Aldebaran, for hopefully the last time, try to make the argument that shaving Saddam’s beard was a signal of humiliation, and stop referring to past assertions or what people think – I’ve already provided an argument (twice) for you to address, and irae has repeated it.
Don’t take your so far only recourse and say that Arabs would view such an act as humiliation, because I’ve already addressed that point at least twice. For Arabs who wear and value their beard as an important custom, your point is true; however, for Saddam (a public figure whom I cannot remember ever wearing a beard) that same point is ridiculous.
It was more humiliating for Saddam to be shown in his “homeless tramp” disguise than to have his grooming restored to his former (head of state) levels.
Or are you suggesting that back when Saddam used to shave himself daily he was in fact humiliating himself on a regular basis? Saddam’s beard was a disguise, nothing more. I am almost completely certain that Saddam wouldn’t have wanted to keep his beard, for reasons already explained and since he was wearing it because of temporary necessity.
If they ever catch Osama bin Laden and they shave him clean, I agree that that would be a token of humiliation, and you would be justified in claiming that it could be taken as an affront to Arab customs if they then paraded him for videocameras thus shorn of his hair.
However that is far from the case, which is why your point as I and everyone else seem to understand it is unacceptable.
To the posters who appear to believe that a person’s moral worth has anything to do with the ex-punitive ex-legal treatment afforded him by his captors: please, stop wasting our time with the schoolyard arguments of “so what, he was a bad boy and deserves to be humiliated”. Not affording Saddam important rights and protections now that he is captive casts absolutely no light on the evil of his regime and cannot be justified by any such hare-brained method, but it does say a lot about the moral looseness of his captors and provides plenty of ammo for arguments of US Hypocrisy. Let’s hope the release of those videos we’ve been discussing was a once-only lapse.
Yeticus Rex: perhaps you could expand your latest point a bit, right now as I read it again it seems to me just a bit of tit-for-tat arguing that will lead nowhere. Aldebaran’s point regarding the moral outrage of the US when images of their captured soldiers were broadcast is a valid one, since only a few days after that fact the US started happily allowing filming of hundreds of prisoners for the remainder of the war, to say nothing of Saddam’s capture. It’s difficult to argue that that kind of outrage and subsequent behaviour is not hypocritical. Yes, the cheap propaganda coming out of the Iraqi Information Ministry was outrageous (very amusing, I found) but don’t forget that one country here was expected by dint of their very actions to hold the moral high ground, while the other was not (indeed, since the war is now being justified chiefly on moral grounds, good behaviour and single standards are more important than ever).
