May 13, 2004
The Snuff Film Reality Check
Marc Cooper says the prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib pales next to the barbarism in the Nick Berg snuff film. No kidding. But he’s mercilessly heckled in the comments by the usual suspects. The only thing a certain kind of leftist seems to enjoy more than declaring and implying ad nauseum that the United States government is as nasty as Al Qaeda and the Baath Party is denouncing liberals, even columnists at The Nation, for not correctly adhering to the Proper Left-Wing Position.
We’ve all seen the gross pictures from Abu Ghraib. Now take a look at the snuff film.
I’d like to know if anyone who has the stomach to watch it still thinks even our worst soldiers are morally equivalent. Have you not yet taken note of the genocidal death warrant issued to every “infidel?”
I did not watch the video. I did see the Daniel Pearl tape and boy was that enough. So in a sense I’ve already “seen” this one. It’s the same atrocity all over again. I did watch the first few seconds of the clip at the link I provided to make sure the link works. It does. At least it did when I checked it.
I really don’t recommend you watch it. The only reason I’m even linking to it at all is because I think a certain kind of person, a certain kind of moral equivocator, is obligated to watch it to make sure they really mean what they say. It's so easy to mouth off if you haven't actually seen. As for the rest of you, watch at your own risk. It can seriously mess you up. This is not at all like the prison photos.
Posted by Michael J. Totten at May 13, 2004 09:49 PMBoth the Abu Ghraib and Nick Berg incidents are condemnable by humanitarian standards in any case.
Posted by: Stephen at May 13, 2004 09:59 PMI watched the Nick Berg video, and I DON'T recommend you watch it--unless you're a moral equivocator, Arab apologist, Leftist bitch. Then please DO watch it if you have any integrity whatsoever.
Posted by: David at May 13, 2004 10:31 PMExcept that one incident is more "condemnable" by an order of magnitude.
Guess which one.
Posted by: Morty at May 13, 2004 10:33 PMMost important, I feel, is who did what to whom and why... what I mean...
Posted by: sean at May 13, 2004 11:04 PMWell, I'm not really one of the aforementioned relativists and whatnot, but I felt that as someone who has supported the war (and still continues to support it) that if I couldn't stomach watching this video, I may not have enough moral fiber to have any business advocating the large-scale institutionalized violence that is warfare.
So I watched.
Bracing.
I can say the thing that I do find most appalling are those people who insist that the Abu Ghraib images (or the helicopter gunship footage that was floating around some time ago) are somehow equivalent.
People who make such comparisons truly lack any shred of empathy. Sympathy, they may have in bucket loads, but I guess that they can just blithely listen to the last screams of that poor man and its just as real (or unreal) to them as having a woman point at your pee-pee and chuckle.
That sort of moral blindness leaves me cold.
Posted by: Bravo Romeo Delta at May 13, 2004 11:06 PMOne of the painful effects of post 9/11 life and of the war in Iraq is that there are now numbers of my own countrymen whom I have come to despise, to hold in contempt. I have been a supporter of this war, but I have never been blind to the huge risk that it is. People who argued against it with good reasons had my respect, if not my agreement. But it has now become apparent to me that numbers of my own countrymen take positive delight in anything that will wound our common homeland. It's all covered under moral outrage...and God, how tiring that gets...but it smells of glee.
Abu Ghraib was shameful. Shameful. But what was done to Nick Berg is galactically different. I did watch the video. I did hear his screaming. I made myself watch it and now I can't get it out of my head. The people who do not see this, or who wish to pass over it with some nostrum about, "Well, of course it's barbaric, but...", these are the people I have come to hold in contempt.
In one way, Iraq is indeed becoming like Vietnam, in the way it opens, tears and worsens painful divisions among ourselves. I am not some sentimentalist who imagines that once upon a time all Americans loved one another. I have lived too long and studied a little history. I remember what Vietnam did in my family. But there is a cold fury in me which feeds something like the seeds of hatred toward these people. I don't like the feeling. But, to be honest, I like them even less.
Posted by: SM at May 13, 2004 11:41 PMI think almost all people would agree that the beheading of Daniel Berg, while chanting "God is Great" in the background, is infinitely worse on the scale of horror than what happened at Abu Ghraib. Very few people I know, or have read, think otherwise. You have a few nuts on the left, claiming equivalence, but you also have, I would say more powerful political voices on the right (also nuts) that attempt to paint all Iraq doubters, or liberals, as believing in this equivalency. Most people, left or right, have absolutely no wish to use the horror of the Daniel Berg case to score points. It's beyond that, I would think.
Posted by: JC at May 13, 2004 11:44 PMI watched it. I wasn't sure how it would affect me, since I worked in an emergency room for five years and have seen every variety of gore.
I watched it, and although I experienced an unpleasant anxiety, there is a long boring stretch in which a statement in Arabic is read... so that I was desensitized a little by the time the murder occurred.
It was repellent, but I thought I was okay. However, in an hour or so, when my wife came home, I couldn't speak, I was speechless, and when she embraced me, asking with alarm "What is it? What's wrong?", I suddenly began weeping... and couldn't stop, filled with grief and a terrible rage.
When I was able to explain to her the source of my emotion, she said "I thought somebody had died."
She meant a family member or a friend. But she was right, of course.
Someone had died.
Posted by: miklos rosza at May 13, 2004 11:49 PMTed Kennedy "On March 19, 2004, President Bush asked, 'Who would prefer that Saddam's torture chambers still be open?
"Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management: U.S. management."
****************************************************
No equivocation there. Best vote this November like our lives depend on the outcome.
The leaders of one Party equate us with Ba'athists if we do not support their candidates.
I guess maybe John and Bobby used up all the ethical genes in the family pool?
Posted by: Dan Kauffman at May 14, 2004 12:01 AMMichael Totten asks: "I’d like to know if anyone who has the stomach to watch it still thinks even our worst soldiers are morally equivalent."
Our worst soldiers? I take it for granted that in the U.S. armed forces, at any given time, there are people who have taken part in crimes that (at least for purposes of body disposal) involve dismemberment. And who have killed people in even more disgusting and painful ways than portrayed in this video. Not many, but some. Would such people, commit this sort of crime if were under orders to do so? Probably. So in some sense, the answer to your question is Yes.
The real question is: do we have a more moral military operation than these terrorists? Sure we do. Absolutely.
To put it another way: does this sort of bestiality, which is inherent in human nature - including our own human nature - face greater legal restraint in the U.S. military than in the fundamentalist splinter party of Zarqawi? Yes. Absolutely. I would never have said otherwise.
"Have you not yet taken note of the genocidal death warrant issued to every “infidel?”"
I'm sorry, Michael but is that supported by a quote from the transcript? As far as I can tell, it's what it claims to be: the killing of a presumed-innocent person for events that, among other things, have led to the death of at least one person who should have been presumed innocent. I.e., murder in response to what might have been only manslaughter (in the technical sense or the word.) It isn't justice, except in some Old Testament eye-for-an-eye sense. However, that sense of "justice" is still alive not only in the Middle East, but in much of America - maybe even in Inhofe's Oklahoma.
People assume that if al Qaeda had a nuclear weapon, they'd use it against America. Maybe even al Qaeda prefers that Americans assume this.
But bear this in mind: al Qaeda is an apparently well-organized terrorist group, terrorism is war by asymmetric means, and war is politics by violent means. It's safe to assume that al Qaeda is politically calculating how to make their opponents as irrational as possible in ways that advance the group's agenda. Yes, I bet Al Qaeda would commit 'genocide against the infidel' if they could figure out how it worked for them politically. But explain to me how nuking an American city would do that?
In this game of chess, Nick Berg was a pawn, and this video was a move. Try to think more than one move ahead, and don't let your anger get in the way. If you do get emotional about it, you play into the hands of the terrorists. You do exactly what they want you to do: think poorly, and react emotionally.
Posted by: Michael Turner at May 14, 2004 12:03 AMMichael Turner: I'm sorry, Michael but is that supported by a quote from the transcript?
I don't know. It doesn't matter anyway. They've been telling us this for years now and everything they've done shows they are absolutely serious.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at May 14, 2004 12:11 AMI don't have the stomach to watch this video. I watched the Daniel Pearl video and I understood it deeply enough.
How could anything be worse ?
Daniel Pearl was a good man, an innocent journalist who happened to be Jewish.
After several years of Al-Qaeda realising that America won't surrender to terrorism either, the same genocidal attitude they have towards Jews now is applied to all Americans.
Al-Qaeda members took Daniel Pearl hostage, and before a video camera, had a planned sequence that would lead to his bloody execution and beheading.
And unfortunately, it wasn't even a case of a few Al-Qaeda members becoming depraved and violating the Al-Qaeda code of conduct.
They adhered to it. They were following Al-Qaeda ideology to the letter of the law when they carried it out. And there was no outrage, condemnations or reprisals against them from any people in the Arab world.
I don't remember exactly what happened afterwards, but I think America pressured Pakistan, and the barbarians were arrested and handed over.
Compare that to Abu Ghraib. Some soldiers violated military code of conduct, engaged in some sadistic acts of torture and humiliation, and since mid January, there were 6 investigations into these actions. We are yet to see what the military will do to punish them, but as Michael said, there are yet to be any Americans who supported the torture.
Posted by: Jono at May 14, 2004 12:50 AMI know that in the current climate of hysteria, many will be horrified that anyone can even ask the question, but out of a spirit of genuine intellectual inquiry, I'll ask anyway: has anyone reached a cogent view of why we all instinctively regard this as more barbaric than if he had been killed in a carbomb explosion or shot in a drive-by, like so many others? Dead, after all, is dead.
Some possibilities:
*killing by hand seems more barbaric than killing by bullets or bombs.
*the fact that he was already neutralized and defenceless.
*the fact that it was videotaped.
Thoughts?
Posted by: Mork at May 14, 2004 12:51 AMMork.. here's the simplest and most direct answer: While dead is indeed dead and torture is indeed torture, you MUST look at the context within which each act takes place. The beheading is an act sanctioned, celebrated, defended and justified by the "policies" (if you will) of its perpetrators (as was, say, torture in Chile). The abuse -- or torture-- at Abu Ghraib, by contrast, contravenes all policy and stated principles of its perpetrators. Is there hypocrist and duplicity and denial also mixed in? Of course! But the two acts do not achieve moral equivalence when viewed in their broader context. That, by the way, is NO justifcation whatsoever for the lesser act.
Posted by: Marc Cooper at May 14, 2004 12:59 AMA clarification that I wouldn't ordinarily think necessary, if it weren't for the fact that many in the forum (otherwise intelligent) often go off half-cocked: in the above, I did not suggest that there are vicious, murderous criminals who have done anything like what was done to Nick Berg under U.S. command, or in Iraq.
