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| Belmont Club: emotionalism and the Abu Ghraib photos. |
| 2004-05-12 |
| Fred, Steve, & Steve: Please consider allowing at least a limited "Steyn/Lileks/VDH exception" for this piece by Wretchard, which makes what I think is an important point. EFL, mainly to eliminate long quotes from Andrew Sullivan, the WaPo ombudsman, and a CENTCOM press release. Andrew Sullivan suggests that the mainstream media publish pictures of an American hostage’s severed head in order to balance, among other things, the slide show presentations depicting the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. . . . And yeah, why not. If Michael Getler, the ombudsman of the Washington Post can assert that "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" there is no logical reason why the video showing the Al Qaeda decapitating a screaming Nick Berg shouldn’t be given the same treatment. That is, unless the Getler’s premise was false in the first place. . . . The fallacy in Getler’s premise was the claim that the Abu Ghraib photographs were simply a factual documentation of an abuse which the public had the right to know about. The existence of the abuses had been known from January, from CENTCOM itself. . . . What was new about the May coverage was that the press had pictures of the Abu Ghraib abuses and was in a position to project, not a new set of facts, but a new set of powerful emotions upon the public. Getler’s claim is really an assertion of the right to invoke outrage, disgust and hatred at a specific act and its perpetrators, and those who may have been indirectly responsible for it. By taking this logic to its limit, Sullivan claims the same right: to unleash a symmetrical set of set emotions at another group -- and demonstrates the absurdity. For it must either be correct to publish both the Abu Ghraib and Berg photos or admit partisanship. Surely, if it is acceptable to run the risk of tainting the entire US military with the brush of Abu Ghraib then there can be no harm in coloring all Muslims with the hues of Al Qaeda. But this is madness. The Belmont Club predicted that "the sad balance of probability is that Abu Ghraib will be displaced from the front pages by the next terrorist outrage, the next Bali, the next Madrid, the next 9/11 until we find ourselves wondering why it upset us at all" -- and the process has already begun. People who only yesterday were beating their breasts at infamy of the 800th MP brigade will be calling for a MOAB to dropped on Fallujah tomorrow. And to the inherent madness of war we will add another lunacy: strategy by manic-depression. ’Are we feeling generous today toward the enemy? Or do we want to get some aggression off our chests? Hmm?’ This is what comes of asserting the right to unleash emotions disconnected from rational perspective as "patriotic". This is what comes of not sticking to facts and they are these. The enemy has attacked America on its own soil and therefore must be defeated utterly. Members of the US military have committed a court-martial offense and therefore they must be punished severely. Any withdrawal from Iraq will not bring safety from enemy action inasmuch as they attacked Manhattan and Washington DC nearly two years before OIF. Any withdrawal from Iraq without first setting up a stable and responsible government there would result in a bloodbath beside which the massacre of the Shi’ites and the gassing of the Kurds by Saddam would be a pale moonlit shadow. Therefore we must persist until victory. And the final fact is this. The only exit from war’s inhumanity is through the doorway of victory. For while it may be mitigated, controlled and reduced to a certain extent fundamentally "war is cruelty, and you cannot refine it", though victory can end it. While it continues, as many in the Left who long for a 21st century Vietnam hope, it will unleash unpredictable forces which no one can control. Those who delighted in discovering the photographs at Abu Ghraib little imagined Nick Berg’s video. And while we can safely grant Andrew Sullivan’s plea and publish both, for reasons the media imagine are laudable, it is what comes next that I am afraid of. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #2 To eradicate the ideas, we are going to eradicate a great many of the perps. But you are right, I hope it serves to harden the resolve. I fear that the resolve of a great number of Democrats is about as hard and serious as ice cream. |
| Posted by: Jake 2004-05-12 5:55:44 PM |
| #1 The video of the beheading of Beck does not need to be shown. You don't need to really see it for it to make you physically ill, and to paint a picture of the Islamists. Close your eyes and complete the picture. You can see the "inspirational leader" bin Laden, declaring the religious duty of all Muslims to kill innocent Americans wherever they are found, men in caves planning murderous attacks, embassies blown up, and children with bombs strapped to them. With your eyes closed, you can call back images of commercial planes, flown by suicidal fanatics but occupied by ordinary Americans, flying into tall buildings and see the buildings come down. You can see school busses, cafes, hotels, and train stations torn apart and strewn with body parts of innocence. Horrific images of severed heads, charred corpses hanging from girders and bodies drug through streets of cheering people chanting Allah Akbar - God is great. With eyes still closed, you can see and hear calls for more deranged killing by black hooded terrorists and bearded, robed clerics from Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Palestinian territories, Africa, Indonesia, France, Sweden, London, and even from America. This picture makes some seek peace at any price, a peace that can never truly be. For others, for the vast majority of Americans, the pictures harden the resolve to eradicate the ideas that have made the picture a reality of our time. |
| Posted by: Rock 2004-05-12 3:21:59 PM |