By thier comments in the senate the names could just as well have been (L to R) Daschle, Byrd, Kennedy, Nelson (FL), Dayton
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| Home Front: Politix |
| Torturous apology |
| 2004-05-12 |
| Mark Steyn ’Just look at the way US army reservist Lynndie England holds the leash of the naked, bearded Iraqi," writes Robert Fisk, famed Middle East correspondent of the London Independent. "Take a close look at the leather strap, the pain on the prisoner’s face. No sadistic movie could outdo the damage of this image. In September 2001, the planes smashed into the buildings; today, Lynndie smashes to pieces our entire morality with just one tug on the leash." Hmm. Sounds like Fiskie’s the one straining at the leash here. You can practically hear him panting. Down, boy. For a week now, readers have been e-mailing me crowing that I haven’t got the guts to confront the truth about Abu Ghraib prison. As one correspondent put it, "I was looking forward to reading about how the moronic lefty press should instead be praising those heroic American soldiers bringing freedom, and saving us from those barbaric Arabs. I thought at least that you’d say that you’d have done the same thing in their position." Well, no, actually. Making a homoerotic pyramid of fetching young Iraqi men naked with their bottoms in the air is not my idea of a good time, unless it’s 48 hours from the Turner Prize deadline at London’s Tate Gallery and I’m all out of ideas for this year’s installation. So I didn’t write about it last week, because I didn’t have anything much to say. I’m revolted by the abuse of prisoners, but evidently not as revolted as Fiskie and Co., so best to let ’em off the leash and go capering round the yard. And now that they have, let me say this: As a political scandal, it’s already over. Historians will disagree about the precise moment it turned into a damp squib. Perhaps it was when Democratic blowhard Joe Biden demanded of Don Rumsfeld: "What did he know and when did he know it?" Or perhaps it was when the Democrats’ leader in the Senate, Tom Daschle, launched into a long, whiney complaint about why he and his colleagues hadn’t been kept informed by the Pentagon. "Why were we not told in a classified briefing why this happened, and that it happened at all?" he huffed. "That is inexcusable; it’s an outrage." Got that? To Senator Daschle, the outrage isn’t the Iraqi buttock mountain or the dog shots, but the fact that the Pentagon had had the appalling lese-majeste not to inform the Senate grandees about it before it turned up on TV. The Democrats have become so formulaic in their Bush-bashing they can’t recognize a real scandal when it drops in their lap. When you’ve got a bunch of shocking pictures, and darker rumours about rape, murder and corpse mutilation, how dumb do you have to be to start talking about breaches of Senate process (Daschle) and reciting tired old cliches from Watergate (Biden)? Congratulations to the Senate Dems for making a very particular and graphic scandal sound like all the other dead horses they’ve been flogging for the last year. On Friday, when they pulled the defense secretary in for the full Senate grilling and demanded to know why he hadn’t resigned, Rumsfeld seemed positively affable about entertaining the proposition. AS WELL he might. According to that day’s polls, 69% of Americans want him to stay on as defense secretary. In other words, half the folks planning to vote for John Kerry don’t want Rummy to quit. They understand, even if Ted Kennedy and The New York Times don’t, that the ritual sacrifice of one of Bush’s key lieutenants is a concession to America’s enemies for no good reason. It’s all very well for Robert Fisk to assert breezily that one West Virginia woman walking a naked Muslim man round like a dog "smashes to pieces our entire morality." He’s an anti-American reporter for a left-wing British newspaper. But Democratic Senators tread that path at their peril. The recent spate of embittered memoirs by disaffected treasury secretaries, terrorism bureaucrats and foreign service diplomats is one thing: they’re anti-Bush, anti-Rummy, anti-Condi. But, when you start bandying around speculation on widespread systemic torture authorized all the way up the chain, that’s not anti-Bush but anti-military. Senate Democrats may be high on Vietnam analogies, but when they start impugning the integrity of the US armed forces, the American people are never going to follow them. Besides, in the broader sense, what’s going on in those pictures is as problematic for Dems as it is for Bush. Fisk thinks it’s your basic clash of cultures: "Could neo-conservative Christianity – Lynndie is also a churchgoer – have collided so violently, so revoltingly, so obscenely with Islam?" "Neo-conservative