Outrage

I am going to address two issues in this post which have become interrelated. The first is something I've been posting about for a couple days, namely the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The second is the cold-blooded murder of Nick Berg, an American civilian contractor, the video footage of which has been televised on Arab television and is available on the Web. Mr. Berg was in Iraq working to help rebuild the country. He was not a soldier, nor was he a private security guard. He was just a good man trying to help. (Update: I thought I'd heard it was on Arab TV but apparently it wasn't. It's only available on the web.)

When it comes to Abu Ghraib, I will defer to the master himself, Emperor Misha I. His posts are filled with invective and reading them is much like listening to an angry young rock band like Linkin Park (whose album Meteora was playing in my car on the way to and from work yesterday). If you look through the crunchy guitars and the screaming vocals, you find that the songs are actually very intelligently written and the lyrics have real meaning. The same is true with Misha's writing. Once you look past the invective and the language, he actually has a valid point and he makes it intelligently.

In this post, he tries to bring some perspective to the whole situation. Some excerpts:

What they were, or at least what a majority of them were, is insurgents, partisans, guerillas, illegal combatants, call it what you will. This may seem trivial to you, but it's not quite that trivial to the victims of that IED that they blew up as a supply column drove by. It's even less trivial when you consider the fact that they were operating outside the Geneva Convention, which means that they had NO rights or protections under it.

Not to say that we shouldn't behave ourselves, it just means that we were under no obligation to do so. Under the actual rules of war that are often quoted when the ones quoting them sense an opportunity to aid our enemies, we could've strung them up by the wayside immediately, and we wouldn't have broken a single rule.

Here, of course, he's referring to the prisoners who were being kept at the prison and who were the subjects of the documented abuse. Regarding the actual abuse, which has been referred to as "torture" in the media:

Sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation and stripping prisoners naked is as old an interrogation method as the art of interrogation itself. Sure, I know that it's not the kind of thing that you really ought to do to nice people, but we're not dealing with nice people here. Again, if you've managed to live your entire lives up until now thinking that such a thing would be too outrageous to even THINK about doing, then you really really need to turn off the boob tube and throw away the chick flicks, because that's just not a way to go through life.

And if you still feel that it's unheard of and should be discontinued immediately, then kindly don't come crying to me or anybody else when a terrorist bomb blows up in your local kindergarten because you couldn't stand the thought of a terrorist suspect being deprived of his dignity. You asked for it.

There's a concept called the Ticking Time Bomb scenario. Let's say you know that there's a time bomb planted somewhere which is scheduled to go off in a couple of hours. You have in custody the man who planted it but he's refusing to tell you where it is. What do you do? And, no, you don't get to pretend to be his brother like in the movie Face Off. You need this information or else hundreds, maybe thousands will die. Is extraction of this information by any means possible justified?

Now that wasn't the situation here, but these people were being interrogated. The information they have may prevent the injury or death of coalition troops. Isn't at least some form of interrogation justified?

In this case, it is possible to go too far, and I think that did happen. But some of the hyperbole that has been bandied about, the comparisons to My Lai and Nazi Germany, are just way over the top, as Misha addresses:

The civilians at My Lai weren't stripped naked, they were gunned down. There's a subtle difference there that even the most repentant among us ought to be able to recognize. If even that is too hard for you, then the fact that you're agreeing with Ted "A Bottle of Scotch and a Ride Across the Chappaquiddick" Kennedy ought to give you pause.

Josef Mengele didn't put leashes on prisoners, he marched them off and boiled them alive, among other things. Again, you just might be able to spot a slight difference if you look really hard.

And Saddam didn't pour the contents of broken glowlights (said contents being no more toxic than a Dr. Pepper, which may not be saying a lot) over prisoners, he dipped them in acid baths, unless he was feeling particularly grumpy, in which case he'd feed them, feet first, through industrial shredders.

So could we lay off the hysterical comparisons for a minute, please?

Regarding calls for Rumsfeld's resignation or firing, he makes the following pointed comment:

Sure. Let's talk about that. Right after the Pope resigns over the pedophile priest scandal. Sounds ridiculous? Well, it should, because it is. Glad you get the point.

And, finally, when it comes to apologizing, he writes:

Unless you happen to be one of the perpetrators or their enablers, I'm having a really hard time seeing where this sudden urge to apologize comes from. I know that I didn't jam broomsticks up the arses of those prisoners, and I'll be thrice damned if I'll apologize for something I didn't do.

Everybody is busy saying "these assholes in Abu Ghraib don't represent America" and they are absolutely right. What I fail to understand is why we have to apologize for their behavior when they, provably, do not represent us. If I was to apologize for every assnugget American who ever fucked up, I'd be on my knees begging all day, and I don't have time for that. I'm too busy apologizing for shit I actually had something to do with.

The only ones needing to apologize (provided that they're guilty as charged, of course) are the ones who did the deed. You know, taking responsibility for your own actions and all that. It used to be something that reasonable people believed in, but apparently that's not the case anymore. Now we have to be responsible for everybody else's actions as well, as long as they carry a U.S. passport.

He closes with this:

In conclusion: I'm just as interested in seeing what the investigation turns out as everybody else is and, based on what little I know right now, I'm just as interested in seeing quite a few idiots taking a long trip to Leavenworth, but I do believe that we need to tone down the hysteria a bit and wait until the investigation is over.

The system is working so far. Why don't we let it work its way to the end?

Read the whole thing and decide for yourself if he has a valid point. I think he does.

This brings me to the murder of Dick Berg. First of all, read Misha's post regarding the video. Then decide if you want to follow a link to one of the mirrors that is hosting the video. I warn you now, the footage is uncut and unmodified. It is not a faked snuff film. It shows the real-life murder of a human being by decapitation. And it's not a quick cut with a guillotine or a large ax. His head is sawed off with a large knife and he has time to scream several times before enough damage is done to render him incapable of doing so. It's clear that the killers have had previous experience at it.