The U.S. military takes all kinds. Some (a small minority) are dangerous criminals who happen not to have a police record. Others are dangerous criminals who might have a police record, but faked their identity to get in. Some might go in because they've gotten themselves in a corner in American gang politics, and decided that being in the military is a safer place than being on the streets. Among them are probably a few who wouldn't mind beheading hapless victims in the least.
Beheading hapless victims is hardly unknown among our "allies" in this war. The Saudi royal family (considerably more under threat of overthrow by Islamic fundamentalist groups than America has ever been), has in the past beheaded women for committing adultery - even women in the royal family. [Scroll down to photos.]
Why do we tolerate this sort of barbarism in our "allies", even to the point of having military bases in their countries?
Let's go back to a curious incident before the first Gulf War. James Baker, then George H.W. Bush's Secretary of State, told us the casus belli of that war: "Make no mistake, this is about oil and jobs." Of course, he was taken out behind the woodshed, and emerged later with a retraction: "This is about the principle of national sovereignty." But it was out there. After that, it was OK to talk about a Saddam Hussein "bestride our lifeline."
Yes, we had to fight, after that. Even if it meant supporting Islamic dictatorships of not much higher moral quality than the murderers of Nick Berg. Even if it meant restoring one to power in Kuwait.
Now, in some twisted sense, this is still all about the preservation of liberal democracy, with the U.S. as exemplar. Follow the money. Because the money matters.
Americans hate high prices at the pump. And spikes in oil prices have preceded just about every significant economic recession. It's not just your gas tank - it ripples through the whole economy. There's nothing like a bad economy to make voters vindictive. They beat up on the political system until they get satisfaction. That satisfaction often comes in the form of an economic revival that the government doesn't have much to do with. As the first Clinton campaign put it, to instill a sense of humility and dampen triumphalism among its campaign staff: "It's the economy, stupid."
However, to the extent that modern economies in affluent industrial democracies depend on cheap oil to maintain prosperity, the picture for liberal democracy is bleak. In a way, the oil price spikes we've seen in the past are just blips in one big downspike, one that's pretty much over. Oil prices can only trend roughly upward for the next 50 years, before supplies basically peter out. Life is going to get more expensive, and in most of the developed world, retirement plans will draw ever more on an assumption that may no longer hold: continuous economic growth.
In short, young people will be pissed off that they can't enjoy the standard of living that their parents enjoyed, because they are shelling out more of their income to support retirees, and more and more of their income to buy what people used to buy more cheaply. And older people will be pissed off because they can't buy what they thought they would be able buy, and aren't getting as much money (not to mention purchasing power) for retirement as they thought they would get. Ever-higher oil prices will be a big part of this vicious cycle.
A voter base with a powerful sense of thwarted entitlement is a nightmare in democracies. It's the downslope. It leads to demogoguery, even to fascism. The trends in energy supplies and in age demographics are not encouraging.
Elite supporters of liberal democracy who are schooled in the Straussian view - that a certain amount of evil might have to be committed to ensure that greater good - are hardly stupid. They can see all this coming. The question for them is: what's the minimum amount of evil that can bridge America toward an energy future without a crisis in democracy? If I were them, I'd do something that would generate a sense of moral mission and moral entitlement among Americans, for what amounts to an oil grab. It's simply the best interim stopgap measure, and something that can be pulled off in one presidential term.
Nick Berg is a pawn in a game. The video is a move. The prizes are big: Saudi Arabia for Islamic fundamentalists, Iraq for the Coalition of the Willing. At this point, I think both sides are likely to get what they are playing for. And I think both sides know it. The only real wild card is the American electorate. Abu Ghraib threatened to turn them sour. Nick Berg's death was brilliantly played to the opposite effect. It remains to be seen whether it will be enough, of course. But there are more captives where he came from.
Suspend your outrage for a second, and tell me what's wrong with this as a theory. Where are the holes?
Posted by: Michael Turner at May 14, 2004 01:02 AMMarc - thanks for taking the question seriously. I want to stress, though (if it's not clear)that I was not trying to make a case for equivalence with anything, other than to the extent that comparisons with other events that don't necessarily evoke the same horror are necessary to understand why this does.
I am as horrified as anyone. I'm just trying to work out why, and what it says about me, and what it says about them.
Michael - I'm loving your posts on this and the previous thread. Please keep it up.
Posted by: Mork at May 14, 2004 01:13 AMThe question is not whether we should hold ourselves to a higher moral standard (we must and we do) but why our enemies are not held to any standard at all.
Posted by: Joe Marino at May 14, 2004 02:26 AMGee Michael Turner, so everything is relative and we are all hypocrites. Are there any other revelations you had in 7th grade you would like to share with us? There are limits to everything. Sometimes you just have to draw a line (no matter how imperfect) and get on with it. Or should we just roll over and die?
Posted by: Joe Marino at May 14, 2004 03:22 AMMichael Turner---
Suspend your outrage for a second, and tell me what's wrong with this as a theory. Where are the holes?
Between your ears?
Posted by: Morty at May 14, 2004 04:09 AMMy new suggestion for MJT -- ask a Lefty friend if they've seen the snuff film. Or would be willing to see it with you?
It's not just the acts, it's the pictures.
Welcome to the "information revolution" -- I never really expected it to be so horrific. Yes, just thinking of brings tears.
Where are pictures, or even stories, of the 3 Americans gunned down by the UN?
Thanks for honesty.
Posted by: Tom Grey at May 14, 2004 04:11 AMThe radio station KNRK at 94.7 FM is issuing an apology to its listeners after talk show hosts Marconi, Tiny and sidekick Nickie J. laughed at and ridiculed the beheading of American Nick Berg.
First the lawyer... now this?
What is it with you Oregonians anyway?
Posted by: Nanopimp at May 14, 2004 04:44 AMAlso, the merciless heckling is the symptom of secular fundamentalism. PC thought police nazis.
Posted by: Tom Grey at May 14, 2004 04:53 AMI'm a little shocked that you linked to this. I regularly click your links. When I saw this, I thought, this couldn't really be it, could it? So I clicked. Like you, I watched the first couple seconds, where Nick Berg identifies himself, his family, where he's from etc. Then the camera panned to a wider angle, and one of the butcher's started speaking. I gave an involuntary jerk of horror and lurched for the mouse and closed the window. I wondered to myself, did Michael really watch this? Or think anyone else would want to? Then I read the rest of your post. I think I understand. By the way, unlike you, I've never watched the video of the Daniel Pearl murder. I don't understand where anyone gets the stomach to watch these f***ing things.
But like a lot of people, the murder of Nick Berg has made me wonder about the Abu Ghraib photos. I saw last night on the news a claim that some of the participants in some of them are intelligence officers/interrogators. My initial horror at them was premised, at least in part, on the belief that the cruelty they depicted was gratuitous.
But now there seems to be an effort by some who oppose the war to claim that what they depict is not gratuitous, its part of policy for interrogations. I even saw something from someone who claimed to have trained US interrogators saying some of the techniques were what interrogators were trained to do. The anti-war crowd seems to think this makes them worse. I'm not so sure. I don't know what all the photos depict, obviously many haven't been released. So I can't speak to all of them. But we always knew "stress and duress" was a euphemism for interrogation tactics we wouldn't particularly want to experience ourselves. Is the sexual humiliation in the photos I've seen beyond the line? Did it go too far? I'm not so sure anymore. But the Nick Berg murder is certainly a reminder that the enemy we're up against is incomprehensibly ruthless. When dealing with such a foe, I'm not sure we can afford quick easy answers, instead of thoughtful examinions of our assumptions about where that line is. And our military, I am confident, has given the question a great deal more thought than any of us or any of the journalists expressing their outrage at Abu Ghraib. We are free to disagree with some of their conclusions, policies may need to be changed, but we should respect there efforts to balance the unbalanceable -- the desire to respect human dignity with the need to defeat those who never will.
Posted by: Michael at May 14, 2004 04:56 AMThe differences are, to me, ridiculously obvious, whether I watch the film or not - I didn't need to see people jumping to their deaths from the WTC to understand the horror.
We are acting to defend ourselves; they are the aggressors.
We target military personnel, locations, and operations; they target civilians.
We aggressively investigate, prosecute, and punish those in our military who violate the law and rules of war; they celebrate the heinous murder of innocent civilians (WTC, Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg).
We are attempting to rebuild; they seek to destroy.
"We" is the idealized America that seeks to do the right thing, even if we make (plenty of) mistakes along the way. "They" is radical islam that will stop at nothing to eradicate us like we are some sort of termite or roach.
Are we all good and they all bad? Of course not, but we had better stick to our principles with a complete willingness to not only defend ourselves from attack but also to enforce, on ourselves, those same principles.
Those are just some of the differences and, IMHO, are the ones that matter most.
Posted by: steve at May 14, 2004 04:57 AMSome people decide whether to articulate a moral judgment based upon whether they expect that articulating that judgment will help combat economic inequality. If there is a moral judgment that makes it seem that, in a certain case, someone representing the rich and powerful has not been as wicked as someone opposing the rich and powerful, then they will not articulate the judgment, but will rather deny it. To say they are cynical is putting it mildly. To them there are no moral facts, and all morals are mere posturing and cover for attempts to control wealth.
Posted by: Jim at May 14, 2004 05:31 AMThe link is down now.
OK, something to think about. What frightens me much more are the rumors that are starting to circulate through the radical left and the islamic world, saying that Nick Berg was really a "Jewish spy", asking why he was wearing an orange jumpsuit (as a prisoner would wear), what he was doing looking for work anyway, etc. That he was really killed by the CIA or some US gov't agency because of his father's anti-war stance, or to distract from the prison photos, or whatever.
I wouldn't even be mentioning this, except that several of my friends are on the left, and they're all spouting these same "well, not that I believe it, mind you, but here's some interesting ideas that I'll give credence to without being man enough to defend them" kinds of conspiracy theories.
What does this say about how polarized we've become that otherwise sane individuals are willing to believe that the Administration committed a grisly murder of one of our own citizens. Actually, even worse, that they are skeptical that al Qaeda was involved because their hated evil enemy, President Bush, is the one who they want to be responsible.
Posted by: Rob at May 14, 2004 05:43 AMI echo the sentiment that the two acts do not achieve moral equivalence.
On a somewhat similar note, in your previous thread, Michael, you wrote I still haven’t found anyone who explicitly supports the torture of Iraqis in Abu Ghraib prison. But some people do like to push it.
Michael Savage's take seems a little more than pushing it:
"[T]ake their deepest fear, the pig, the dog, the woman with the leash, and use it on them to break them!"
