Showing pictures of POW's: the US hypocrisy

Great Debates
61

"My Arab sources in Cairo and Amman reported that people were gloomy (after the capture of Saddam) because Saddam had betrayed their belief that he was a hero who could stand up to America.
“He was not that hero,” said Jordanian commentator Adnan Abu Odeh, “so many Arabs are disillusioned. The way he was arrested, the way he looked, the examination of his mouth. It was so humiliating and so revealing. He looked like a homeless man on the streets of New York”

From Trudy Rubin’s latest column.

So the anger in the OP is doubtfully due to any American “hypocrisy”, but to the downfall of someone seen as presenting a heroic challenge to the U.S., his mass murderous behavior not withstanding.

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From the outset, the stated plan was to remove Iraq’s current government and return the country to the control of its people. They were saying that even before the invasion began. Why do you say this wasn’t the USA’s original idea?

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It’s all a cospiracy! I knew it!

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He was probably sitting and the doctor standing. To see into the guys mouth, you need to be above it.

I’m curious, why was it fun?

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I was not defending the poster against a rather incoherent attack, I was making a point that your response not only was out of place in this forum but also wouldn’t shine too favourably on fellow Americans if one took it as an average reaction.

It often is such, but funny that your response dwelled on the hypocrisy (?) of the “Muslim world” sending suicide bombers to support evil dictators, that Aldebaran has no right to speak because there’s no Sunni/Shia problems in Belgium (??), the obligatory cheap joke about France, the blatant suggestion that this war was about saving Muslims, etc. That’s all just as silly as the things Aldebaran goes off about when the incendiary bug has a hold of him.

In this particular media case, to move on slightly, Aldebaran does have somewhat of a point. As others have said, it is probably not a very tragic flaunt of the Geneva Convention, but, again, why would it be necessary to release those particular shots of Saddam?

Trudy Rubin’s article quoted above summarizes the feeling of many Arabs; the strangely heroic status Saddam attained among many people is well documented, and this ensuing disappointment was fairly predictable (indeed, it was merely a repeat of the let-down some people experienced when Baghdad fell and Saddam was forced into hiding without mounting meaningful opposition). Thinking that those specific haggard and disoriented shots of Saddam (out of all the footage they no doubt took) were chosen for release purposefully is hardly outlandish – after all, those video segments do send the message that the former thorn in the side is now thoroughly vanquished, debased, humiliated, and captive. This could well be a petty propaganda move or it could not, but it’s certainly clumsy any way you analyze it.

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Because I am not as highly developed as some people and can sometimes take pleasure in the misfortunes and degradation of others, at least when the others are murderous despots. My pastor thinks it’s one of my less becoming traits. (shrugging) What’ya gonna do?

Saddam should be glad that the Americans got him before the Assyrians, the Kurds, or the Shi’ites. Having your scalp checked for lice on international TV is only embarassing.

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I think one problem that we folks who have tangled with Aldebaran before, Abe, is his refusal to let us know which country he’s living in, the country “his father is from”. There’s a big big difference between different Middle Eastern countries and therefore the debate gets tricky because we don’t know what sort of media he’s getting fed–whether it’s a steady diet of state propoganda or an unfettered free-for-all like we get or something in the middle. He does seem to be from one of those wealthy families that lets their boys major in “Islamic studies” in lieu of getting a traditional job, but at the same time his access to sites like the BBC doesn’t seem to indicate Saudi Arabia. Attempts to ask him have proved fruitless. I still maintain that if you’re going to post in and especially start political threads it’s only polite to let us know at least which country you’re in. Oh well. We mention Belgium because (assuming he’s telling the truth) his mother is from there and he seems to have spent some time there. If he mentioned the country he’s living in now, we’d ask questions about that.

As for the video–frankly, I think some parts of the Arab world NEED those sort of shocks. The Emperor has no clothes and he’s a damn coward. That’s the first step to take on the road to escaping the mindsets that are stopping them from reaching their full potential.

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as near as I can figure, there was a hubub during the start of the war because showing prisoners of war(in the G.C. sense of the term) as propaganda tools apparenly violates the geneva convention(this is just what i have heard).

the difference: Saddam Hussien is not a Prisoner of War(atleast not as far as the internationally accepted legal definition of the term is concerned) rather, he is rather a man who has been arrested for allegedly(I only use this word because I cannot shake my conviction that all in all matters of law a suspect should be “innocent until proven guilty”) committing crimes of war.