Christianity"? What the heck is that? I thought all we sinister neocons were Jews. The reality is that Lynndie’s appetites owe less to her churchgoing than to her embarking in Iraq on an affair with her comrade (and accomplice) Spc Charles Graner. (Private England is four months pregnant with Graner’s child.) Graner was formerly a Pennsylvania prison guard and has a history of domestic violence. Rather than concocting fictional demographics – West Virginia trailer-park neoconservative Christians – Bush-bashers might at least try to retain some tenuous grip on planet earth. In contrast to hyperventilating Kennedys, the American people seem to be able to distinguish between the actual, specific abuse, which is wrong and should be punished, and the attempt to burden it with some highly selective generalized significance, which is rightly seen as a lot of baloney. In that sense, I deeply regret President Bush’s apology. I’m often dismissed as a Bush apologist, but I decline to be a Bush apologist for the Bush apology. If he wanted to apologize, he should have apologized to Ahmed bin Jihad, or whoever the fellow in the dog collar is, and left it at that. But to be coerced into apologizing more generally is very foolish. What happened at Abu Ghraid is terrible because it’s an offense to American values, not Arab ones. It’s ridiculous to insist that America has to apologize to Arab thugocracies in which what’s merely simulated in those photographs is done for real every day of the week. As for the allegedly seething Arab street, my advice to it would be to lay off the interviews, or at least not to respond to the pictures by saying things like, "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." When you imply that being an Arab woman is analogous to perpetual degradation, you remind Americans that being "insensitive" to certain cultures is not necessarily a bad thing. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #20 Sgt. Mom: I'm not military, but I used to work for the Army, so I guess I would count for half. Can I come and snicker if I promise not to point? :-p |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2004-05-12 11:33:48 PM |
| #19 What "heroic" fighters for the "Allah," god of War, these horrid little pukes are! (Yawn) Bet they got totally off on it. "Another victory for the dickless wonders of the universe." Even if the Berg was a US soldier, it would be bad enough. But, I mean, how easy is it to nab a civilian from an Iraqi street? Bet it only took one of them. ALERT: These guys (and all the rest like them) do this stuff because they LOVE to do this stuff. That's it. Plain and simple. It has nothing at all to do with politics or ideologies. It's just gang "turf war" sh-t. If we weren't there, they'd find another excuse, and would fight among themselves. It's been going on for centuries. I'll keep sayin' it . . . All Islamic pseudo-men need to die. Right on, BigEd (#10)! Ha! Too true! And #1 Alaska Paul: I heard that the Arabs had kind of a "big deal" attitude about Abu G. They were more impressed that President Bush--the most powerful man in the world--would take time to apoligize for the actions of a few miscreant soldiers, and would make it known to the world that the guilty will be punished. NO MORAL GROUND LOST THERE. They thought GW was cool. Me too. |
| Posted by: ex-lib 2004-05-12 4:10:37 PM |
| #18 Mark Steyn does read blogs.I wouldn't be at all surprised if he reads Rantburg. |
| Posted by: Kathy K 2004-05-12 3:28:21 PM |
| #17 Speaking of Rantburg (and maybe why tipper had trouble posting - note that i had trouble accessing the site earlier today -) : "30 rants, 140 comments. 2378 people are online at 14:15" Is that a record? |
| Posted by: Anonymous4134 2004-05-12 2:42:34 PM |
| #16 why wouldn't he read rantburg? It never sleeps, it has insight you can't find anywhere else and it's one of the few interactive blog's that follows the WOT as no other site can. Mark is a great writer. I could only hope that one day a comment from me would inspire him enough for him to put it forward as an idea of his own. Go Mark. |
| Posted by: B 2004-05-12 1:59:11 PM |
| #15 Anyone see the Ajami column in todays WSJ? He wants to know why Bush apologized to King Abdullah, for crying out loud. We owe apologies to IRAQIS, NOT to non-Iraqi arabs - are we accepting the subordination of Iraq to the Arab world, AGAIN? He raises more questions about Brahimi, and applauds Sistani and the Shiite leaders for resisting Brahimi. |
| Posted by: Liberalhawk 2004-05-12 1:56:44 PM |
| #14 C_L : I wouldn't be surprised if Steyn parouses this and other blogs. Remember we are usually sympathetic, and if there was any criticism, he would take it as constructive. Also, We might have a lead on something he would like dig into and expand on. He probably uses all sources. |
