Anne Applebaum of WaPo takes off after those who blame Newsweek for the Koran flushing story. Andy Sullivan gushes approvingly this afternoon. Since he's one the principal bloggers complaining repeatedly about the torture and humiliation of Muslim prisoners at Gitmo and elsewhere, this is a good point to respond. So pardon my editorial license.
Let's make one fair point up front: Newsweek didn't cause the death of 20+ people in Afghanistan. The rioters did that. Newsweek didn't put a gun to their heads, they simply printed a story that turned out to be wrong. Some are saying that the Pentagon acknowledges that other factors caused the rioting, and that the Newsweek article wasn't the match in the tinder. Others disagree. I'm not sure what the truth is to that, but to the extent that the rioters decided to kill people because they heard about the Newsweek story on Al-Jiz, it's their moral failing and not Newsweek's.
Newsweek has a right to print what it wants to print. I wouldn't have it any other way. In turn, we have a right to think that they screwed the pooch exercised poor editorial judgment in printing this piece. That's the issue with them, and that's what the White House was scolding them about: poor editorial judgment. The White House press corps doesn't like being scolded, but it was useful for the White House spokesman to scold them precisely to put the issue in sharp relief.
Here's Newsweek's biggest editorial failure: they used a single, unconfirmed, unnamed source to run with a story because the reporters and editors were hoping that the story would embarrass the administration. As a result, when challenged to provide proof of the incident they were unable to do so. They allowed their hatred, and that's the correct word, hatred, of GWB and company to run ahead of their "professionalism" and "journalistic ethics".
"Journalistic ethics", by the way, is becoming analogous to the "prime directive" on Star Trek: no one ever really defines it, but it sure does seem to be bent and broken a lot.
There's a journalistic moral here: get the story right before you publish. Get the facts correct. Check. Double-check. Get your sources on the record. Get the other side on the record. Missing a deadline is bad. Getting a story wrong is worse.
If the story had been true, Newsweek would be marginally more justified in publishing, as the facts would have been correct and (again) they have a right to print. I would wonder again about their editorial judgment. Somewhere, somebody at the magazine should have asked, "would this story cause a problem with someone other than George Bush, and if so, should we still print it?" No one did. Some claim that this incident demonstrates a lack of religious sensitivity, but I think in the end it was a lack of thought: there wasn't, and isn't, any judgment being rendered as to the consequences of a story, so long as it hurts GWB.
There are consequences of what one prints, just as there are consequences of yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater. Think first.
I recognize that each religion and culture has its particular taboos. I'm certainly willing to respect the sensitivities of good Muslim people concerning their holy book. Seems fair to me. I ask them to do the same in honoring my sensitivities.
Rioting and murdering a bunch of folks, claiming that halfway around the world someone you don't even know desecrated your holy book as sufficient justification, doesn't meet my definition of "good" Muslim. And it doesn't seem very sensitive.
Glenn Reynolds said something yesterday that I also believe: that whatever wrongs committed by our interrogators (wrongs that when proven should be punished appropriately), those wrongs are less important than winning the war on Islamofascism. We should all be clear: torture is wrong. Any US soldier caught torturing a suspect for any reason needs to be court-martialed and separated from the military. Any US commanding officer tolerating torture, or not being sufficiently engaged with his/her command to know that torture is occurring within the command, needs to be relieved of command and reprimanded. No excuses, no exceptions.
Humiliating one's enemy in an attempt to extract information may be stoopid and (just as importantly) may not work, but it's not a moral wrong in the way torture is. Anne Applebaum and Andy Sullivan seem to think that exposing a Muslim man to a dog, or having a woman ridicule his doinker, in an effort to make him talk is as great a sin as beheading a hostage. It's not. One reason why their complaint hasn't resonated with the public is that most people understand this, and even if they think humiliating one's enemy is wrong, they understand that it isn't the same as driving a car bomb into a schoolyard.
It might not be the best approach to humiliate a captured Muslim hard boy. It's distasteful, but then I'm a little squeamish. That is why I'm not a military interrogator. And why I'm not in the difficult position of trying to figure out whether the Muslim hard boy in front of me knows something that I need to know to protect the lives of my countrymen. And how I'm going to extract that information.
I'll get more concerned about the sensitivities of captured Muslim hard boys when I see world Muslim leaders educate their flock about the need to stop beheading hostages. In Arabic.
If I wrung my hands as much as Andy wrings his, I'd need lotion. |
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