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For those who don’t read posted posts before writing that the Iraqis “needed pictures to be sure it wasd him”, let me quote myself from a post on this very thread.

For those who’s hobby it is to post “US hater” and “Sadam lover” and other nonsense:
I made a topic here with an OP that would have disappointed you that much that I don’t even have the heart to post the link to it, in order to spare you the misery and the embarrasment that you would have to write lists of apologies if you had any decency left.
I don’t even say where it is placed. You can eventually ask the moderator where you can find it.

For those who post that those pictures where shown to “discourage” those who find Hussein a hero…
I listened to some statements made by some US’ers who supposedly have “knowledge of the region”.
I’m still laughing.
Claiming that Sadam supporters will be “discouraged” and even claiming that people will “demystify” every other leader in the ME is such an unbelievable idiocy for someone claiming to “know Arabs and the ME” that I once again ask myself what kind of education US’ers get in order to become “specialists of the ME”.

If that is the aim of this circus, the more I laugh with the idiocy of the US government being “informed” on the “Arabs and the ME” by such delusionalists.

They couldn’t have done much worse to inflame the anti-US feelings, sorry.
For many Arabs a beard is a sign of dignity and for many Muslims it is in adition a sign of following the Prophet.
Seeing someone they take for a hero being treated like that by the enemy and in addition seeing that this enemy shaved him…
mmmmmm… I wouldn’t like to be in the place of the US’er who got into the hands of these completely enraged people wachting that spectacle on World TV.

So if you mind your delusional colonising criminal government, maybe you could inform them that their “trick” wasn’t exactly coming from the right trickbox and landed very badly on the target audience.
Salaam. A

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Let’s see, the OP was highly exercised over Saddam’s “humiliation” by his American captors. An outrage to personal dignity and all.
That being the case, Aldebaran, could you point me to the thread(s) in which you have expressed outrage over the killing and mutilation of the bodies of U.S. soldiers in Mosul? I’m sure that killing and mutilation must be even worse in your eyes than shaving Saddam’s beard. Surely you agree that whether Arabs or non-Arabs are involved, killing and abusing corpses is arguably the ultimate affront to human dignity.

mmmmmm…A certain tone of relish is evident in these words.

But such hypocrisy is not laughable. It’s very sad.

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  1. I suggest that from this point forward that the OP stop trying to present himself as a spokesman for the entire muslim world. This may or may not be the case, but since the OP is in most cases the only self-professed muslim to post to his threads, his opinions are too small a sample for readeres to make any informed judgement about what may or may not be the opinions of muslims in general.

  2. I further suggest that instead of constantly hijacking his own threads and wasting bandwidth to bemoan his supposed mistreatment by the members of this board, that the OP simply reject points that he feels are unfairly made and focus on answering questions or points raised in good faith by other posters.

  3. I strongly urge the OP to try to make an effort to limit his editorializing: constantly referring to respondents as “delusional” and “in need of professional help”, and to state that those who disagree with him may be subject to physical violence, as the OP has done in several threads including this one, tends to display the OP as an irrational person and undermines the points he makes, rather than supporting them.

Now, on to a couple of points raised by the OP in his last post:

I missed where anyone in this thread, except yourself, claims to have special knowledge of the region. In fact, what several respondents have said, myself included, is that discouragement of supporters may have been what the military intended in selecting the footage they did, but that we recognize that they did so from ignorance of how some may interpret the images. In other words, we agree with you. So why the continued hostility?

Until the images of his capture, I’ve never seen a photo showing Saddam with a beard, and, given his known history, I find it difficult to believe that he grew one in recent months simply to show his respect to the Prophet. Thus I question the accuracy of your statement concerning what other muslims may think of this, particularly because you seem to be suggesting that your fellow muslims are at least as gullible as, in your view, Americans are.

Perhaps you could as well. If you’d like, I’d be happy to provide a few links to US government contacts where you could express your opinion in your usual, inimitable fashion.

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Showing Saddam as a desheveled man being medically examined is hypocritical, but necessary…we knew he was hiding for months, he was not in his mansions, known bunkers, etc., so wouldn’t we expect him to look this way (unclean, unshaven, living in poverty conditions) because the army looked just about everywhere else for him and didn’t find him? Don’t you think the Iraqi people would think the same way and expect to see him this way when he was captured? What if we cleaned him up, shaved him, and then showed the world for the first time that he was captured…do you think for a second that the Iraqi people would believe that was actually him? Yeah, showing it over and over is getting ridiculous for everybody, but the image seen the first time was very valuable to the Iraqi people as well as the coalition forces.

