The Dish

What more can we do about this? Like most of you, I’ve had a hard time coming to grips with the appalling abuses perpetrated by some under U.S. command in, of all places, Abu Ghraib. We can make necessary distinctions between this abuse and the horrifying torture of Saddam’s rule, but they cannot obliterate the sickening feeling in the pit of the stomach. Those of us who believe in the moral necessity of this war should be, perhaps, the most offended. These goons have defiled something important and noble; they have wrought awful damage on Western prestige; they have tarnished the vast majority of servicemembers who do an amazing job; and they have done something incontrovertibly disgusting and wrong. By the same token, this has been – finally – exposed. We have a chance to show the Muslim and Arab world how a democracy deals with this. So far, the punishments meted out have not been severe enough; and the public apology not clear and definitive enough. It seems to me that some kind of reckoning has to be made by the president himself. No one below him can have the impact of a presidential statement of apology to the Iraqi and American people. Bush should give one. He should show true responsibility and remorse, which I have no doubt he feels. I can think of no better way than to go to Abu Ghraib itself, to witness the place where these abuses occurred and swear that the culprits will be punished and that it will not happen again. It would be a huge gesture. But frankly there is something tawdry about a president at a time like this campaigning in the Midwest in a bus. His entire war’s rationale has been called into question. The integrity of the United States has been indelibly harmed on his watch. He must account for it. Soon. And why not in Iraq?

The interesting thing about Ted Rall is that he reminds us of something we have forgotten – that a measurable swathe of the anti-Iraq war crowd were also against the war to topple the Taliban and uproot al Qaeda’s base of operations. In fact, opposition to the war in Afghanistan was intense in far left circles in early 2002. Rall is someone who craves and shouldn’t get more attention, but his views from an interview last year are revealing:

“My theory is that essentially, people don’t like to think they’re living in a country that’s led by an evil, dictatorial madman. But they are, they are living in Nazi Germany, in Stalinist Russia.”

And this:

“Bush’s whole tactic has been to throw so much shit at the wall in an average news cycle that potential political opponents have no idea how to react. In the end, what’s the issue here? Is it really war against Iraq? That’s an issue. But where were these same protesters for the war against Afghanistan, which was every bit as illegal and wrong-headed and immoral as the war against Iraq?”

Rall is a member of the Black Helicopter crowd on the far left. He does not represent most liberals, let alone most Democrats. But that offers them an opportunity to condemn him. Why has, say, Salon not weighed in? Why has Slate not barred his work permanently from their site? If National Review could can Coulter, the mainstream left can certainly can Rall. My bet is: they won’t. Nothing should be allowed to detract from the war against Bush. Not even elemental decency and taste.

“A strong culture permits diversity; a strong culture permits freedom of thought, deviation from the framework. When the Abbasid period was at its height, it became a culture of self-confidence. When there is confidence like this, you permit space and freedom. Lack of self-confidence leads to the lowest cultural point, from all aspects – human rights, women’s rights. In the Arab empire, there was more freedom than in the Arab world today.” – Salman Masalha, Israeli Arab intellectual and poet.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I’m afraid you have once again approached Muslim culture from an improper assumption. The issue of homosexuality and women’s issues has a certain quantum to do with patriarchal society; however, this is not the primary ideological thrust for the mindset of the people. The real issue is one dealing with private vs public space. Homosexuality has existed in the Muslim world since time immemorial, irrespective of Islam’s injunctions upon it. The humiliation experienced by the Iraqi prisoners at the hands of US troops, especially female soldiers, is a function of the fact that their nakedness was involuntarily exposed in a public realm. Discretion and modesty is still held at a very high premium in that part of the world.
The violation of these prisoners’ modesty is the key factor, tantamount to a woman being stripped of her clothing at a football game or some other public spectacle here. It is simply not done.
You can try to push the issue onto the Iraqi’s in typically Orientalist fashion, as if the only reason they have issue with the way they were treated is that they come from a backward, unenlightened culture, and that they should let the magnanimous white man (and woman) do to them whatever they wish because “white makes right.” Well, Andrew, formal colonialism is fortunately over; it would be a shame if you and your acolytes are trying to introduce its latest incarnation. The late Edward Said was correct in the title of one of his books, ‘Blaming the Victims.’ It seems that is what you wish to do as well.
The reason why these pictures will have a more deleterious impact in the Muslim world is because the Muslim world still holds sacred one’s own body and the ability to be free of exploitation, especially by so-called liberators. The Muslim world sees the current situation as being a Hobson’s choice: being a slave to Saddam or being made a whore by their ‘liberators.’ Neither appears to be too appealing.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.