Yes, I watched it.

You wanna know why? It wasn't out of some sick desire to see a man die. It was because I didn't want to shield myself from the horror. I wanted to know what we were fighting against. I wanted to have it rammed into my brain beyond any question, any doubt, what these animals are capable of. I wanted to get mad. It's the same reason I looked at the pictures of people jumping out of the World Trade Center. I wanted to have full knowledge of what happened so that I could not, would not, be in denial about the events. I refuse to be naïve.

It was not pleasant (the understatement of the year). I'm pretty fortunate that disturbing imagery doesn't seem to affect my sleep very often. This just might. Watch at your own risk.

As usual, others with more experience at this sort of thing have said it better than I can. First up is Charles over at Little Green Footballs who writes:

When the Daniel Pearl video was making the rounds on the web, I refused to post a link because it was so soul-wrenching that I thought people didn’t need to see it. I thought September 11 was a big enough shock to the American public that we wouldn’t dare go back to sleep.

Unfortunately, I no longer believe that, and that’s why I’m posting a link to this goddamned obscenity. Watch it, if you think you can. It’s going to make you sick, and it’s going to make you mad.

And remember this: what you see in this video is what the mujahideen would like to do to each and every one of us.

Jim at Smoke on the Water is up next, and he doesn't pull any punches when he says:

Doubtless, those who killed Mr. Berg are worthy of nothing more than a bullet and a bonfire. I wouldn't even dignify them with a burial.

But they're only one enemy. They're the obvious enemy, and of course they are the primary target. But there are other enemies, and many of them are your friends, your neighbors, your co-workers and sadly, even some in your families.

I have a message for you left-wing fucktards who've spent the last couple of weeks wringing your hands over the stupidity of a few troops in Abu Grhaib. Listen to me closely when I tell you this:

You helped kill Mr. Berg, just as surely as if you'd held him down while they slit his throat and hacked off his head.

Your days of endless moral equivication, alligator tears and manufactured outrage over the offenses of a select few have been pure, unadulterated aid and comfort to the enemy. Which, is Al Quaeda and every other Islamofacist terrorist.

...

All you care about is your unceasing quest to regain power. To unseat President Bush. To appease the tyrants of the mideast, the U.N. and the E.U. You seek this at any cost, even if that cost is to American soldiers and civilians as they serve their Nation.

And you've succeeded for a moment, succeeded beyond your wildest dreams. You just helped kill an American Citizen. But it is a moment that may cost you for all eternity.

Misha follows up with this post where he writes:

The direct responsibility for the brutal murder of Nick Berg rests upon the heads of the five ragheaded scumbags in the movie who were afraid to even show their own faces, something that even the stupid shits of our own at Abu Ghraib weren't afraid to do, and it rests upon their head alone.

But there's no denying that certain parties emboldened them, and did so for political gain and nothing else. They showed themselves to be completely devoid of consideration for anything other than their own naked ambition, and they did so in the public eye, for all to see.

Oh, I bet they hadn't thought for a second that their campaign of hysteria would lead to anything like this, they're not exactly known for thinking very far beyond the immediate reach of their own probosces, but now it's come back to bite them in the ass, as well it should.

Say hello to the concept of "Karma", assholes. You're going to be spending a LOT of time together.

I'll end the linking with this post by doc Russia at Bloodletting who writes:

We have seen two sides in a war, defined by how they treat their captives, and how the respective body politics have reacted. A few of our troops did some bad things. The nation, as a whole is upset, and we have shown our colors through the acts of disciplining our own publicly, as well as a sincere apology from the very top.
Our enemy, after setting fire to, and defiling the corpses of civilians, have gone further without a single word of disapproval from within, much less any sort of corresponding act to prove sincerity. No amount of kindness, charity nor any number of apologies for the rare transgression will sway those who oppose us. The "moderate" muslims have shown their true colors not through their actions, but througfh their lack thereof. By their silence, they give tacit approval to the horrific actions of those who commit atrocities in their name. Those sabotuers in our ranks who do all in their power through passive aggression to defeat our efforts are not just traitors to our nation, but traitors to civilization itself.

The murder of this man is the responsibility of those who actually carried out the deed. It's so heinous that I can't help but want those cretins to die with their bodies immersed in pig fat so they'll die in the belief they will be forever denied the paradise their twisted religion tells them is their due.

But it's also true that they believed they could do it because they continue to believe that we are weak, that enough obscenities like this will convince us that it's not worth it to continue, and we'll pack up and walk away. The murderers said they killed him in response to the abuse at Abu Ghraib. First of all, it certainly wasn't a proportionate response. Second of all, it didn't matter. They were going to kill him anyway; Abu Ghraib was just a convenient event that they could play on. If the abuse at the prison hadn't happened, or hadn't come to light, they would have found some other pretext to kill him. Nothing short of rescue would have saved his life. They're hoping that those of us who are outraged at the events at Abu Ghraib will blame ourselves for Mr. Berg's death, that those of us who think Americans are no better than the creatures who carried out this horrific act will be able to sway public policy in their favor. That we will once again return to the policy of appeasement. After all, it worked in Spain.

And Charles is right. They want nothing more than to do the same thing to you, to me, to all of us. Think about that for a minute and then tell me that we should cut them any slack whatsoever. Tell me if there's any moral equivalence between the humiliation of some prisoners, who were in prison for a reason after all, and the deliberate, cruel murder of a man who harmed nobody. Tell me if those animals deserve any mercy whatsoever for what they did. Tell me they don't deserve to die in terror as Mr. Berg did. Tell me we're not better than they are. Go on, I dare you.