BTW, if someone captured George Bush, I would have expected to see him on TV with the captors to prove that he was in their hands, and I’m sure that Dubya would prefer the oral exam and hair preening instead of the treatment that some of our GI’s were given. And of course I would expect that Dubya would also be shown on TV in a humiliating situation again, and again and AGAIN…JMHO…(there would be some people here that would just love that too…)

I really think the humiliation with Saddam is that he wasn’t true to his word and gave up without a “Blaze of Glory”, regardless of the prone position in the hole. He went in their to avoid and hide from conflict and chose not to engage forces to initiate his “Blaze of Glory”…THAT is humiliation, and that is probably the OP’s actual view (although as shrouded as it may be) of humiliation.

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My last paragraph…“their” = “there”

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Honest question here for you, Alebaran: I think we can generally agree that many Iraqis did not believe the American military when it was announced that they had killed Saddam’s sons. Thus we had that morbid bit of showing their corpses on TV.

As someone who is much more familiar with Muslim sensibilities than I, could you suggest a way in which the US military could have delivered some proof to the Iraqi people that they indeed captured Saddam, without showing Saddam in a dishevelled state (as was your concern), or providing such vague evidence that people would not believe the US military (as apparently was many Iraqis’ concern with Uday and Qusay)?

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What do the people who responded to this thread think reaction would be of the Iraqi’s if pictures were not posted?

IMO, there would be an outcry for visual proof of his capture. That would be followed by a desire for a description of the events.

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Remember before the invasion of Iraq, President Bush said many times that Saddam “must disarm”. I can remember hearing him say this many times. Bush did not say, prior to the commencement of the war, that Saddam should step down or be captured and executed. All he had to do was disarm. And if Iraq had held WMDs at the time, maybe he would’ve.

Jackmannii, you have called on Aldebaran to refer you to the thread in which he has posted his objection to the alleged killing and mutilation of US soldiers in Mosul. Can you please explain how his entitlement to point out the hypocricsy inherent in the US’s obvious double standard over the public humiliation of POWs hinges on his voicing his outrage over these killings/mutilations? Why do you assume he is not outraged by the killing and torture of US soldiers until he says otherwise? Your argument seems to be that as killing and torture are more humiliating than having an oral examination, it was OK for the US to show humiliating images of Saddam to the world - despite Rumsfeld’s claim that he would be treated as a POW and afforded all the Geneva Convention’s rights and entitlements as such.

The decision to display the footage of Saddam having an oral examination and having his hair checked was completely unnecessary and a disgrace. I can just hear the likes of Jackmannii vigorously defending George W being displayed to the world this way after capture by Saddam. I mean, the Americans would all want to see humiliating pictures of Bush following his capture so that they could be sure he’d actually been caught, right? Puh-leeeaze. Most American posters to this thread defending the display of the patently humiliating footage of Saddam need only reverse the fact situation to reveal the extent of their collective myopia. Credit goes to the few who have had the objectivity to make the concession that it was wrong.

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I had already thought through that scenario and posted it a few scant posts before you…and I would prefer Dubya getting the televised medical exam rather than cap in the forehead…

Doesn’t anyone read all the posts in the thread before they post?

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While I don’t think there was anything wrong with showing Saddam, I also think we have to face the fact that the more we carve out exceptions and special situations for ourselves, the less we can expect our outrage at similar behavior to be taken seriously as moral outrage. When the distinction rests on arcane technical and legal definitions, it’s hard to see how the distinction is particular relevant to whether something is wrong, as opposed to merely illegal, especially when we seem able to assign and withhold privaleged designations like P.O.W. at our convienience.

So, our excuse for showing Saddam in a dirty and humiliated state is that it’s really important for the Iraqi people, and to help us demoralize the insurgents. I definately buy that.
But how different is that from Iraqis fighting an overwhelming military force showing U.S. soldiers to their comrades to demonstrate that this force is not, in fact totally unstoppable? In both cases, the excuse is plausible and necessary for the particular cause that these people think is important.