"Use ... [l]ittle, ugly women. And let 'em take big strapping Iraqis and put 'em on leashes naked."
"Instead of putting joysticks, I would have liked to have seen dynamite put in their orifices."
http://tinyurl.com/234b9
This man has 8 million listeners. Steve and the one or two posters at Marc Coopers blog have, what, maybe hundreds of readers. I haven't read (at least yet) anyone of any stature on the far left coming out officially with this line of argument. Not to suggest that they won't, just haven't seen it yet.
Posted by: Ya Think at May 14, 2004 05:46 AMAccording to Johah Goldberg at National Review, Berg might have been an anti-war peacenik:
http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/04_05_09_corner-archive.asp#031762
What if Berg was anti-war, a supporter of Islamists and more anti-Bush than Indymedia....and AQ still killed him?
Posted by: Ex at May 14, 2004 05:54 AMPS: If any of you have watched it...do any of you believe that these animals WOULD NOT nuke a US city if they had the means? You saw what they did with a butcher knife....
Posted by: Ex at May 14, 2004 05:57 AM'symptoms of secular fundamentalism. PC thought police nazis'
Words to remember.
Most secular fundamentalist have no idea they have been brainwashed and held captive by the PC thought police nazis.
Posted by: syn at May 14, 2004 05:58 AMmy impression is marc is telling leftists there is only one politically correct position, namely his position that american torture is a better kind of torture than the torture in the beheading video and that anyone who argues that both kinds of torture are hideous are traitors to america. kind of a weak kind of argumentation really.
Posted by: calibar at May 14, 2004 06:13 AMthe guy in oregon is probably innocent and likely to be released i'd guess. it seems a lot like the silly eunice stone scare based on nothing.
Posted by: calibar at May 14, 2004 06:16 AMSteve and the one or two posters at Marc Coopers blog have, what, maybe hundreds of readers. I haven't read (at least yet) anyone of any stature on the far left coming out officially with this line of argument. Not to suggest that they won't, just haven't seen it yet.
--nope, you won't find Steve taking that position, it's a Savage form of fascism that leades Mr. Savage to that position. and an unbridled need to find whacky things to say to win audience shares away from other 21st century father coughlins like limbaugh , orielly, hannity, etc.
Posted by: calibar at May 14, 2004 06:33 AMyeah savage is a nazi all right, like all rebuttlickans. but who thinks that berg was CIA or a private-military-corporate stooge? in that case, maybe it was a justified execution of a spy. but i am sure the rightwing hilterites here will use this justifed action to cover up today's my lai fascism. notice no one cared when the zionazis killed rachel corrie? and yet we are supposed to care for a CIA stooge?
Posted by: toad at May 14, 2004 06:44 AMYes, but it's far more important to be outraged at conservatives who are outraged at the disproportionate level of outrage over Abu Ghraib moreso than they are outraged at the real outrage of Abu Ghraib. Or Something.
Posted by: Eric Deamer at May 14, 2004 06:49 AM
an unbridled need to find whacky things to say to win audience shares away from other 21st century father coughlins like limbaugh , orielly, hannity, etc.
"etc." = Franklin, Amy Goodman, et al., n'est-ce pas?
Posted by: chris at May 14, 2004 06:50 AMtoad must have gotten some great experience as an agent provacateur in police school. that impression was almost as good as rich little.
Posted by: calibar at May 14, 2004 06:51 AMWARNING
EXAMINATION OF RECENT POSTS INDICATE THIS THREAD HAS BEEN HIJACKED BY PSYCHOTIC LEFTISTS AFFILIATED WITH INDYMEDIA.ORG
SEVERE INTELLECTUAL DETERIORATION AND POSSIBLE DAMAGE TO THE SERVER IS POSSIBLE
Posted by: WARNING at May 14, 2004 06:53 AM"etc." = Franklin, Amy Goodman, et al., n'est-ce pas?
--don't know franklin, but i haven't heard Goodman saying things like what Savage is quoted saying above. or is that idea in your head just part of a paranoid imagination about the left?
Posted by: calibar at May 14, 2004 06:53 AMnotice no one cared when the zionazis killed rachel corrie?
St. Pancake was a suicide, dude. Didn't you see the ISM video?
Posted by: chris at May 14, 2004 06:53 AMis that idea in your head just part of a paranoid imagination about the left?
Gee, Doctor, I'm probably just too scared to think about it!
Posted by: chris at May 14, 2004 06:56 AMchris, relax buddy, toad is on your side.
Posted by: calibar at May 14, 2004 06:58 AMMJT:
Dude. You have a serious troll problem here. Unless it's been this bad for awhile and I missed it. It's your house and you can do what you want of course, but if you have festering piles of garbage and old chevies up on cinder blocks and an old fridge without a door piled up on the front lawn don't expect concerned citizens not to notice.
Your justification for not banning calibar, ratatosk etc. as far as I understand has something to do with the fact that you could potentially get paid writing gigs from them or something. Really, I don't think that's going to happen with these guys. Though, given the level of calibar's political thought it's probably not out of the question that he's an editor at The Nation or something.
I'm not sure what a "banning offense" is. In tosk's case, he's explicitly admitted below that he's here purely for the purpose of abuse. calibar hasn't issued any death threats or anything but he posts so frequently he probably falls into the "spam" category technically.
Is this really the type of "community" you want to have here. If you given up on managing the comments at all that's cool. The problem then is that the bad comments tend to crowd out the good and to make the non-trolls not want to come back. At this point, you might as well just close the comments for all the good they are doing you or anyone else.
Posted by: Eric Deamer at May 14, 2004 06:59 AMBizarrely, Joe Marino asks "The question is not whether we should hold ourselves to a higher moral standard (we must and we do) but why our enemies are not held to any standard at all."
Would you cite a source to back up the implied claim that people are not holding the enemy to moral standards? I see nothing but blanket condemnation of the Nick Berg execution.
Continuing: "Gee Michael Turner, so everything is relative and we are all hypocrites."
Well, a certain U.S. Senator's comments were deplored by Michael Totten just recently, and precisely for the relativism he expressed. What U.S. soldiers did at Abu Ghraib was not on the scale that Saddam did in the same prison, so this Senator expressed "outraged at the outrage" about the abuses at Abu Ghraib under U.S. control (or perhaps lack of control.) Eh? We were not nearly as bad, therefore we are good? How does that follow, except from some relativistic moral reasoning?
I'm not sure how you infer that I'm telling everybody they are all hypocrites in what I wrote above. Could you explain?
"Are there any other revelations you had in 7th grade you would like to share with us?"
In the seventh grade, I found out that black people could be just as racist as white people. More generally: being a victim doesn't make you morally pure. If anything, victimization can create moral hazard in the victims, by making any retaliation - even against the innocent - feel justified.
What did you learn about people in the 7th grade?
"There are limits to everything. Sometimes you just have to draw a line (no matter how imperfect) and get on with it."
No matter how imperfect? How much imperfection is tolerable? Let me put to you the question I put (without getting an answer) to Michael Totten: if someone had told you a year ago that we might be dealing with the revelations of the Abu Ghraib abuses, wouldn't you have accused them of paranoia, of demonization of the Bush administration?
If asked then, I would have answered: "Under a proper system of oversight, with objective outsiders reviewing the system? No. Without those things? Very probably."
America is a great idea, but Americans are still human beings, just as the enemies are human beings, just from a much worse system than ours.
"Or should we just roll over and die?
Ah, everything is either-or, when dealing with extremists.
Confining military invasion to Afghanistan in the War on Terror would have been somewhere in between. Tightening the noose of WMD inspections in Iraq would have been somewhere in between. Perfect? Hardly. But, as you say, you have to draw the line somewhere, and get on with it, however imperfect that line-drawing may be. You drew it in a place that has gotten us where we are today. I wouldn't have gone that far.
Patrick Henry wrote "It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it."
Somebody didn't provide for the whole truth at Abu Ghraib. Somebody who should have. Whether they did so by negligence or by calculation is something we have to discover. Those who listened to the "song of the siren", who fell prey to the "illusions of hope", have seen a turn of events they never dreamed of: Americans torturing Iraqs - some possibly innocent of any crime - in the same prison where Saddam had so many tortured - many of them innocent of any crime.
Maybe I was lucky. I was prepared. I met people who knew what went on in the POW camps after Gulf War I. It wasn't pretty. But you didn't hear about it, did you? That stuff should never have been swept under the rug. That was the beginning. Making Guantanamo an information black hole was the next step. We didn't get here all at once.
I'm not a moral relativist. But I'm not a fool either. The beginning of corruption is the belief that it can't happen to you. That belief is reinforced by demonization of the enemy, by making the enemy seem subhuman.
With terrorism, the belief in your own inherent moral superiority is further reinforced by an enemy that realizes that it can make itself seem subhuman by committing atrocious acts and using them to agitate the emotions of those who see themselves as being permanently above such crimes. This self-perception leads, almost inexorably, to the morally superior committing similar crimes. And this, in turn, harms the image of those who emotionally reacted to terror attacks, by way of a hypocrisy that they are often very blind to, until it's too late. It's a hypocrisy that is obvious to the hearts and minds that the terrorists are trying to reach. "See?" they can say, "We are the ones who were truly morally superior all along."
Terrorism isn't just scaring people to seem like a bunch of really scary dudes. It's a political tactic aimed at political destabilization, by cultivating disproportionate moral superiority among the targets. Armed with enough moral superiority, any of us could do anything - including hack off the head of an innocent captive. Armed with enough moral superiority, armed with enough of a sense that we are somehow inherently better people that "those animals", we will undo ourselves, and what little good we have in ourselves.
Posted by: Michael Turner at May 14, 2004 07:03 AMcalibrn is typical right-wing infiltrator - i am not the cops! you are i bet! you just like those wingnuts who try to disrupt our legal right to protest the iraq imperialism!
you are just like "eric dreamer" who wants to censor. what are you afraid of? the TRUTH. how much is PNAC paying you to write this propaganda? i heard on indymedia about this blog and and i wanted to check it out before they shut it down DoS style.
Posted by: toad at May 14, 2004 07:04 AMcalibar hasn't issued any death threats or anything but he posts so frequently he probably falls into the "spam" category technically.
--that's weak in my book, spam is utterly pointless and not relevant posts (like the guy who posted the long screeds against David Duke on another comment thread). What I think frustrates you, Grant, and others is that I do make counterarguments that aren't filled with swearing, ethnic slurs, and the like and require a serious response. I think my challenges to the stereotypes you guys have of the left and the antiwar movement is most frustrating to you and your cries for my removal are just a reflection of that.
