The Dish

Here’s a new slogan for the state: “Virginia Is For Haters.” And a new website. Makes sense, given the fact that the Virginia legislature has just passed a veto-proof bill to prevent gay couples from even having private, legally-enforceable contracts to protect their relationships. The social right is still silent. Will the free market right come to the defense of the formation of private contracts? Or will they wait until “activist, rogue judges” strike it down as plainly unconstitutional? Meanwhile, there is a place where a clear majority would vote – with no judicial prodding or “tyranny” – for equal marriage rights. It happens to be where I live. But in Washington, D.C., the citizens do not have any right to govern themselves (that’s left to Congressmen from elsewhere). The residents of Baghdad will soon have more democratic rights than the people who live here. I keep hearing about an American empire, but few people notice that the first colony is in the U.S. itself: the capital.

The anti-gay crusader, Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave, needs to do a little more work on her own turf. Her own county Republican party in Colorado just voted against the Musgrave Amendment to the U.S. constitution, backed by president Bush, that would strip gay couples of any enforceable legal protections for their relationships. She cannot even win the Republicans in her own county. Maybe they realize that the amendment, by writing discrimination into the Constitution and ripping up states’ rights, is, in fact, the opposite of what real conservatives would support. May the rebellion against the theocrats continue.

The Iraqi writing about the emerging new Iraq, at the blog, IraqtheModel, is well worth a read. He captures both the enormous success the U.S. is having in parts of Iraq, alongside the resentment that we still provoke. He challenges his countrymen’s cognitive dissonance:

My uncle had some unusual sense of humor that didn’t fit quite well in his somewhat religious family. He winked at me and turned to his son and asked him “What do you think of the Americans?” His son answered,
“They are occupiers”.
“So you think we should fight them?” his father asked.
Ibrahim said “No, but I don’t like them”. My uncle said, pretending to change the subject
“Do you like your new computer that no one shares with you?” “Yes of course dad”. “Ok, are you satisfied with the satellite dish receiver we have or do you need a better one?”
“This one is fine but I heard there’s a better one that gets more channels”
“ok I’ll get you that next week”. Then he said, “Is there anything else you’d like to have son?”
“No dad I have all that I need”.
“Ok but how about a car?”
Ibrahim was astounded and said “Really? a..a CAR.. for me!?”.
“Of course for you! I’m too old to drive now and my eyes are not that well and you are the older son. So whom else would it be for!?”
“Oh, dad that will be great! When will that happen?”
“Just finish you’re exams and you’ll have it”.
“I will dad”.
“Are you happy now son?”
“Yes dad, sure I am!”
“Then why do you hate the Americans you son of a b***h!? I couldn’t get you a bicycle a year ago, I could hardly feed you and your brothers and sisters. You didn’t know what an apple or a banana tasted like, I couldn’t buy you a damned Pepsi bottle except in occasions, and now you can have all that you wish, and a car of your own! Who do you think made that possible!?”
My cousin’s face turned red and didn’t answer as we laughed and I said “What do you think Ibrahim?”

We must hang in there. It would be insane, after all we have gone through – and the Iraqis have gone through – to snatch defeat from victory now.

I can see where he’s coming from, but Jonah Goldberg is surely wrong when he writes: “Well, CBS’ scoop has gotten someone killed and there will be more deaths, on both sides, as a result of this story before it becomes history.” The photographs emphatically did not get Berg killed, no more than they got Daniel Pearl killed. Al Qaeda may have exploited the photographs as a propaganda tool, but we know they need no “reason” to behead or massacre Americans. The only reason they need is that the person is an infidel and in their captivity. Believing that this is an actual response by Zarqawi to Abu Ghraib is to accept Zarqawi’s own spin.

This is the really striking thing about the Zarqawi execution of Nick Berg. Al Qaeda never learns. Listening to the hooded coward shriek on that video and reading what he says can only remind us that these people are a) vile, b) as alien to true Islam as the KKK was to the Gospels, c) pathetic and d) dumb. They think they terrify us by this? The gang-murder of an unarmed, innocent civilian? And they think that it will add to the shame of Abu Ghraib, demoralize Americans still further, and prompt a withdrawal? In fact, of course, the Berg beheading does a grim but salutary service. In the midst of our own deserved self-criticism, we are suddenly reminded of the larger stakes, the wider war, why we are in Iraq in the first place. Most Americans do not in any way excuse Abu Ghraib, but also see that any sort of moral equivalence between our flawed democracy and Islamism’s pathological hatred is obscene. In a purely strategic sense, stiffening American resolve and inflaming American outrage at this juncture is exactly what a smart al Qaeda would avoid. But there is no such thing as a smart al Qaeda. Evil can sometimes be stupid, and often is. Hitler, remember, invaded the Soviet Union. For our part, we must not take the deeper bait, which is to polarize this still further and associate these fanatics with Arabs or Islam as a whole. This is not a war against Islam. It is a war to defend Islam. And a democratic Iraq – not run by mullahs – is indispensable to that end.