So really, the conduct seems based less in whether the TACTIC is acceptable or not, and more in just who we think the good guys and good motives are. We think that Iraqis fighting us is not only bad for us, but also ultimately futile and bad for Iraq. And we were right. But that doesn’t mean the TACTIC was unjustifiable. We certainly seem to think that it can be justifiable when WE happen to think it’s really important (remember “by parading around the captured Iraqi soliders, we encourage others to surrender faster, thus saving their lives.”?)

I have the same problem with the definition of terrorism. It’s specially defined to avoid the “good guys” from ever having to own up to using it, so we can simply say that it is evil, end of story. But the fact is, terrorism is a tactic that’s sometimes been used by good people for worthy purposes, and sometimes by evil people for evil purposes. There is no doubt at all in my mind that Hiroshima was an act of terrorism no less than what the insurgents do when they try to demoralize and punish allied Iraqis and Americans working in Iraq.

Hiroshima was justified (or rather, may have been: I’m not sure it really was justified, but that’s another topic) because it was at least plausible that it would be successful in getting the required message across to the enemy in a way that would force their compliance. And it was to help the good guys win. The insurgent Iraqis, on the other hand, have little hope of accomplishing anything, and they are bad guys fighting for a bad cause.

Osama Bin Laden’s reasoning for 9/11 was not very different from Hiroshima, and in fact he explicitly pointed to Hiroshima as an example of why the TACTIC he was contemplating was acceptable. The logic is 1) fighting the enemy directly is too costly or futile, so 2) we send them a message, showing them the destruction they are going to get if they don’t listen to our demands.

Now I don’t want to get into a hijack on that point, and I want to make very clear that this is an ABSTRACT point that can be made with any number of cases and examples. My main point is simply that we have to be very conscious about whether what we are defending is REALLY a principle about tactic after all, or is rather just a principle about case by case justification. Obviously, the legal issues can cut all over the place, almost arbitrarily. But for most here, the legal issues seem to be a side point.

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Congrats! I’m happy for you to take the credit for this thought.

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From buns3000

Is it your assertion that Iraqis do NOT want to see such images of Saddam? Do you have anything except your own moral outrage to back that up with? Because my impression from what little news I’ve seen so far is just the opposite. Just a cursory search of google turns up plenty of cites saying just that the Iraqi’s aren’t TOO unhappy about SH capture nor the pictures. Here is only one.

Could you provide a cite showing that the majority of Iraqi’s are A) Offended by the footage of SH getting a medical exam, or B) That Iraqi’s in general didn’t want to see ANY pictures of SH at all? Unless of course you have nothing to back that up, and its just your oppinion of course.

While I didn’t agree with SOME of the footage myself (and certainly got sick of seeing it over and over again), there is no denying it was a huge propaganda coup. It REALLY took the wind out of the Saddam loyalists sails IMO. And in the end, its the real world guys…of COURSE he would be shown off for the propaganda value. It was just too good a story NOT to show it all in its grizzly details.

Here was a guy that was exorting his people to resist to the death, who was widely considered a ‘lion’ in his opposition to the US, who’s own sons went out in a blaze of glory fighting the hated Americans to the death…and he’s caught like a mouse in a rat hole. He is found with a gun, but neither does he put up any resistance nor does he take his own life…but submits meekly.

Here is a guy that lived in palaces, was a billionare in his own right, and squeezed his country and his citizens to get all that wealth…looking like a street person on a bad hair day.

Ya, I think the Iraqi people deserved to see that, and IMO NEEDED to see it…to see him brought low. It showed the average Iraqi that the boogy man was gone, and wouldn’t be coming back. It was a comfort and maybe vindication for those who had lost loved ones to his regime. And it took the wind from the sails of the SH loyalists, showing how very far he’d sunk.

The medical exam…well, I suppose you could say that it was another kind of propaganda. It shows that, in spite of the fact that SH was our enemy, he is still being treated well.

As to Bush being paraded in like kind…well, as it is highly unlikely to happen (except in the dreams of some of the folks on this board :)) its one of those things thats purely academic. Personally, my favorite fantasy scenerio (that has an equal chance of happening as the Bush thing) is to see Chirac carried before the mob, dipped in honey and burried in an ant hill. Not because I hate the French (my wife’s family is French), or that I think the guy is the anti-christ (like the anti-Bush guys think about GW) but just because I think the guy is a slimy dog…and I love the imagry. :slight_smile:

-XT