Posted by: calibar at May 14, 2004 07:05 AMBush Lied! No blood for Oil!
Posted by: Invasion at May 14, 2004 07:07 AMCalibar,
I may have missed your earlier structured counter-arguments, but if it isn't too much trouble, I would appreciate it if you could copy and paste one of your points so I can read it (and respond, if the mood strikes).
Thanks!
BRD
Posted by: Bravo Romeo Delta at May 14, 2004 07:21 AMI'll oblige you happily:
Grant wrote:I would say that your arguments suck, but you don't actually make any arguments to begin with so I can't.
--really? you make generalizations about the left and I ask for examples from well known and read left wing magazines like The Nation, The Progressive, In These Times, or Monthly Review. You offer no examples to sustain your claims, which appear to me to be based on little other than your imagination or what you've heard from others who think like you.
----------------------------
Grant wrote: And your rebutals, if I can call them that, do nothing but take people out of context.
--no, i've taken what you've said and directly refuted it, and I've done so without swearing at you, without name calling (ok, mussolini lobby is kinda hardball), without ethnic slurs, etc.
---------------------
Grant wrote: It's either the "all liberals hate America" mindset or the "all conservatives are fascists" one and I can't stand it.
--i've not said either actually. though we do hear plenty of the former, and forget lefists, they're just outright evil, worse than ossama.
----------------------
Grant wrote: "Let me make sense of this for you, Steve. As I said earlier, leftists always blame America and Rightists never do."
--well, let's see the proof. is it citing american foreign policy as an important contributor to where we are today or is it 'blaming america' 1) and 2) when you say blame america are you saying that in magazines like the Nation, In These Times, Monthly Review,...that the left blames Martin Luther King's ideas on where America should go in its foreign policy or the ideas of FDR say? Or George McGovern? Or do you mean criticising anything left of Zbigniew Brzenzki is 'hating America'. Please advise. And please tell me how I'm 'taking you out of context' in the above.
Also please tell me when Justin Raimando makes arguments against the war how he as a rightwinger is NOT blaming America, or for that matter the free traders at CATO, Hudson are not blaming America when they criticise American foreign policy.
--------------------------
Grant wrote: "Leftists have tried every which way since 9/11 to blame what happened on us. They empathized with the poverty and put themselves in their shoes and yada yada yada..."
--I would likewise ask for examples where leftists 'blame america' or they are blaming specific american policies. there is a difference, being a college student you should be able to distinguish the difference. Really, try to respond to such rebuttals with more than, "HEY MAN YOU"RE STUPID!!"..., if you really can respond to them with anything more substantive
than that.
Calibar,
Thanks much. Unfortunately, since I seemed to have missed the context, et al., all I get from this is two poster exchanging broadsides. It sounds like both yours and Grants posts were already full steam at this point.
As far as I can tell from the excerpts you've quoted, it seems as if Grant was basically making the assertion that both right and left are pretty well balanced in terms of being full of crap, while you seemed to take the view that the right is pretty full of it, while the left gets savaged unjustly. I could be wrong in my interpretation, but I'll keep an eye peeled for your posts in future.
Cheers!
BRD
Posted by: Bravo Romeo Delta at May 14, 2004 07:32 AMDimocrat left-wingers like pander-flopping war criminal John Kerry want us surrender to the terrorists.
Nuke Mecca now!
Posted by: toad at May 14, 2004 07:37 AMnice try caliburn, but we all know who the fascist infiltrator is here.
meanwhile did you notice that the "terrorists" are all white in the video? i smell another neocon-job. how could they be white? unless propaganda? as chomsk says, the corporate media is making up lies. will rush or hanity talk about that? no, because we know who pays their checks. meanwhile they hire the caliburns of the world to pretend to be anti-war. just like the old redneck days of j. edgar hoover.
Posted by: toad (the real deal) at May 14, 2004 07:51 AMRob wrote "OK, something to think about. What frightens me much more are the rumors that are starting to circulate through the radical left and the islamic world, saying that Nick Berg was really a "Jewish spy", asking why he was wearing an orange jumpsuit (as a prisoner would wear), what he was doing looking for work anyway, etc. That he was really killed by the CIA or some US gov't agency because of his father's anti-war stance, or to distract from the prison photos, or whatever."
That's pretty funny. It's amazing what people will believe.
What I find interesting is that Berg was investigated by the FBI because Zacarias Moussaoui had a password that matched Berg's, and Berg lived in the same town as the flight school attended by 9/11 hijackers. The verdict at the time was that it was a total coincidence. Very likely it was, but it came back to haunt him later.
This password issue surfaced again after Berg was in Iraq, leading to facetime with authorities there. It may well be that Berg, having spent so much time with authorities in Iraq, and having an Israel stamp in his passport, was just presumptively convicted as some kind of spy by al-Zarkawi's group.
Berg was probably just a bumbling fool. That doesn't mean that al-Zawkawi's publicized execution of him wasn't timed to effect. If it was timed, it was brilliant timing.
Posted by: Michael Turner at May 14, 2004 07:56 AMTerrorism isn't just scaring people to seem like a bunch of really scary dudes. It's a political tactic aimed at political destabilization, by cultivating disproportionate moral superiority among the targets. Armed with enough moral superiority, any of us could do anything - including hack off the head of an innocent captive. Armed with enough moral superiority, armed with enough of a sense that we are somehow inherently better people that "those animals", we will undo ourselves, and what little good we have in ourselves.
Wow, Mr. Turner, what a brilliant deduction.
It’s like when the Japanese did that sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. That sure gave us a sense of disproportionate moral superiority, didn’t it? We fell for that one, big time. And, as usual, every American immediately reacted by sawing off the head of an innocent captive..if they could find one. We started running out after awhile.
And the Germans and most of Europe with the holocaust? Once again, they did it to give Americans a disproportionate sense of moral superiority.
Maybe that was Stalin’s whole plan, and Mao’s too – they murdered millions of innocent people just so the Western World could feel that we were inherently better than them.
I guess that’s why Arab Islamists in the Sudan are murdering people for the crime of being black. They want to tick us off.
Accroding to your reasoning, the whole world revolves around us. Terrorists aren’t motivated by an exterminationist philosophy, they just do these things to bug us. We should just ignore them and they’ll go away.
Posted by: mary at May 14, 2004 08:02 AMMichael, in the words of Wilson Mizener, "Gangrene has set in." Your site has seriously devolved to the point these threads may cause brain damage. Adios, best of luck, and I'll visit again in 2005.
Posted by: Zhombre at May 14, 2004 08:04 AMon the freeper/instapundit and other mussolini lobby sites, boy are they going after Berg's father with a vengeance. Berg's father might be even more evil than ossama in their eyes.
Posted by: calibar at May 14, 2004 08:05 AMof course they are! they need to cover the CIA set up like the good corproate PR firms they are! how much advertsing dollars do these sites get from PNAC and other hate groups i wonder? easier to snuff out this guy and blame it on "terrorists" than to just kill him blatently (as they did to rachel corrie). too bad they should have hired arabs instead of white guys to do the job - oops! a big fuck up by the hitlerites.
Posted by: toad at May 14, 2004 08:08 AMi bet this guy was just a merc who saw too much. if i was his dad i would move away before the neocons "dissapear" him too! just like pinoche did to activists!
Posted by: toad at May 14, 2004 08:10 AMMr. Turner,
This starts driving back to basic questions of how a moral person lives in an immoral world. From what I'm told, Rheinhold Niebur did some pretty heavy-duty writing on this subject in the early 20th century.
For my money, trying to go through the acrobatics involved in not ending up in a fundamentally Hobbsean world starts marching one down some pretty philosophically tricky paths. The core of the debate you're engaged in here simply reflects some of that difficulty.
Posted by: Bravo Romeo Delta at May 14, 2004 08:11 AMToo many comments to quickly read, so apologies to all if this has been stated already.
MJT: We’ve all seen the gross pictures from Abu Ghraib. Now take a look at the snuff film.
What has one to do with the other? What kind of scoring system are we devising to determine who's crime is morally worse? We haven't seen all the footage from Abu Ghraib, people were raped and murdered there. Are you saying that these two separate crimes will be equivalent until we've seen the worst footage available of the Abu Ghraib, and the possibly hundreds of other incidents that have been documented? Will we be determined to be the bad guys if video becomes public of US troops raping prisoners, or beating them to death in an interrogation?
Or should we compare numbers? How many points do we use for this evil murder, versus the hundreds and possibly thousands of crimes that have been committed against Iraqi prisoners and citizens?
So what's the point of this silly exercise? Making us feel better? "Sure, our troops commited crimes, but look, those five guys are way worse than them."
Secondly, could we please stop doing a PR job for this sick video? MJT, I applaud your decision for not viewing it, but shame on you for linking to it. The publicity that it's receiving is exactly the reason that this murder was committed, and it's certain to spark new and worse incidents. Are we going to watch all those too?
Posted by: double-plus-ungood at May 14, 2004 08:11 AMMary It’s like when the Japanese did that sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. That sure gave us a sense of disproportionate moral superiority, didn’t it? We fell for that one, big time. And, as usual, every American immediately reacted by sawing off the head of an innocent captive..if they could find one.
No, Americans did not start sawing off heads, but while America had taken the moral stand of condemning the Japanese Army for targetting enemy civilians before the war, by the end of it they had no objection to burning alive millions of Japanese men, women, and children in firebombing raids, specifically intended to kill large numbers of civilians in a particularily horrible and painful fashion.
When moral superiority is on your side, it puts horrible acts in a different light, which I think was Michael Turner's point.
Posted by: double-plus-ungood at May 14, 2004 08:21 AMBoth actions are condemnable on moral and humanitarian grounds. The Berg killing is definitely worse than Abu Ghirab, but neither incident should be regarded by anybody as a good thing. Thats my twopence worth, just in response to the main post not any of the comments posted so far.
Posted by: sam at May 14, 2004 08:30 AMToo many comments to quickly read, so apologies to all if this has been stated already.
Consider yourself lucky.
Posted by: rick w. at May 14, 2004 08:31 AMActually Americans did start sawing off heads, but it was of dead Japanese troops. (and boiling the flesh off, and sending them home to their girlfriends). Read Paul Fussel's collection of essays "Thank God for the Atom Bomb" for a combat veteran's take on that.
Now, ++UG wants to know what does some pictures have to do with another. Well, in this case, its pretty obviously stated by the terrorists that Berg was being killed to 'avenge' the prison stuff.
Which, of course, nobody (including those terrorists) but the Army was paying attention to until 60 Minutes went and put the pictures all over the place. Then it was all 'flood the zone', even though the story was several months old at that point. And had even been mentioned at least once.
