Posted on 05/11/2004 4:10:49 PM PDT by rface
Many Arabs and other Muslims must have heard President George W. Bush’s not-quite-contrite apology for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, coupled with his confusing assurance that Americans really don’t do that sort of thing.
It must have been confusing because there are literally thousands of images demonstrating conclusively that Americans have been doing exactly that sort of thing. It was like listening to "Baghdad Bob," the former Saddam spokesperson who loudly would state as fact what everyone knew to be fiction.
Perhaps some Arabs also heard the televised testimony of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who purported to accept "full responsibility" but not its natural consequence: resignation from his high office. He also vowed to bring the wrongdoers to justice, but he said the Pentagon would not seek "scapegoats" among the middle and higher ranks of the officer corps.
It might seem to Iraqis that a mere handful of low-ranking enlisted grunts - six or seven face court-martial proceedings - are the ones taking full responsibility.
That perception could change as the inquiry expands. What is less likely to change is the perception of the images themselves.
Arabs are being bombarded with photos and videos showing U.S. soldiers forcing Iraqis to strip, to form pyramids, to masturbate and to simulate oral sex with one another while a woman soldier leers and mugs for the lens. Another infamous picture shows the same woman holding a leash attached to the neck of a naked man curled in a fetal position.
Remember, these are societies that have never experienced the Renaissance, let alone the sexual revolution.
As much as the hardest of hard-shell Baptists, these people believe in covering their nakedness, especially before the opposite sex. To a lot of Iraqis, Americans aren’t just occupiers anymore, not even just oppressors. We’re sick perverts who film and photograph our women engaging in sadomasochistic abuse of Muslim men.
You might ask, as many have, what could have possessed the jailers at the Abu Ghraib prison to take such inflammatory and compromising pictures of their own illegal acts. Seymour Hersch, who broke the story, reports that the photographs were employed as interrogation tools. The pictures were considered so horribly mortifying, from a Muslim perspective, that it was believed they would break the morale of recalcitrant prisoners.
No one seems to know where this lousy idea came from. Some potential scapegoat up the line, no doubt - but we’re not looking for him, are we?
Imagine for a moment how we would feel if the airwaves were clogged with images of Americans undergoing such torment: chained spread-eagled and naked to a bunk with their faces covered by women’s panties. You know and I know the red-eyed rage that would erupt across the U.S. political spectrum. Rush Limbaugh would be apoplectic!
And yet last week, the Big Ditto laughed off the photographs as little more than evidence of frat house-style high jinks. The girls and boys were just "having a good time" and needed "to blow some steam off," he said with his trademark chortle. Other neocons joined the chorus.
"If there has been humiliation, it isn’t the fault of the West" said Fox News host Cal Thomas. "It is Muslims’ fault."
That particular counterspin can only be counterproductive. It lends credence to the fundamentalist Islamic view that ours is a depraved and decadent society in which such things are tolerated, even encouraged. You might recall that President George W. Bush was famous for his pranks back at the ol’ Deke House. Ha-ha!
It’s certainly no laughing matter to millions of Muslims. Maybe they’ll be impressed by the swift punishment that is sure to befall the half-dozen enlisted soldiers who have been accused. It’s also possible that many Arabs would be satisfied with nothing less than the coalition turning the suspects over for Iraqi justice.
Isn’t that what we’d want?
In a twisted way, maybe Limbaugh and the other abuse apologists have a point. The images of prison abuse, however you look at them, are just a tiny slice of the ugly reality of war - and not the worst slice, either.
War - any war - is all about death and destruction. Violent coercion is the whole point of the exercise, and it certainly gets a lot more brutal than naked pyramids and forced masturbation. If you’re a soldier in an occupying army that is fighting a guerrilla insurgency, guarding a prison is probably pretty soft duty compared with a lot of other postings.
Yes, ugly things happen in wars, no matter how lofty the political strategies behind them. Atrocities did occur in Vietnam, on both sides.
It’s the war, stupid. And who got us into this unnecessary and possibly unwinnable war? "Full responsibility" devolves on the president, the vice president and the secretary of defense. Or is "accountability" a concept that applies only to welfare mothers?
It’s going to be pretty hard at this point to pitch the United States as nothing more than a benevolent liberator. Circumstances have dictated a new policy direction: Clean up the mess and get the hell out.
If I were an Iraqi, that’s what I’d want.
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Forrest Rose is a Tribune columnist. You can reach him via e-mail at editor@tribmail.com.
How about images of an American being beheaded with a dull knife?
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