Victor Davis Hanson: Abu Ghraib

Selma, Calif. – Pictures of American military police humiliating and, in some cases, allegedly torturing Iraqi prisoners in Saddam's old Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad now flash across the world. "The Shame!," Egyptian papers blare out at the sight of a pyramid of contorted naked males amid a smiling female GI. Various human-rights organizations in the Arab World, we are told, are about to condemn formally such barbarism.

Good. These seemingly inhuman acts are indeed serious stuff. They also raise a host of dilemmas for the U.S. — from the pragmatic to the idealistic. We must insist on a higher standard of human behavior than embraced by either Saddam Hussein or his various fascist and Islamicist successors. As emissaries of human rights, how can we allow a few miscreants to treat detainees indecently — without earning the wages of hypocrisy from both professed allies and enemies who enjoy our embarrassment? In defense, it won't do for us just to point to our enemies and shrug, "They do it all the time."

The guards' alleged crimes are not only repugnant but stupid as well. At a time when it is critical to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, a few renegade corrections officers have endangered the lives of thousands of their fellow soldiers in the field. Marines around Fallujah take enormous risks precisely because they do not employ the tactics of the fedayeen, who fire from minarets and use civilians as human shields.

Yet without minimizing the seriousness of these apparent transgressions, we need to take a breath, get a grip, and put the sordid incident in some perspective beyond its initial 24-hour news cycle.

As we all know, it wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the unholy alliance between western leftists and Muslim fanatics.

Marx and Lenin argued that the Communists should never ally themselves with moderate progressives in the West. Instead they should support the reactionaries, because that would help make destructive economic trends and class warfare worse, and bring on the revolution sooner.

We seem to have the same principle at work today. Why would leftists and feminists support these murderous wifebeaters? Why would those who hate religion support these murderous fundamentalists? Because they want to destroy our civilization and foolishly believe that Utopia will emerge from the ashes. If they succeeded, of course, what would emerge from the ashes would be universal Muslim domination. They really should consider if that's what they want to see happen.

Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War

Article 38

While respecting the individual preferences of every prisoner, the Detaining Power shall encourage the practice of intellectual, educational, and recreational pursuits, sports and games amongst prisoners, and shall take the measures necessary to ensure the exercise thereof by providing them with adequate premises and necessary equipment.

Prisoners shall have opportunities for taking physical exercise, including sports and games, and for being out of doors. Sufficient open spaces shall be provided for this purpose in all camps.

Since we garner no credit for observing Marquis of Queesbury rules why not declare a new doctrine of terrorism, when terrorists are captured out of uniform or otherwise in violation of the Geneva convention, they are liable to torture and death. To deal with them otherwise in unconventional or asymetrical warfare waged with WMDs puts the reticent power at a dangerous disadvantage. I have no doubt we will arrive at this place if the terrorists succeed in their aim of blowing up one of our cities or sickenig tens of thousands of Americans. Consider what the French would do in our place once they found that surrender availed them nothing.

The law of deminishing returns for fair dealing with the Arab world has already rendered us terminally hated, let us be respected or at least feared.

Well written and fairly balanced view of the events.

The men who apparently committed these abuses will be dealt with, they will almost certainly do time, and they need to. Their actions endanger the whole project, and they endanger the lives of soldiers who must go out into the street to confront not only avowed enemies but a public that is deciding whether or not to trust us. Each family that comes down on the side of "distrust" is another family providing cannon fodder to the enemy. Soldiers and Iraqis are going to die because a few guards decided to have a little fun and were stupid enough to photograph it.

The moral underpinnings of this project are of life and death importance; men will risk themselves if they believe in the moral purpose of what they do. Undercut that, even for the temporary advantage of gaining a little information, and you do irrecoverable damage. If the guys lose faith in the moral basis of the fight they will not risk themselves, they will find any of a thousand ways to avoid contact to get home safely, instead of boldly confronting their enemy.