So, it is very possible to conclude that had the prison pictures not been published, Nick Berg would still be alive.
What of course is missed by both ++UG and MT, is that while abuses can and will occur, its not policy, and there are processes in place (that were/are working) to stop the abuse, investigate it, and punish the guilty. That is why the navel-gazing and breast beating about morality is so insipid. The morality of it was decided along time ago.
Posted by: eric at May 14, 2004 08:55 AMI'm all for cleaning house. What happened at Abu Ghraib is indefensible. I'm also all for knowing what's out there that wants me dead, and its preferred methods for implementing that goal.
Ignoring it isn't going to make it go away, children. Changing the subject isn't going to make it go away. Don't make the mistake of thinking all evils are the same.
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend" is going to get a lot of people killed someday by "friendly" fire.
Posted by: Mark Poling at May 14, 2004 08:59 AMWhich, of course, nobody (including those terrorists) but the Army was paying attention to until 60 Minutes went and put the pictures all over the place. Then it was all 'flood the zone', even though the story was several months old at that point. And had even been mentioned at least once.
--but isn't that interesting, given the mantra of 'left wing media' 'liberal media'. what you state is correct, the media largely ignored this story though there was plenty of opportunity to report on it and feature it more prominently. the fear of reporting too much 'negative' news kept cold feet colder as usual.
Posted by: calibar at May 14, 2004 09:06 AMCalibar, the decision of the media to report it may have been related to the point at time at which they obtained the pictures. Assuming that the notion that the media has a given bias simply because they do or don't have a given bit of information doesn't really follow logically.
If they have information, e.g. Nick Berg's execution tape, and then choose to sit on it, then perhaps this might be stronger evidence of bias.
Posted by: Bravo Romeo Delta at May 14, 2004 09:14 AMMichael,
2 things I think about this video thats I havent seen punditized yet:
1) If you do watch it and feel uneasy for a couple days, just consider watching that video is probably 1/1000th as gory as what every one of our soldiers has had to live through being in Iraq. Think of how it makes you feel, then think how returning veterans must feel. Buy them a beer.
2) Dont let this film make you hate Muslims or Arabs. Thats what Al Queda wants. They want a holy war, so inciting hate on both sides serves their goals.
Posted by: dave at May 14, 2004 09:18 AMeric: What of course is missed by both ++UG and MT, is that while abuses can and will occur, its not policy, and there are processes in place (that were/are working) to stop the abuse, investigate it, and punish the guilty.
Hey, I like the "++UG", thanks for the handle.
Re: your comment - Actually, I didn't miss that at all, and there was nothing in my comment that indicate my opinion on the matter. I posted on my own blog two weeks ago:The disturbing photos of mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib don't really surprise me. Put any group of people in charge of another group of people without proper safeguards to prevent this kind of abuse, and it just seems to happen. Some are making the conclusion that because of these abuses, the Americans are as bad as the Baathists. I disagree. The US military has announced that these kinds of abuses are not to be tolerated, arrests have been made, and court-martials are to follow. That would have been unlikely under Hussein, I think. And I imagine that the enormous PR damage this incident has caused will hopefully cause policy changes to avoid a repeat of this kind of crap.What I am concerned about is that these two crimes have nothing to do with each other, aside from the contention by the killers who say it was for revenge. I read this today on Juan Cole's site, quoted from a Jordanian newspaper editorial:
Taking the life of a man who obviously had nothing to do with the prison conditions in Iraq only trivialises the Iraqis' ordeal and plasters the repulsive face of the occupation with a mask of acceptance of such gross violence. It is also likely to deflect anger from those responsible for the inhumane treatment of detainees, weakening the case for bringing them to justice...It looks like this video is having that effect by either deflecting attention, or making the abuses seem more tolerable in comparison. Posted by: double-plus-ungood at May 14, 2004 09:33 AM
they had no objection to burning alive millions of Japanese men, women, and children in firebombing raids, specifically intended to kill large numbers of civilians in a particularily horrible and painful fashion.
When moral superiority is on your side, it puts horrible acts in a different light, which I think was Michael Turner's point.
And what is your point – that our sense of ‘moral superiority’ let to Hiroshima, and Hiroshima was wrong?
Was Hiroshima wrong?
In fact, I think Mr. Turner was saying that terrorists commit atrocities with the specific goal of instilling a sense of moral superiority in gullible Americans – and gullible Americans react by committing their own atrocities, because we’re so gullible and everything.
This theory doesn’t mention the fact that groups like al Qaeda are motivated by an extremist, fundamentalist philosophy that has a long standing policy of exterminating any people who do not share their beliefs. This extreme fundamentalism has already led to the deaths of many thousands of people. These fundamentalists kill because they feel superior to their victims. (ie the Arabs in the Sudan killing people for the crime of being black). Like the Japanese during WWII, like our own KKK, they have the superiority complex.
The question is, how do we stop them?
Posted by: mary at May 14, 2004 09:34 AMmary And what is your point – that our sense of ‘moral superiority’ let to Hiroshima, and Hiroshima was wrong?
I wasn't referring to Hiroshima, and that wasn't my point. I was responding to your assertion that after Pearl Harbour, Americans didn't kill innocent victims in retaliation. I was pointing out that in the minds of many Americans, burning a million or so Japanese civilians alive became justifiable because they felt moral outrage at the sneak attack and the atrocities of the Japanese Imperial Army.
Posted by: double-plus-ungood at May 14, 2004 09:55 AM"Armed with enough moral superiority, armed with enough of a sense that we are somehow inherently better people that "those animals", we will undo ourselves, and what little good we have in ourselves."
The current debate within our nation is pivoting on our self-perception. MT makes the case that notions of morally superiority, otherwise known as American exceptionalism, could be our undoing.
Perhaps. But I would bet that not believing that we are good and superior to the likes of Islamofacists is currently a much bigger problem.
We saw it yesterday in the incredible bias displayed by the Boston Globe and in the denial of the media outlets who don't want to show the brutality of the enemy we are facing.
If we don't believe in our own moral superiority, what do we fall back upon if our democracy is truly threatened and unequivacably requires a military response? Does Mr. Turner really think he could look his son or daughter in the eye and ask them to put their lives on the line if there is not a clear and undebatable distinction between the moral standings of his country and the enemy? I know I couldn't.
The bottom line is if we don't believe we are morally superior we can't defend ourselves.
If the distinction between al-Qaeda and our nation is so muddled, what atrocities committed against our nation will convince equivocators that for all our shortcomings our society is worth protecting?
Posted by: bob at May 14, 2004 09:56 AMCalibar, the decision of the media to report it may have been related to the point at time at which they obtained the pictures.
-well, yeah, that's my point. they had plenty of other documentation of abuses and torture, false accusations, etc. well before the photos scandal made it easier for the media to report this without being accused of only reporting 'negative' news. now the media, which ignored this story for a year, can congratulate itself for its johnny come lately reportage.
---------------------------
Assuming that the notion that the media has a given bias simply because they do or don't have a given bit of information doesn't really follow logically.
--everyone has a bias, i wouldn't argue the media has a bias, that's like stating 'water is not a solid at 50 degrees. So?
-------------------------
If the distinction between al-Qaeda and our nation is so muddled, what atrocities committed against our nation will convince equivocators that for all our shortcomings our society is worth protecting?
--odd, you had no trouble supporting their tactics during the afghani war against Soviet occupation.
Posted by: calibar at May 14, 2004 10:09 AMThe trouble with moral evaluation is that it demands that you put actions, including your own (which you can control) and that of others (which, sometimes, you cannot) into perspective.
And often it's not easy. It takes homework and intestinal fortitude, especially when the persons being evaluated are in your own house while others set to kill you, over whom you are relatively powerless, are rightout side the door.
For some of us who have to make tough decisions (even if it's just to fire someone or to give a rock-bottom evaluation) frequently, we get steeled and used to it. We can hopefully condem and pursue the mistreatment at Abu Ghraib while keeping it in the context of the greater war when faced with the far more barbaric and savage murder of Berg. Those who don't make those choices but, likewise, have maturity and objectivity can do so as well.
But for those who lack the integrity to see the world for what it is, it's so much easier to grade "themselves" (or to be more honest, the people they can control or manipulate by negative evaluation) unfarily downward so that the b*st*rds beyond their control don't seem as bad. Easy-Peasey, problem solved, pat yourself on the back, collect your "conflict resolution fee."
That's how we get Bush-Hitler. That's how we get AmeriKKKa. That's how we get Nazis = Jews Beta Release. That's how we get Al Queda = Abu Ghraib. And that's where we get Indimedia, Ted Rall and the rest. I have to grimly wonder how they would respond if they were in Berg's place. We've already seen Robert Fisk's example.
Posted by: Bill at May 14, 2004 10:10 AMthey felt moral outrage at the sneak attack and the atrocities of the Japanese Imperial Army
Turner seems to believe that with enough moral outrage, any person would be willing to do anything:
Armed with enough moral superiority, any of us could do anything - including hack off the head of an innocent captive.
I can personally say that I would not hack off the head of an innocent captive under any circumstances. A large percentage of people could say the same thing. Human nature is not always good, but if it were as horrific and corruptible as Turner believes, we would not have survived to this point.
Yes, we felt moral outrage towards the Japanese. And we defeated a nation that was motivated by an exterminationist policy.
Was our moral outrage justified? We can ask ourselves that question, or we could ask the older residents of Nanking, Korea and Malaysia. They could probably give us a more balanced view.
Posted by: mary at May 14, 2004 10:14 AMha-ha, even cuba can see that the US is fascist hate-state:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/americas/05/14/cuba.us.march.ap/
how are the "terrorist" white guys? how is the cia not involvded? keep spinning, you rebuttlicks!
Posted by: toad at May 14, 2004 10:23 AMI was pointing out that in the minds of many Americans, burning a million or so Japanese civilians alive became justifiable because they felt moral outrage at the sneak attack and the atrocities of the Japanese Imperial Army.
Now even hypothetically speaking when using the qualifier "many Americans", that's out of line.
I seem to recall that a goodly amount of the decision to drop the bomb (recall that we didn't understand much about radiation fallout then) was to preclude a massive invasion that would have cost far more American Military and Japanese civilian lives and would have required even more atomic weapons used tactically, all the while making time for the Soviets to expand even more into the Pacific Rim.
Did anger over Pearl Harbor ease some of the guilt in dropping the bombs? Likely not as much as the Death Marches in the Philippines, Nanjing or other Japaneese attrocities... But it was the Calculus of War that primarily drove that decision, and the decision was reportedly agonizing for Wilson. "Burning people alive," especially after what was coming out at the fall of the Third Reich, would have been a block on the bomb, not a rationalization.