“The reality of war in all its aspects needs to be reported and photographed. That is the patriotic, and necessary, thing to do in a democracy.” – Michael Getler, ombudsman of the Washington Post, May 9, 2004.

BBC WATCH: “His killers shouted “Allah is great” before holding what appeared to be a head up to the camera.” What appeared to be his head? Who do they think Zarqawi is: Penn or Teller?

OUR ALLIES, THE FRENCH: How Le Monde pictures America:

A STEP TOO FAR: You should check out Josh Marshall’s read of the ICRC report. As usual, he goes deeper than many others. He homes in on the critical passage:

“[M]ethods of physical and psychological coercion used by the interrogators appeared to be part of the standard operating procedures by military intelligence personnel to obtain confessions and extract information. Several military intelligence officers confirmed to ICRC that it was part of the military intelligence process to hold a person deprived of his liberty naked in a completely dark and empty cell for a prolonged period [,] to use inhumane and degrading treatment, including physical and psychological coercion, against persons deprived of their liberty to secure their cooperation.”

There is some troubling stuff in this report. Which is why it’s disappointing to read Marshall conclude the following:

The president’s stylized expressions of outrage and disgust are further revealed, I believe, as play-acting, like his feigned outrage over the outing of Valerie Plame by one of his top advisors and his pretended efforts to discover the culprits. More echoes of the search for the ‘real killers’.

Puh-lease. Trying to implicate the president himself in the Abu Ghraib horrors, trying to claim that his “disbelief and disgust” were somehow faked, seems to me to be excessive. To equate him with O.J. Simpson is a symptom of creeping Krugmanism.

“I’m probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment. These prisoners, you know they’re not there for traffic violations. If they’re in cellblock 1-A or 1-B, these prisoners, they’re murderers, they’re terrorists, they’re insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands and here we’re so concerned about the treatment of those individuals.” – Oklahoma senator, James Inhofe.

TOURIST HELL: The abuses of the INS – now called the BCIS – are legendary. But after 9/11, the experience of travelers to this country has gone from bad to worse. Here’s a classic story of the current mess. We really have to find a better balance between legitimate security concerns and pointless hassling of tourists and visitors.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “While I do not necessarily disagree with the release of all images of horror in order to put these abominations into some sort of comparable context, I am very much disturbed and worried by the effect of such acts and the motivations for your calling for this display of a violence-in-the-media free-for-all. It seems to me that we need to be careful of playing one-upsmanship with regard to violence. The murderers that beheaded Nick Berg, in the words of one of my hometown’s famous chefs, “kicked it up a notch” and used Abu Ghraib as the excuse for doing so. Now, in the wake of this unfathomable public decapitation horror, we will have U.S. citizens who were once queasy about Abu Ghraib, now frothing at the mouth and calling for the heads of Iraqi POWs on a platter – no matter their innocence or their harmlessness in captivity. It seems to me that the intention of your call to grisly voyeurism is not to create perspective to eliminate the need for atrocities and inhumanities, but rather to desensitize us to the “lesser” cruelties of Abu Ghraib to the point where we perhaps may justify and tolerate it with a wink and a nod — raising the bar for what is considered “acceptable” levels of abominations. Such grisly voyeurism demands the escalation of “bigger and better” brutality. And in the justifiable outrage you feel at the moment, I think you are unwittingly and unthinkingly walking this dangerous path.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.

Here they are – absolutely horrifying beyond belief. My heart goes out to his family. We will now see what the mainstream media is made of. You think we will see “slideshows” of this?

You can see the first part of the video on this page. They leave out the actual murder.

The mainstream media is driving me bonkers. They keep referring to an al Qaeda website that carries the video of the beheading of Nick Berg. But they won’t tell us the name of the website! Not only will they not show what al Qaeda really is, they won’t even allow us to know how to find it. If anyone out there has a link, please let me know. We can get around the Washington Post, which has a “slideshow” of American abuse but won’t even provide a link to the horrors perpetrated by the enemy.