathon. It may take me three hours, it may take me four, but as I cross the finish line, they'll know someone was running with a T-shirt that said 'Peace, health care, fair trade, and civil liberties.' "--Dennis Kucinich
Talk About Procrastination
"Six Flags to Improve Ride Restraints After Death"--headline, Reuters, May 7
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Tobacco Kills, but Not Quickly Enough
"Marlboro Man to Be Charged With Murder for Shooting Party Host"--headline, Associated Press, May 9
George W. Bush, Progressive
Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, has a new book out in which he blasts the Bush administration's environmental policies, the Associated Press reports. That's hardly surprising, but Pope seems to be a bit confused:
"Bush has done his best, in only three years, to break our national compact on environmental progress and turn the clock back--not years or decades but a full century," Pope writes in "Strategic Ignorance" with co-author Paul Rauber. . . .
Pope said the Bush administration has abandoned the environmental principles first championed by President Theodore Roosevelt a century ago.
If Bush is trying to turn the clock back a century, that would be to 1904, when the president was . . . Theodore Roosevelt.
Not Too Brite--CXLII
"A sexually excited stallion bit a Polish man to death when he tried to calm the beast, which had become uncontrollably aroused by a nearby mare," Reuters reports from Warsaw.
Oddly Enough!
(For an explanation of the "Not Too Brite" series, click here.)
We Get Results--II
Kerfuffle is the ninth most popular word in an online poll by Merriam-Webster, according to a press release by the dictionary publisher. The top word was also a good one, defenestration (whose popularity may speak to frustrations with Microsoft Windows). We noted the poll last month.
And an update on the BBC poll on "the best word ever," which we noted in March: Kerfuffle is way out in front with 4,300 votes, or 56%. In second place is discombobulate with just 566 votes, or 7%. (Discombobulate finished in fourth place in the M-W survey.) The BBC poll apparently is still going on, so there's time to run up the score |