Here’s what cartoonist Ted Rall has to say about the end of Taliban rule in Afghanistan and the removal of one of the worst mass-murderers in modern history, Saddam Hussein: “The word ‘hero’ has been bandied about a lot to refer to anyone killed in Afghanistan or Iraq. But anyone who voluntarily goes to Afghanistan or Iraq [as a soldier] is fighting for an evil cause under an evil commander in chief.” The United States’ intervention in Afghanistan was “an evil cause.” Good to know. I will believe the mainstream left that they do not share Rall’s views when they stop publishing him. But they won’t, will they?

The far right’s attempt to do to Catholicism what has been done to American Fundamentalism – turn it into a political wing of one party – is exemplified by Opus Dei supporter, Robert Novak, in yesterday’s Washington Post, and echoed by the National Review and the Weekly Standard, who also want to see a universal faith coopted by one faction in one political party. My response at TNR is now posted.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE I: Shiites begin to get serious about running their own affairs in the South. The news this past week has indeed been gloomy, the retreat in Fallujah dispiriting, the Abu Ghraib images gut-wrenchingly awful. But I don’t believe that all is lost. The bottom line is that the Kurds want a new pluralist Iraq to work and have shown how in ten years in the north. the Shi’a have every reason not to see their country decsend ito civil war, since for the first time in decades they have a chance at exercizing real power. The danger is that Arab-Islamic cultural pathologies will overwhelm all of this. That was always the risk and it’s why, as George Will points out today, what we are witnessing is something truly historic and a test between the hopes of neoconservatism and the sobriety of conservatism. But my bet is that the truth is somewhere in between, and that, with time and commitment, real improvement can and will come to Iraq. Unlike others, I’m not giving up yet. Far from it. It’s at times like this that we have to grit our teeth and see this through.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE II: Remember when Rhea County, Tennessee, wanted to sexually cleanse their county of homosexual vermin? They’re now going to get a fully-fledged “Gay Day” this year. The spirit of the freedom rides continues.

We now have a new general commanding forces in Fallujah. This one isn’t a reincarnation of Saddam. But check the time stamp on this post. The news could be stale within hours. Hey, the Bushies know what they’re doing. Don’t they? Don’t they??

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “In our blessed and mostly peaceful society we’re not as familiar with courage as we once were. We ascribe the virtue to all manner of endeavors that only really require skill, fortitude and a little daring, the qualities Pat Tillman showed on the football field. Pat’s best service to his country was to remind us all what courage really looks like, and that the purpose of all good courage is love.
He loved his country, and the values that make us exceptional among nations, and good. And he worried after the terrible blow we were struck on September 11th, 2001, that he had ‘never done a damn thing’ to serve her. Love and honor oblige us. We are obliged to value our blessings, and to pay our debts to those who sacrificed to secure them for us. They are blood debts we owe to the policemen and firemen who raced into the burning towers that others fled; to the men and women who left for dangerous, distant lands to take the war to our enemies and away from us, and to those who fought in all the wars of our history.” – Senator John McCain, at Pat Tillman’s memorial service yesterday.

WERE SOME PHOTOS FAKED? A debate begins in Britain about the provenance of some of the photographs of prisoner abuse by the British military. There’s apparently good reason to believe that some may have been faked. Money quote from the Guardian:

[A] former commander of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment dismissed the photographs as having “too many inconsistencies”.
Colonel David Black argued that the images were probably not even taken in Iraq. He told BBC1’s Breakfast that the vehicle shown had never been sent to the war zone and the uniforms were not the same as those worn by the regiment.
Col Black said: “[From] the evidence we have seen so far looking at the photographs, there are too many inconsistencies.”
He said the vehicle, the Bedford MK, which appears in the photographs, was “not deployed by the army to Iraq at all because of difficulties with local fuel.
“That vehicle can’t operate with fuel that was available in Iraq. So obviously the photograph was probably not even taken in Iraq.”
Col Black said the soldiers would have been wearing helmets or berets, not floppy hats as in the photographs. They would have had a regiment identification flash and a brigade flash on their sleeves and the rifle should have had a sling and an attached radio button.

See for yourself. This does not mean that other photos were faked or that there isn’t a real story here. But some of it may be fishy.

I cited an article yesterday which quoted an al Sadr supporter saying he would rather have been shot between the eyes than subjected to what appears to be a strip search. The full quote was truncated in the piece. Here is the rest of it:

Mr Shweiri said that while jailed by Saddam’s regime he was electrocuted, beaten and suspended from the ceiling with his hands tied behind his back. “But that’s better than the humiliation of being stripped naked,” he said. “Shoot me here,” he added, pointing between his eyes, “but don’t do this to us… They made us stand in a way that I am ashamed to describe. They came to look at us as we stood there. They knew this would humiliate us. We are men. It’s OK if they beat me. Beating don’t hurt us, it’s just a blow. But no one would want their manhood to be shattered. They wanted us to feel as though we were women, the way women feel, and this is the worst insult, to feel like a woman.”