Posted by: Bill at May 14, 2004 10:26 AM"--odd, you had no trouble supporting their tactics during the afghani war against Soviet occupation. "
Keep trying, Low. Your shooting blanks.
Posted by: bob at May 14, 2004 10:27 AMMary: Was our moral outrage justified? We can ask ourselves that question, or we could ask the older residents of Nanking, Korea and Malaysia. They could probably give us a more balanced view.
Can one justify killing a random Japanese civilian because of the crimes of a member of the Imperial Japanese Army? If you can, and I think you just did, then that proves Michael's point.
Posted by: double-plus-ungood at May 14, 2004 10:28 AMThe debate on Hiroshima always gets down to a numbers game. It's as if we knew that the total casulties of invasion would cost one less death than the bomb, the moral thing to do we be to opt for invasion. Easy to say, generations after the fact, in hindsight, without yourself or your brother or your father being deployed as infantry man in the South Pacific, after serving four years of hell. Expected casualty rates for an invasion of the Japanese mainland were expected to be 95% for the first wave, down to 90% for the second.
Posted by: bob at May 14, 2004 10:35 AMAnti-war leftists attempting to numb emotions and blur distinctions between proper outrage over a clear brutality and a civilian casualties in a just war are acting in defense of institutionalized evil.
Posted by: d-rod at May 14, 2004 10:44 AMBob:
The debate on Hiroshima always gets down to a numbers game. It's as if we knew that the total casulties of invasion would cost one less death than the bomb, the moral thing to do we be to opt for invasion.
I disagree. the Hiroshima "debate" is about ignoring the numbers game. As you indicated with your closing stats and I indicated with the fact that an invasion would have used MORE nukes than just two, the numbers game always ends with a grim "victory" for two strategic devices used over five, ten or more tactical ones (or just the raw military and civilian casualties of an invasion).
The Hiroshima debate is about evading those numbers so as to paint the Americans as amoralists on par with the Imperial Japanese or worse.
Posted by: Bill at May 14, 2004 10:45 AMKeep trying, Low. Your shooting blanks.
--really? is what I said that wrong?
http://www.w3schools.com/Visit W3Schools
"Did the founders of US policy in Afghanistan during the Carter Administration (1977-1981) realized that in spawning Islamic militancy with the primary aim of defeating the Soviet Union they were risking sowing the seeds of a phenomenon that was likely to acquire a life of its own, spread throughout the Muslim world and threaten US interests?
Perhaps not, but it was not as if they had no choice. When Moscow intervened militarily in Afghanistan in December 1979, there were several secular and nationalist Afghan groups opposed to the Moscow-backed Communists, who had seized power twenty months earlier in a military coup. Washington had the option of bolstering these groups and encouraging them to form an alliance with three traditionalist Islamic factions, two of them monarchist. Instead, Washington beefed up the three fundamentalist organizations then in existence. This left moderate Islamic leaders no choice but to ally with hard-liners and form the radical-dominated Islamic Alliance of Afghan Mujahedeen (IAAM) in 1983.
The main architect of US Policy was Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's National Security Advisor. A virulent anti-Communist of Polish origin, he saw his chance in Moscow's Afghanistan intervention to rival Henry Kissinger as a heavyweight strategic thinker. It was not enough to expel the Soviet tanks, he reasoned. This was a great opportunity to export a composite ideology of nationalism and Islam to the Muslim-majority Central Asian states and Soviet republics with a view to destroying the Soviet order.
Brzezinski also fell in easily with the domestic considerations of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, the military dictator of Pakistan. After having overthrown the elected prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in 1977, Zia was keen to create a popular base for his regime by inducting Islam into politics. One way of doing this was to give aid to the exiled Afghan fundamentalist leaders in Pakistan. "
Posted by: calibar at May 14, 2004 10:51 AMCan one justify killing a random Japanese civilian because of the crimes of a member of the Imperial Japanese Army? If you can, and I think you just did, then that proves Michael's point.
Is the killing of one random Japanese civilian an event that occurs during the course of a war? Is Turners point that terrorism leads to war and all war is bad?
So, is all war bad?
Posted by: mary at May 14, 2004 11:11 AMI wasn't referring to Hiroshima or Nagasaki when talking about the civilian casualties, I was referring to the numerous firebombing raids between 1943 and 1945. The debate about Hiroshima is a seperate one.
The use of nukes wasn't, as many contend, aimed at preventing an invasion. As the Japanese government had already asked the Soviet Union to be the intermediary in surrender discussions with America, and as Stalin had passed this information to the US, Truman knew that an invasion would not be necessary. What was needed was a speedier conclusion of the war with Japan, as the Soviet Union was about to get involved, and had been promised some concessions that would have made them far more powerful in the Pacific. So the bombs were dropped to hurry the Japanese government up before the Soviets committed troops and could argue that they helped defeat them.
When it comes right down to it, the nukes killed far less people than the firebombing raids.
Posted by: double-plus-ungood at May 14, 2004 11:15 AMWhy did support of nationalism in Central Asia whose goal would confront Soviet territorial expansion have to become a nihilistic war against infidels? That was hardly self-evident even to 20/20 hindsighters like you. Had Carter realized this do you really thing that Mr. Peanut, Mr. Do-Gooder, Mr. "I Have Lusted in My Heart" would have proceeded with such a policy? Please, elaborate on the dark side of Jimmy Carter. I am all ears.
By extension of logic, we should not have allied ourselves with the French resistance because of the potential for France to become Communist after WWII (remember, Western Europe did vacillate after the war and almost did embrace Communism). Going further we obviously should not have aligned ourselves with Uncle Joe against Hitler, since we should have forsaw the potential of the Cold War rather then deal expediently with the current threat at hand ( fascism).
Low. Have you ever thought of what it would be like to be in a position of reponsibility? Where lives are on the line and you don't have a crystal ball to know how something as complicated as internation geopolitics is going to play out.
Stop pretending that we are morally bankrupt because there are unintended consequences in the world.
Posted by: bob at May 14, 2004 11:15 AMThe people who killed Berg are scum. If I had them in a prison that I was guarding, I would adhere to the Geneva convention every bit as much as they had done.
Posted by: JJ at May 14, 2004 11:45 AMWhy did support of nationalism in Central Asia whose goal would confront Soviet territorial expansion have to become a nihilistic war against infidels? That was hardly self-evident even to 20/20 hindsighters like you.
--oh really? actually it was, but when ya brought up such matters to people like Carter/Reagan or the islamic fascist lover Dan Rather, well they just ignored such considerations.
------------------------
Had Carter realized this do you really thing that Mr. Peanut, Mr. Do-Gooder, Mr. "I Have Lusted in My Heart" would have proceeded with such a policy? Please, elaborate on the dark side of Jimmy Carter. I am all ears.
--you're incoherently making a point here? would Carter have done differently? no. would reagan have done differently? no.
----------------------------
By extension of logic, we should not have allied ourselves with the French resistance because of the potential for France to become Communist after WWII (remember, Western Europe did vacillate after the war and almost did embrace Communism).
--i don't remember the communists in France blowing up civilians, bombing hospitals,...to advance their cause against fascism.
----------------------------
Low. Have you ever thought of what it would be like to be in a position of reponsibility? Where lives are on the line and you don't have a crystal ball to know how something as complicated as internation geopolitics is going to play out.
--really? there were no other options available? we couldn't have supported moderate secular elements? why not? why did we have to support religious nuts to advance the cause of american democracy? i'm all ears.
------------------------------
Stop pretending that we are morally bankrupt because there are unintended consequences in the world.
--i don't doubt for one minute that Carter and Reagan had the best of intentions. what does that have to do with anything?
Posted by: calibar at May 14, 2004 11:59 AMThe people who killed Berg are scum. If I had them in a prison that I was guarding, I would adhere to the Geneva convention every bit as much as they had done.
--you would probably do that even if you had no idea if they actually were just picked up in a random raid and those who picked them up had no idea if they actually were the murderers.
i wonder though if you would object to your siblings or parents being subjected to such treatment? that's a big issue among Iraqis right now, will they get picked up by mistake by people who don't speak their language and are heavily infiltrated, confused, and misinformed about Iraq's history and culture.
Michael Turner,
Ah. When Americans feel moral outrage at the heinous acts of terrorists, we too are in danger of hacking off heads because moral outrage equals belief in one’s moral superiority, and a sense of moral superiority is what gives you the power to hack off heads. Therefore, one should NOT be outraged at the hacking off of an innocent’s head, because that could have been you doing the hacking, if only you weren’t you that is. Oddly though, it is correct to be morally outraged at prosecuting a war against (metaphorically speaking) those who hack off heads, and in particular those who commit acts of humiliation in a prison. Being aware of the dangers of moral superiority and pontificating on its dangers therefore allows you to short circuit the dangers of believing oneself morally superior. In short, it makes you morally superior.
What’s wrong with this picture?
All together now kids: Can you say “sophistry?”
Now Michael, I’m on lunch and don’t have time to eviscerate the rest of your quaint university sensibilities, but I’ll leave you with a few quotes from Patrick Henry:
“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force: Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.”
“Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense?”
So go ahead and talk yourself in circles. Derrida, Foucoult, and Kroeber would be proud.
Posted by: Catalonia at May 14, 2004 12:03 PMOddly though, it is correct to be morally outraged at prosecuting a war against (metaphorically speaking) those who hack off heads,...
--by now it should be quite plain that this is not the reason for this adventure in Iraq.
Posted by: calibar at May 14, 2004 12:12 PMSo go ahead and talk yourself in circles. Derrida, Foucoult, and Kroeber would be proud.
--and you read Heidegger?
Posted by: calibar at May 14, 2004 12:15 PM--by now it should be quite plain that this is not the reason for this adventure in Iraq.
By now it should be quite plain that this sort of argument only works against the terminally partisan and the logically inane.
Posted by: Catalonia at May 14, 2004 12:22 PMBy now it should be quite plain that this sort of argument only works against the terminally partisan and the logically inane.
--really? is that your impression, the only critics of the war are people on the left? you're not reading or listening carefully enough I'm afraid.
Posted by: calibar at May 14, 2004 12:44 PM--really? there were no other options available? we couldn't have supported moderate secular elements? why not? why did we have to support religious nuts to advance the cause of american democracy? i'm all ears.
Well, since Afghanistan has been a indecipherable mess since Hector was a pup, I would venture to guess that the existence of "moderate secular elements" who had some politcal weight were virtually non-existent.
The tribalism/warlordism of Afghanistan is not a recent phenominon. It is part and parcel of their social makeup and is why they had, have, and will continue to have a difficult time coming to grips with the modern world.
