|
From a Middle Eastern perspective the US never had any morale high ground. Too many decades of anti-americanism is hard to break down, particularly with the dominance of religion in all aspects of Middle Eastern society. The Americans can recover from this, maybe not in the eyes of all involved, but if they punish the perpetrators severly enough then they regain a degree of credibility. A good piece by Tacitus on this situation- Subjects and objects
By tacitus, Other posts by Tacitus
Posted on Sun May 2nd, 2004 at 11:57:03 AM EST
Henley chides Drezner for pointing out the hypocrisy in Arab popular reaction to the brutalizations at Abu Ghraib. But given that Drezner clearly doesn't approve of or excuse those crimes, Henley misses the point. There is no moral reason to limit one's response to these crimes of war -- for such they are -- to expressions of contrition and disgust. This is, in fact, a rather revealing moment in popular psychology. Let's be honest and declare that what happened at Abu Ghraib, while awful, was a mere fraction of the horrors that go on in Saudi, Egyptian, Syrian, and yes, old Iraqi prisons. Incarceration in the Arab world in general is a bad proposition for the prisoner: torture, rape, and murder of the accused (to say nothing of the convicted) are de rigeur more often than not. The recent experience of Britons and African Christians tortured while in Saudi custody, and the historical experiences of Israeli POWs in Arab hands suffering mass rape by their captors, only scratch the surface of penal practice in the region. Hence extraordinary renditions. This is, if not liked, then accepted by the masses. The general Arab outrage over Abu Ghraib is in this sense qualitatively different from ours. We are repelled by the barbarity of our soldiers' actions because we see these things as wrongs in themselves: universally repugnant and immoral. The "Arab street," such as it is, is no doubt angered by the acts per se on some level (no one is, after all, wholly immune to the tug of humanity), but there is also the added element -- which, I strongly suspect, is the overriding element -- that this is a case of an outsider (infidel, non-Arab) inflicting humiliation on their own. Thus we see a Leninist morality emerge: right and wrong not as things in themselves, but as functions of who does what to whom. It is a phenomenon to be acknowledged, inasmuch as it tells us a great deal about the war and our enemies -- but it is not a phenomenon to be respected.
| 