| Posted by: BigEd 2004-05-12 1:18:52 PM |
| #13 Well that settles it. We now have confirmation that Mark Steyn reads Rantburg. He clearly picked up the Tate Gallery/Turner Prize meme from Jen. |
| Posted by: Classical_Liberal 2004-05-12 1:06:41 PM |
| #12 Making a homoerotic pyramid of fetching young Iraqi men naked with their bottoms in the air is not my idea of a good time... Fetching? Yeah, I'll bet it ain't, right, Fiskie. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2004-05-12 12:35:25 PM |
| #11 Hmmm...it happened last time I posted. I thought maybe Fred was trying to send me a not so subtle message...like...the internet is busy for you! Nice to see my posts aren't THAT bad :-) |
| Posted by: B 2004-05-12 12:26:25 PM |
| #10 Take a look at the five cowards standing behind the doomed Mr Berg. By thier comments in the senate the names could just as well have been (L to R) Daschle, Byrd, Kennedy, Nelson (FL), Dayton |
| Posted by: BigEd 2004-05-12 12:26:06 PM |
| #9 DOS attack - note the front page sez 2058 peopel are online....Master Fred's working on it |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-05-12 11:59:26 AM |
| #8 I couldn't get through to RB between about 8pm and midnight EST and it was intermittent for several hours afterwards |
| Posted by: Phil B 2004-05-12 11:52:22 AM |
| #7 One of the regular commenters at SSDB suggested that we round up some military women who can point and snicker at a naked Robert Fisks' endowments, such as they are. I am almost tempted, actually. |
| Posted by: Sgt. Mom 2004-05-12 11:49:46 AM |
| #6 if you don't comment first, the post goes into the Editor Limbo til they make sure it's not crap/Boris spam |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-05-12 11:47:15 AM |
| #5 This rates as most rational analysis of the prisoner abuse story I have seen, and I agree that Bush's apology was a serious mistake. The system is working to rectify the actions of individuals stepping over the line. So what exactly is the problem? Becuase I don't see one. As .com pointed out the Arabs will seethe because its a Tuesday. |
| Posted by: Phil B 2004-05-12 11:46:46 AM |
| #4 I've had a lot of trouble posting today. Anyone know what's going on? |
| Posted by: tipper 2004-05-12 11:44:18 AM |
| #3 kinda puts things in perspective, doesn't it, Teddy K? I mean, it's not like they killed any body by drowning, is it? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-05-12 11:43:05 AM |
| #2 The Media is already trying to bury Berg's Decapitation news as they always do with any news that might make muslims and their appeasers look bad. But there is something that we can ALL do about it and it is very simple: E-mail the websites, listed below, where the video of Nick Burg's decapitation can be watched and ask all of your friends to send those links to everyone they know and so on, and so on.... Americans need to understand the evil they are up against. Websites showing Berg's decapitation: Internet Haganah is hosting the video at three of their mirror sites: Mirror 1: iraq2vediow.zip Mirror 2: iraq2vediow.zip Mirror 3: iraq2vediow.zip http://www.ogrish.com/ogrish-dot-com-ame rican_beheading_in_iraq_small.wmv http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/ |
| Posted by: Anonymous4617 2004-05-12 6:18:05 AM |
| #1 Well, I think that we Americans have self-flagellated enough for everyone over the Iraqi prisoner treatment. Jeeze Louise! We whip ourselves collectively more than Shi'ites! We recognize the problem of prisoner mistreatment and we will correct it. That is what we do, we make bad mistakes and we correct and make it better, painful as it is. Too bad most arab countries do not do that. They just fulminate. Now back to real evil. Everyone seen the snuffy video of Mr. Berg? It is absolutely sickening. THAT VIDEO should be REQUIRED VIEWING for Kennedy, Fisk, and all the pompous asshats playing dogpile on our military and President Bush. It should be required viewing for the American public, and while you are at it, throw in Spain, France, and the rest of the EU to boot. That is a free preview of what is in store for the civilized world if we try appeasement and lose the WoT or the WoI (Islamofascism). The only good that will come out of this video record of murder is that it shows the world what we (and I mean the whole world) are up against. Follow the money where the guys that do this stuff get their resources and it comes back to Saudi money. Follow the Chechian terrorists and you see Saudi money. Check out the Pack Land madrassas and you find Saudi money. We must quit fighting our own money for a start. Sweet dreams, everyone. I hope that we wake up out of this nightmare soon. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul in Wales, Alaska 2004-05-12 5:12:38 AM |