We lost Viet Nam having won it on the battlefield, because the war's enemies succeeded in convincing the public, and to some extent the soldiers, that it was morally flawed. The stories of atrocities committed by soldiers were a key part of undermining the will to go on. While ugly things happen in every war, and are usually dealt with quietly, we were told that Americans were committing mass murder, and once this image of the war took hold, Americans couldn't wait to get their kids out of there. Soldiers came home to find themselves vilified as baby killers, and at that point the war was lost. It woudn't be lost officially for a few more years, but once the moral underpinnings of the war were cut, once people no longer understood and supported what the soldiers were purportedly doing, it was over.

This is something people need to think about even now. Every soldier who came home from Southeast Asia to be spat upon as a baby killer needs to consider, where did those stories come from? And the answer is two-fold; they came from media focus on a few events that sadly happen in any war, and they came from the efforts of a few anti-war activists to make it appear as if those events were universal. Who claimed that Americans universally committed atrocities in Viet Nam?

John Kerry did. No one knew who he was at the time, people just saw some well-spoken soldier come before Congress to tell the world his story, and his story changed the world's view of the war, and of America's soldiers. Anyone who wonders why American soldiers were spat upon needs to remember that the stories came from John Kerry, and the effects of his stories was the eventual collapse of America's will to fight.

We have to control two things if we don't want to see the Iraq War end in a rout. We have to control the reality, which we do; America's soldiers are the most disciplined in the world, and the most disciplined ever even compared to Americans from other wars. The men who committed these abuses will do time and pray that their own guards aren't men like them. And they won't be.

And we have to control the image. If we don't get our story out there the enemy will have the airwaves to themselves and they will win the war for people's minds. And again we will lose.

Why would leftists and feminists support these murderous wifebeaters? Why would those who hate religion support these murderous fundamentalists? Because they want to destroy our civilization and foolishly believe that Utopia will emerge from the ashes. If they succeeded, of course, what would emerge from the ashes would be universal Muslim domination.

I agree with you with one caveat. The movers and shakers of the left have co-opted these Islamic fanatics (as well as the starry-eyed useful idiots) as "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." However, their intent is to brutally put down any opposition once the battle with the west is over. They won't play by the Geneva Convention, as they insist we do, or any other rules. They will slaughter.

That is their intent. We know human nature's yearning for freedom will eventually win out but they haven't accepted that. They want power for themselves, pure and simple, and will use anyone and any method to get it.

Yet, as the USSR's experience in Afghanistan and Chechnya have shown they may be playing with a hotter fire than intended this time.

Since we garner no credit for observing Marquis of Queesbury rules why not declare a new doctrine of terrorism, when terrorists are captured out of uniform or otherwise in violation of the Geneva convention, they are liable to torture and death. To deal with them otherwise in unconventional or asymetrical warfare waged with WMDs puts the reticent power at a dangerous disadvantage. I have no doubt we will arrive at this place if the terrorists succeed in their aim of blowing up one of our cities or sickenig tens of thousands of Americans. Consider what the French would do in our place once they found that surrender availed them nothing.

The law of deminishing returns of fair deasling with the Arab world has already rendered us terminally hated, let us be respected or at least feared.

If they succeeded, of course, what would emerge from the ashes would be universal Muslim domination.

Neither the leftists nor Islamics will ever succeed. The reason for such optimism? Just as VDH states: a 2,500 year history of Western Civ ie the supremacy of the individual. Whenever these ideals are truly threatened, such as Vienna in 1529 or the BoB in 1940, freemen will always defeat conscripts.

In fact, it might not be such a bad idea if we did lose in Iraq. Look at the what happened after Viet Nam: 5 years of Soviet ascendancy, followed by the election of RR, and the fall of the USSR 9 years later.

If the country elected JFK and we had a setback in the WOT, think what would follow after a few years when citizens really got motivated to eliminate the threat once and for all.

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