In the early 1980's, we were in no position to dictate how warlords fought the Soviets. You make it sound as if this was simply a matter of doing a little homework, going over to the Hindu Kush and annointing the "correct" leaders of the resistance. Tactical alliances were made on the fly in the shadow of a common enemy.
We assisted the resistance in an arm's length way, somewhat analogous to France's assistance to us two centuries ago. France was motivated by geopolitical concerns, but the outcome of our revolution and what we did with it was solely the consequence of our actions. It would be stupid to blame the French for what we did or did not do after kicking out the British. I'll leave it as an academic excercise to figure out what I think about blaming Afghanisan's state on America.
Posted by: bob at May 14, 2004 02:53 PMWell, since Afghanistan has been a indecipherable mess since Hector was a pup, I would venture to guess that the existence of "moderate secular elements" who had some politcal weight were virtually non-existent.
--you would guess wrong.
Posted by: calibar at May 14, 2004 04:25 PMWe assisted the resistance in an arm's length way, somewhat analogous to France's assistance to us two centuries ago.
--gimme a break, we supplied them with arms galore, $$ like no tomorrow, and supplied even more through surrogates like the Saudi Royals, and supplied a bigtime team of CIA trainers...
Posted by: calibar at May 14, 2004 04:27 PMAlright, it's time for me to babysit the comments again.
Calibar: You need to post here less frequently. You are hogging the comments section. I've never banned anyone for hogging, but people I respect are asking me to do it.
So please consider this a polite warning. You are welcome to continue posting, but please cut your rate down by half. (If you have so much to say perhaps you should start your own blog. You clearly have the time and the energy.)
Toad: It's blazingly obvious that you are an anonymous right-wing troll pretending to be an anonymous left-wing troll. This is your first and last warning. Otherwise I will kick you out of here partly for being a fucking idiot, but mostly for being a liar. I'm not going to let you drive reasonable people away. When I kick you out your IP address will be banned, so you won't be able to post under any other name either. Also be aware that I can use my publishing software to figure out your identity in about ten seconds any time I feel like it. You aren't half as anonymous or clever as you think you are.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at May 14, 2004 05:03 PMmichael,
i'll try to cut down the comments, i'll arrive less often. hopefully that will help and the whining about my contributions from people who seem to have little response outside of 'you're stupid' or some slur of one sort or another.
Thanks, Calibar. Nothing personal.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at May 14, 2004 05:09 PM2) Dont let this film make you hate Muslims or Arabs. Thats what Al Queda wants. They want a holy war, so inciting hate on both sides serves their goals.
Posted by dave at May 14, 2004 09:18 AM
*************************************************
You sound like there is a choice.
There IS a Holy War on going, has been for a gerneration or so. It is global, it's casualties include, 1 t0 3 million Pagan and Christian Sudanese, 1 to 3 million Bengalis, hundreds of thousands of Algerians and untold others.
Don't hate the man says? When will people wake up?
When our casualties skyrocket from the pinprick we have endured so far, to the genocide the rest of the world has been enduring at the hands of Islamic Jihad?
It is in vain, sir, to extentuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! Patrick Henry
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands, which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
-Samuel Adams
Posted by: Dan Kauffman at May 14, 2004 06:13 PM
A reply to Morty:
Then I must say that the murder of Nick Berg was worse.
Posted by: Stephen at May 14, 2004 07:30 PMBob is right. Young men do not charge into a hail of bullets, watch their buddies arms and legs get blown off, and crawl through blood soaked dirt contemplating the clap trap proffered by Michael Turner. I know, because I’ve led men into such circumstances. They are convinced that the people on the top of the hill they have been ordered to take are godless heathens who are planning to rape their wives and kill their children. Yes Michael Turner, we know, our enemies are convinced of this too – give it a rest you complete fucking bore. Witness the failure of Dutch/UN troops to perform their sworn duties at Srebrenica or quite recently German/UN troops who disobeyed orders to intervene in ethnic fighting in Kosovo. These men did not want to die wearing some baby blue helmet serving the “international community”. Come wet ass time they cut and run.
Our current foes are the complete antithesis of liberalism -religious intolerance, subjugation of women, persecution of homosexuals and minorities. Complete Totalitarians. They are also confident, determined and as we have seen, quite deadly. It’s no time to be gazing at our navels. Trust me, the self doubt and flat out undermining taking place in this country will filter down to the troops and effect moral. Perhaps you want to take that hill Mr. Turner?
Posted by: Joe Marino at May 14, 2004 09:39 PMI wrote: Terrorism isn't just scaring people to seem like a bunch of really scary dudes. It's a political tactic aimed at political destabilization, by cultivating disproportionate moral superiority among the targets. Armed with enough moral superiority, any of us could do anything - including hack off the head of an innocent captive ...
Mary responded: "Wow, Mr. Turner, what a brilliant deduction."
It wasn't my deduction. People who study these things for a living will tell you: this is what terrorism is for, to morally debase its target governments.
"It’s like when the Japanese did that sneak attack on Pearl Harbor."
A sneak military attack isn't a terror attack. A British blockade had cut Japan off from its oil supplies. Pearl Harbor was one of several simultaneous attacks aimed at restoring those oil supplies. (And the Japanese Empire's claim to the moral high ground? Simply that they were a better expansionist empire than any of the European colonial powers. Which was crap, of course, but ... that's how victims can end up moralizing. And Asia had been victimized by European imperialism and colonialism.)
"That sure gave us a sense of disproportionate moral superiority, didn’t it?"
Since it wasn't a terror attack, but a military one, what I said about terror doesn't apply to Pearl Harbor. However, it did help Americans starting thinking in morally superior terms, where they had previously been isolationist. For some people, the beginning of sympathy is having something similar happen to yourself. It was also the beginning of war atrocities by U.S. soldiers against Japanese soldiers (which, admittedly, were generally not as bad, nor on as large a scale.) And the beginning of a slippery slope that led the U.S. finally to large scale firebombings of cities, and to the atomic bombings.
"And, as usual, every American immediately reacted by sawing off the head of an innocent captive..if they could find one. We started running out after awhile."
I wrote "armed with enough moral superiority." I did not say that every provocation immediately makes anybody like al-Zarkawi. It takes escalation, over a long period of time, not just a single provocation. It took a long time before America was so morally debased by WW II that it would consider killing tens of thousands of noncombatants with napalm and nuclear weapons, condemning most of them to deaths far worse than Nick Berg's - long, lingering deaths from 3rd degree burns.
"And the Germans and most of Europe with the holocaust? Once again, they did it to give Americans a disproportionate sense of moral superiority."
Terrorist acts are committed in public, for maximum public exposure. I don't see how you can compare the Holocaust, when so much of it was kept so secret for so long. Genocide is terrifying, but it is not terrorism.
"Maybe that was Stalin’s whole plan, and Mao’s too – they murdered millions of innocent people just so the Western World could feel that we were inherently better than them."
Again, you're confusing "terrifying to the victims" with "terroristic in intent". Police states tend to keep their worst excesses secret. Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago was shocking precisely because it proposed that Stalin's purges and imprisonments were on a far wider scale than previously supposed.
What terrorist would kill a lot of people, then cover it up?
"I guess that’s why Arab Islamists in the Sudan are murdering people for the crime of being black. They want to tick us off."
If so, they are doing a piss-poor job. I doubt that even 1 American in 8 could tell you what's going on in Sudan. If there was a place in the world where America should be intervening militarily against a genocidal dictatorship, it's Sudan, not Iraq. What they are doing is horrifying, morally on par with the Rwanda genocide. But ... they aren't trumpeting it in the press, trying to impress us with what bad guys they are. Quite the contrary. They'd rather that nobody knew.
Don't equate genocide with terrorism. Genocide is shameless extermination of a people, but an extermination that the exterminators would rather keep quiet. Terror is attacks on civilians that the terrorists hope will play as widely as possible.
"Accroding to your reasoning, the whole world revolves around us."
Actually, the whole world does revolve around us. America is, by a factor of two, at least, the largest economy in the world. It's military spending is many times greater than the next largest national military budget. If there was a voter base in a democracy that a terrorist would like to manipulate for his own political ends, it's the voters of America.
"Terrorists aren’t motivated by an exterminationist philosophy, they just do these things to bug us."
They want to do more than "bug" us. They want us to react excessively, because that's far better propaganda for their agenda than any propaganda they could ever put out on their own.
Mary, concluding, says that I am implying that"We should just ignore them and they’ll go away."
See? Here we have that extremist either-or reasoning again. Just because I say that you shouldn't allow yourself to be manipulated by terrorists, by emotionally reacting in the way they want you to react, I therefore must be saying that the single (and preferable) alternative is to do nothing.
Thank you for your comments, Mary. You've provided a showcase for the mind-clouding that terror causes - your are equating military sneak attacks, genocide, and terror, as if they were all the same sort of political act, with the same political intent. They are not. If terrorism is making many Americans think this fuzzily, the terrorists are indeed winning.
Posted by: Michael Turner at May 14, 2004 10:23 PMMary, putting words in my mouth: "Turner seems to believe that with enough moral outrage, any person would be willing to do anything".
Why don't you quote me directly?
"Armed with enough moral superiority, any of us could do anything - including hack off the head of an innocent captive."
A better way to say it: "armed with enough moral superiority, ordinary people will presume guilt in almost anyone who has been pointed out to them as being 'one of the enemy'."
"I can personally say that I would not hack off the head of an innocent captive under any circumstances."
Even if you'd been brainwashed into thinking that anyone coming from a culture that you'd been told was made up of genocidal maniacs at the top was similarly morally tainted?
Really?
I'm so glad to meet Superwoman, finally.
"A large percentage of people could say the same thing."
Of course they would. They should know better - they should be taught better - but they don't and they aren't.
"Human nature is not always good, but if it were as horrific and corruptible as Turner believes, we would not have survived to this point."
If that were all there is to human nature, you'd be right. But since there's more to us than that,
you're wrong. Having a certain capacity for evil doesn't inherently impost limits on your capacity for good. It's not zero-sum, and one doesn't cancel the other. They co-exist - mostly latently, in the case of evil, and almost routinely on display, in the case of good.
"Yes, we felt moral outrage towards the Japanese. And we defeated a nation that was motivated by an exterminationist policy."
Excuse me, but your terrorism-clouded brain is talking again. Japan did not have an "exterminationist policy." What it had was moral superiority, a sense of cultural superiority, and lousy troop discipline. Japan could not afford to have "an exterminationist policy." It was trying to build an empire, and you can't do that by killing everybody.
"Was our moral outrage justified? We can ask ourselves that question, or we could ask the older residents of Nanking, Korea and Malaysia. They could probably give us a more balanced view."
