Posted on 05/18/2004 5:33:55 PM PDT by quidnunc
One thing I noticed in Iraq was the missing body parts. Not immediately. I spend most of my time in the Great North Woods of New Hampshire and Quebec and, when you're in old mill towns, it's not unusual to find yourself sitting at a lunch counter with three codgers who can barely muster 10 fingers between them.
So at first I didn't pay much attention to the missing digits and missing limbs. It was the third missing ear I saw — in Ramadi — that made me realize what was really going on. An ear's a hard thing to lose. So's a tongue.
That's why I cannot share the "outrage" over Abu Ghraib of some of the more excitable correspondents ("The Shaming of America: George Bush's boast of shutting down Saddam Hussein's torture chambers in Iraq rings hollow now," according to my chums at The Irish Times). More to the point, nor do most Iraqis. Representatives of the Shi'ites and Kurds, who between them account for four-fifths of the population, have said nary a word. Ayatollah Sistani, the most prominent figure in the land and a man who can cause the coalition serious trouble any time he wishes, has let the matter lie.
And, as I endeavored to explain last week, most Americans don't share the "outrage." A week later, they share it even less. As Senator Zell Miller, a Democrat, put it: "Why is it that there's more indignation over a photo of a prisoner with underwear on his head than over the video of a young American with no head at all?"
That wouldn't, in normal circumstances, be a valid comparison. If you go to the hospital in Dublin or Rotterdam and they botch the operation, it's no consolation to be told that it's better treatment than you'd have got in the Sudan. You want your health care to be measured against London, Geneva, Vancouver — not Chad and Rwanda. But for Iraqis, this is the only comparison that matters — pre-April 2003 vs post-April 2003.
The best rule of politics is this: Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at jpost.com ...
Are the media good? After these last two weeks, I think I'll pass on that one.
I'll answer that one for you. No, the media is not good. The media has failed.
Probably too long to be made into a new tagline, unfortunately. Oh wait! A little editing and shazzam! Thanks, Zell.
Actually, Human Rights Watch is currently focusing mostly on the US at this time. However, if you go to their site you can find broad criticism against Middle East regimes, China, and North Korea. Also they are covering the genocide in Sudan. Here's their UN section:
http://www.hrw.org/doc/?t=united_nations
I hope this isn't some dark secret I'm not supposed to ask, but what's the deal with the posting of the Steyn columns? Invariably, quidnunc posts an excerpt, and someone else posts the full thing. People then thank the second poster for posting the whole thing. So, why isn't the full thing just posted the first time?
In my experience, there is no one so offended as a liar who is called a liar even when he's lying.
I am forced to pass this on and hope that it breaks through the wall of certain muddleheaded dunderheads.
It's a violation of a little thing called federal copyright law to do more thaqn excerpt copyrighted material.
Whnat the people who like Steyn's writing need to ask themselves is what will they do if the peoplke who took over the hollinger newspapers forbid any posting of their content like Gannett did.
Then there won't even be exceprts form Steyn's articles.
By the way, Gannett hasn't forbidden posting of it's content on Luciasnne.com, which is a conservative site too.
The difference is that L.com limits articles to a 75-word excerpt and a link.
Not even close. They are wholly devoted to the big lie. The details are true, but they only give you the details that lead you to the big lie and none that point out the untruth of the big lie. They are frauds almost to a man.
Okay, thanks. I was just curious and don't want to derail this thread, but now I understand the situation.
The difference is that L.com limits articles to a 75-word excerpt and a link.
Copyright law doesn't allow for such differences. That's just the way it is, baby.
I think a lot of us Christians have troubles accepting this argument. They think as Christians we must walk in the maximum degree of holiness we already know and which in turn implies if you make the slightest sin, it is still sin nonetheless and you are just as guilty as the worst sinner in the world.
This comes up with another interesting contention. Do we need to accept the premise of moral relativism in our case. To put in an analogy, suppose student A is a A+ student and he consistently gets 97% in tests. Now he gets only 85%. And student B is only able to achieve 30% in the test and he gets exactly 30% in that test. So B could actually blast A for his shortcomings and he is "worse" than B himself even though A still gets more than twice his testscores. Is this a valid basis for having relativism around us?
Yes, but the problem is many American media neglect them because on essence they can't be used as ammunitions against domestic politicians they don't them (and you don't need to be an einstein to figure out who they hate :)).
Besides, these human rights organisation believe as if domestic nationalism over-rules general abuse on their report scale. So for instance a native dictatorship and a colonial regime commit the same abuses, the native dictatorship may get a B- and the colonial regime could end up with a D+. This is another example of relativism that I don't buy into.
bttt
Ping to the Steyn List, and to your list.
The 2002 Save the Children report on the UN's cover-up of the sex-for-food scandal in West Africa provides grim details of peacekeepers' demanding sexual favors from children as young as four in exchange for biscuits and cake powder.
What do we want? Out of the U.N. When do we want it? NOW!!!!
Ping
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.