Enough

Thursday, May 13, 2004

I lost sleep last night after watching the Berg video. Now I'm going to lose sleep over the right-wing reaction. Look at this excerpt from Real Clear Politics:

THE EXECUTION OF NICK BERG: I just forced myself to watch the video of Nick Berg's beheading, which you can find here. Mort Kondracke's comments on FOX News last night are the best summation I've heard:

"Look at those monsters standing there five of them and they cut the guy's head off, they sawed his head off, shouting God is great. Now that is what we are dealing with, that is the kind of people who will run the world if we do not win this war on terrorism. And it is being fought in Iraq and we have got to win and that is it. Full stop. There is just no losing this thing or else the world will be run by monsters."

This certainly puts into context the issue of abuse of prisoners and who the good guys and the bad guys are.

The five men in this video who cruelly sawed off Nick Berg's head while he was alive are exactly like the 19 who flew those planes on 9/11. Kondrake is right, Iraq is now a central battle in the War on Terror and we have no choice but to win this war or the world will be tormented by these monsters.

Yes, the men who did this to Nick Berg are monsters. No question about it. They are the lowest of the low, as despicable as they come. The whole thing is chilling and appalling, and I hope those bastards get what's coming to them.

But:

1. This doesn't do a DAMNED THING to put the prisoner abuse in context. The bar is not so fucking low that we can say "The prisoner abuse is no big deal because we didn't behead anyone." Besides that, the people in this video are not the same people who are in the Iraqi prisons. The implied connection between them is equivocation at best, racism at worst. The Red Cross has estimated that 70-90% of those jailed Iraqis are innocent of anything, but even if they are 100% guilty of something, they're 0% guilty of the beheading of Nick Berg. The existence of monsters does not and cannot justify the torture of those who live in the same region as monsters.

2. Yes, the five beasts in the video are like the 19 hijackers. But how does that mean that Iraq is now the central battle on terror? What kind of logical leap is that? If we win in Iraq, will Al Qaeda go away? Will violent, hateful Islamic extremism diminish? And, if so, will it diminish below the levels that it was at pre-Iraq invasion, or just to the levels it was at before we decided to piss off the world? Does Real Clear Politics believe that these animals did this to Nick Berg in defense of Iraq?

The Nick Berg incident is incredibly tragic, and it absolutely should serve as a reminder to those of us on the left that the perpetrators of this and 9/11 are not going to be won over by soft measures, that some military action, some hard power, is absolutely necessary.

But this MSNBC Headline:

"Arab media muted in coverage of beheading

Many papers play down story, others ignore it"

demonstrates--again--that we can't just look at the horror of Nick Berg and say "Fuck those people, who cares if we tortured some of 'them', let's kick some ass. They're animals anyway." There is a perception gap here that cannot be won over by the military. The war on terror has two fronts. Failure on the non-military front means failure overall, because if we're perceived as the evil empire, we can't stop the proliferation of despicable acts.

I'm repeating things I've said before, but this is what apologists like Inhofe and Real Clear Politics either genuinely or willfully do not understand about the torture in Iraq. Even if--and that's a big if--one is willing to concede that the torture isn't a big deal when considering the prisoners themselves, the broader impact is massive. And I haven't seen any Republican commentators even attempt to deny this or come to grips with it. If we were winning the war on terror before Abu Ghraib, and we probably weren't, we're sure as shit losing it now.

Let's get the bastards that did this to Nick Berg. Let's also try not to make more Islamists who believe that it was justified.

10:15:57 AM

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