The very fact that they can speak at all should tell you something: they weren't exterminated. I've spoken with older Koreans, in Korea, and in Japanese, a language that older people there were forced to use in school when they were growing up. Japan tried to exterminate their culture. But it wasn't trying to exterminate them. The Japanese thought they were improving Koreans, and that Koreans weren't as grateful as they should have been.
Okay, so how's the fuzzy-thinking quotient looking here. Mary has equated terrorism with military sneak attacks and with genocide, both very different things. Now, it seems that almost anybody who ever did anything hateful have all committed acts of the same moral magnitude. If, however, Americans do the same thing against them, well, that's only fair.
This is what terrorism does to people. It makes them think like that.
Posted by: Michael Turner at May 14, 2004 10:52 PMMichael Turner
The public always reacts emotionally, everywhere. That's nothing new.
But are you sure that the military is reacting emotionally, rather than strategically, in Fallujah and Najaf? I refer you to the continuing posts of Wretchard at the Belmont Club. Perhaps he is largely mistaken. It seems to me that he allows for this possibility.
And one should not leave out of the equation an intelligent and sophisticated sense of self-preservation on the part of a great many Iraqis who are invisible to us at this point. We may not have the eyes to see them yet.
Posted by: miklos rosza at May 14, 2004 10:54 PMJoe Marino writes: "Bob is right. Young men do not charge into a hail of bullets, watch their buddies arms and legs get blown off, and crawl through blood soaked dirt contemplating the clap trap proffered by Michael Turner. I know, because I’ve led men into such circumstances. They are convinced that the people on the top of the hill they have been ordered to take are godless heathens who are planning to rape their wives and kill their children. Yes Michael Turner, we know, our enemies are convinced of this too – give it a rest you complete fucking bore."
How very interesting. So the Viet Cong were planning to come over to America and rape their erstwhile opponents' wives and rape their children? Could you point me to some Army training materials at the time that outlined exactly how they planned to do this, in a way that a 19-year-old would believe?
Posted by: Michael Turner (AKA Complete Fucking Bore) at May 14, 2004 11:11 PMMiklos Rosza writes: "The public always reacts emotionally, everywhere. That's nothing new."
True enough. Most people form their opinions out of their gut reactions, to whatever information at hand at the time, then rationalize after the fact.
"But are you sure that the military is reacting emotionally, rather than strategically, in Fallujah and Najaf?"
Not only am I not sure of that, I don't believe it in the first place. Yes, individual soldiers may be reacting individually in emotional ways - that's inevitable. We're talking about combat, combat stress, culture shock, and finally, most important, grief over fallen comrades. But the way in which the U.S. military as a whole is prosecuting the war in the major conflict areas might be a model of rationality as far as I know. They may be doing the best they can, with the marching orders they have.
"I refer you to the continuing posts of Wretchard at the Belmont Club. Perhaps he is largely mistaken. It seems to me that he allows for this possibility."
It will take many different views on the scene, a mosaic of perspectives, to put together a picture from which reasonable conclusions can be drawn. Personally, I like the view from eye-level, on the ground. One blog I'm reading a lot these days is the truly amazing dispatches to be found here:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/ginmar/
It's interesting to read her reaction to the re-release of the infamous battle scene where a helicopter gunship chops a severely wounded rebel into hamburger. She says, in effect, of course: this is war - come and serve in Iraq, and you'll understand. I happen to think this particular action was probably wrong, in some technical legal international rules-of-war sense of "wrong," but I also think it was understandable.
On the other hand, read her on the subject of the Abu Ghraib fiasco. She's deeply perturbed - and precisely because she doesn't see that much difference between herself and Lyndie England, more of a difference of circumstances. This too is very level-headed and rational.
In any case, it's not so much about the behavior of the troops, but about where the legitimacy of the decisions resides: ultimately, with the American people. The framers of the Constitution were very clear on the point that the people themselves can be corrupted. The U.S. military's commander in chief is the President. The President is elected by the people. If the people of the U.S. allow themselves a President who pushes the U.S. down the slope of becoming an imperial power, and because of an emotional reaction to terror ... well, in a democracy, we get the government we deserve, but that doesn't mean that other countries deserve what they get as a result, especially considering they weren't part of our democracy in the first place.
"And one should not leave out of the equation an intelligent and sophisticated sense of self-preservation on the part of a great many Iraqis who are invisible to us at this point. We may not have the eyes to see them yet."
Read the above blog. Some very interesting eyes there.
For example, she points out that Iraq is a very well-armed country, and that when you encounter an Iraqi on the street with an AK-47, you leave them unmolested if they keep the muzzle down.
Iraq is indeed very well armed. There's a weird kind of "consent of the governed" implied in that. With an average of one gun per household, Iraqi's, if unified to kick us out, could have kicked us out in any two week period over the last year. But they haven't. They don't like us. Many of them hate us. But the vast majority of Iraqis may be choosing quite rationally in all this. This is the invisible Iraq. Or one view onto it, anyway.
I also don't dispute that the best solutions to this whole mess may come out of the creativity of the armed forces in the U.S., combined with the realism of those among them who have been on the ground. They are politically well-positioned to make their case to the American people, by virtue of the great respect they command among the majority of Americans. But they are not incorruptible themselves.
The most important things are information, and keeping your head cool. Outrageous things will happen. When they do, indulge in that outrage - I know I do. It's only human. But there comes a time to take deep breaths and start thinking again, searching for the information, asking the questions. To do otherwise is to play into the hands of the terrorists.
Posted by: Michael Turner at May 14, 2004 11:41 PMThanks. I'll check out the recommended blog.
Posted by: miklos rosza at May 15, 2004 12:19 AMLet me make a point about how a feeling of inherent moral superiority can become dangerous. I'm going to make this point by discussing my experience of being in a city that endured a deadly terrorist attack. The incident was Aum Shinrikyo's nerve-gassing of the Tokyo subway system.
I was here when that happened. It was months before I could make myself descend into the subway system again.
The Japanese usually style themselves a peaceful people. And they will tell you that there is very little crime in their country. Both are half-truths.
In fact, Japan is a society that happens to have opted out foreign military adventures for geopolitical reasons more than moral ones. They survived - even thrived from - the Cold War under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Their polity is still very much that of an economic and military satellite of the U.S.
"No crime here?" Heh. Organized crime in this country is as strong as you'll find anywhere, including in certain mob-controlled neighborhoods in New Jersey where there is relatively little street crime by American standards.
The Japanese had hoodwinked themselves into thinking they were a better people. They hadn't seen much around them to contradict that in a while. But even a complacent sense of superiority can turn deadly.
When Aum Shinrikyo attacked, with the goal of destabilizing the Japanese government, the Japanese asked themselves: How could we have done this? How could people with PhD's in chemistry from our top schools fall into a cult, and brew sarin to be used against other Japanese?
The discomfiting answer comes in looking at the fact that the sarin attack had a precedent: a nerve gas attack in Matsumoto. There was exactly one arrest made in response the Matsumoto attack, and the man arrested was someone whose wife had ended up disabled from sarin poisoning in that very same attack. The evidence was flimsy and entirely circumstantial, but he was in jail for a long time.
The police decided to view the Matsumoto attack as the result of an individual aberration, the only explanation they felt comfortable with. The more reasonable alternative explanation was unthinkable: that there was a Japanese organization that had organized the Matsumoto attack. The only kind of organization that the police here felt could descend to such a moral depth was one that was far too practical to try any such thing. It was an organization that had far too much too lose by doing such a thing. It was the Yakuza.
The police here have their understanding with the Yakuza, the understanding that police agencies have with certain crime organizations in countries all over the world, including the U.S.: keep violent crime under control, is their tacit message to the Yakuza, and you'll have a relatively free hand in your illegitimate, illegal businesses. Don't do anything to turn the people against the police. Don't make the people ask "What are you doing about this rape, that killing, that armed robbery in which one of us was wounded?"
No, it couldn't have been the Yakuza. That was too far out of character. And it couldn't have been any other Japanese organization - Japanese organizations just aren't like that, they felt, and could never become like that. (At least not since the virtual disappearance of armed leftist groups from Japan.) So it had to be some lone nut.
This failure of due diligence, stemming from a sense of cultural superiority (perhaps even racial superiority; the police are pretty right-wing here in Japan) was a serious obstacle to investigating Aum Shinrikyo for the Matsumoto attack. They didn't pursue certain leads, despite some evidence that had already surfaced that Aum Shinrikyo was a very dangerous cult indeed.
Japan left itself more exposed to indigenous terror by assuming that the Japanese were a better people, and that the rule of law needn't be taken quite so seriously because of that. Despite a general policy of not arresting anyone until they feel sure the suspect is guilty, the police chose to victimize an individual with vanishingly little evidence against him, confident that Japanese groupism - a seemingly reliable substitute for the rule of law here - could never have given rise to such a savage and inhumane attack. That it was a terrorist attack, with political motivations, seemed unthinkable. Why, that would assume a Japanese group that wanted to bring down the existing political order by terroristic violence, wouldn't it? But not even the leftists had ever stooped to anything as low as gassing randomly chosen civilian targets, and they were long gone.
One thing they left out of their calculations was The Bubble. Japan's economy had grown rapidly, and almost continuously, since WW II. It peaked in a frenzy of speculation - a continuous party, according to some. What they didn't bargain on was that some Japanese would react to economic disappointment the way people in most societies do, including in liberal democracies do: by seeking out mass movements to give meaning to lives in which empty consumerism and hope for more consumption in the future had departed, leaving only a spiritual vacuum. It matters little what educational level has been attained - if anything, being well educated - but not rewarded for it as others like yourself had been rewarded in the past can only sharpen the disappointment, send you seeking that much harder for validation, for acceptance, for some wisdom you feel is above that of others who have only financial success.
Eric Hoffer outlined this dynamic very cogently in an essay called "The True Believer." Mass movements arise less from poverty than from disappointment in unrealistic hopes. Combine that with a weak sense of the rule of law and terror is a likely consequence.
America is in a post-Bubble period. Hopes have been dashed. The sense of the rule of law has been weakened by a terror attack. We have had not a few troubling lapses of the rule of law within our borders, and outside those borders, for which counterterror has been given as a justification. And we have a very disturbing jurisdictional black hole: Guantanamo.
The disappointed can turn vindictive, the vindictive can attack with a sense of fairness that is not fair at all except in the Old Testament eye-for-an-eye sense, and injustice can escalate, blow by counterblow. In a way, the Japanese were lucky to be attacked by themselves - it forced them to question themselves, to take a more realistic view of what it meant to be Japanese. America now has t