I am in no way attempting to minimize the horror of what appears to have gone on in Abu Ghraib prison under U.S. command. But it’s worth realizing that the nakedness and the sexual humiliation might be far more potent in a sexist, homophobic and patriarchal culture than in less sexually repressed societies. One of the most important things to remember about today’s Muslim extremism is that it has taken what is the submission of women under Islam and turned it into a political pathology. Like most variants of fascism, it is deeply troubled by women’s equality and by homosexuality. Hence the impact of these images could be psychologically devastating to many Iraqis – and far worse to those in countries where Islamism has made even deeper inroads. This was not simply a p.r. debacle; it was a p.r. catastrophe. And that in itself shows the enormous cultural gulf between where the West is now headed and where Islamism wants to take the Middle East.

“By showing the true nature of the US occupation, the photos may have broken the rush to wider war and the return to military conscription. Polls released at the end of April show that a majority of Americans had soured on the war prior to the torture story. The photographic evidence that US troops are committing atrocities will further reduce support for the war. The impact on the Muslim world will be different. For decades extremists have called the US “the Great Satan.” The US invasion and violent occupation of Iraq have given credibility to this characterization of America.” – conservative anti-war polemicist, Paul Craig Roberts.

A MARRIAGE DEBATE: As the days tick by before civil marriage for all citizens arrives in America, here’s an audio link to a debate between me, former congressman Bob Barr, Matthew Spaulding of the Heritage Foundation, and Phil Munoz of AEI. It was hosted by the America’s Future Foundation, and it’s worth a listen, if you have time on your hands.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I share your misgivings over the most recent developments in Falluja, namely the pullback by US Marines and the handing over of responsibility to Iraqi troops of doubtful quality and staying power.
I think this may end up being one of the key turning points of this entire struggle. I think the Bush Administration just blinked and the insurgents know it. From now on they can be assured of relatively safe havens in certain urban areas of Iraq. They will be free to rebuild, rearm and reorganize unmolested by coalition troops. The only hope that the insurgents had all along was the belief that if they could just make it bloody enough, or at least make it look bloody enough, especially in terms of civilian casualties, Bush and the coalition would eventually waver. Now that belief has been vindicated.
Whatever short-term goodwill may be earned by these actions will be far outweighed by the long-term consequences for our goals in Iraq. We’ve missed out on a chance to wipe out a major threat to the future stability of Iraq and revitalized the very opponents we needed to eliminate. Even if these insurgents don’t re-emerge to attack the coalition between now and June 30, they will certainly strike at the best moment to demolish any emerging Iraqi government and it’s police and army. That will have far worse consequences than any of the combat that has taken place in the last month.
It’s possible the new direction in Falluja will be deemed a failure and US troops will return to finish the job. But that would mean paying more blood to recapture ground that should never have been given up. And it would cause more death, destruction and anger among Iraqis than if we had just finished the job we started instead of implementing this ill-advised course change.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.

I’m somewhat staggered by the revelation that even the usually sober Ramesh Ponnuru wants all pro-choice Catholic politicians, Democrat or Republican, to be denied communion by the bishops. That means Tom Ridge, George Pataki and Arnold Shwarzenegger, for starters. This is not the same thing as formal ex-communication but it will be understood – and should be understood – as the effective form of it. Why am I stunned by how far out there the theocons now are? Cutting off people from the sacraments is a drastic step for the church to take; taking on almost all one political party and a hefty swathe of another in a democracy as large and influential as the United States would be a political Rubicon for the Catholic church. But it’s one the theo-cons eagerly want to see occur. I see every reason for the church to make a positive case loudly and often about the moral gravity of abortion. But the attempt to purge miscreants who are lay people strikes me as a truly radical move. I wonder if, under theo-conservative logic, the withholding of the sacraments should be restricted only to public officials. Why not any lay Catholic who publicly dissents from Church teaching on matters of faith and morals? Why not pundits, writers, and, er, bloggers? And why just abortion? Why not those who express enthusiastic support for the death penalty, which is clearly condemned by the Vatican in almost all cases? Why not those who oppose the Federal Marriage Amendment, which is all that keeps us from sliding into the end of civilization, according to National Review? What are the exact lines of demarcation here? I ask, because purges rarely end where they start, and it would be good to read a thorough piece detailing who should be thrown out and who would be allowed by the bishops to stay. Joe Conason has described the attitude of some of these people as reminiscent of Torquemada. As usual, de trop. But the impulse to publicly shame, purge and purify religions is one that is as theologically ancient as it is politically explosive. I never realized how deep that vein now runs among today’s theocons. But it’s useful to know.

The hate-monger is syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate. It’s not censorship or “McCarthyism” for people to complain about any syndicate that peddles the poison that Rall lives off. Today’s disgusting diatribe against Pat Tillman is so vile, so utterly devoid of any motive or argument but personal malice and hatred, some form of protest is surely merited. Email the vice-president for print syndication, Lee Salem, and tell him what you think of Rall’s cartoon. Please, please, be civil. His email is lsalem@amuniversal.com. He needs to hear from you.