Here’s some Arab anger about Arab crimes.
I’m sorry, but I really disagree vehemently with that assertion. Who the hell says that there is NO Arab anger at the crimes committed by their own governments? On the contrary, there is a lot of popular dissatisfaction with many of these regimes and disgust at their tactics. I have relatives and friends of the family who were brutally tortured by Ghadhaffi’s goons in Libya, so don’t try telling me that Arabs are happy to condone that kind of treatment.
Arabs have every right to condemn US torture, there isn’t anything hypocritical about it.
Perhaps, but you do realize that “they” have the “Us vs. Them” mentality as well? Just look at the recent calls by Muslim clerics in France for a jihad against “the West,” and that attacks are being carried out against any country (USA, Spain) that is thought of as “the West” or perceived to have a connection (Israel). The Pan-Arab movement is very real.
As I said, it doesn’t matter what we do, they’re going to bitch and moan. The sooner we get out of Iraq, the better (how soon we can get out is another story). Let them govern themselves and see how well things go. The insurgents or “evildoers” (heh) aren’t making things any easier by constantly attacking and trying to keep things from getting off the ground.
I think it was when the military first got into Baghdad, and secured the oil wells, but left the museums alone; some Iraqis looted their own museums and then the US was criticized. Attacks continued and the US was criticized for not having proper water facilities set up. There isn’t much question that some things could have been handled better, but some of the Iraqis aren’t making things any easier. We’re going to be criticized no matter what happens, once we leave I’m sure we’ll be criticized for leaving to soon, for not leaving soon enough, for not leaving things in the right place, for not setting up enough of an infrastructure, for setting up the wrong infrastructure, etc. We’re not going to be able to change the minds that are raised from birth to hate us.
If it seems like the Arabs are more vocal about U.S. torture, part of it could be the kind of thing where it’s a feeling of, “I can say bad things about my brother, and fight with him, but no one else can do the same.” Another part is probably that they know they can express their outrage and not have to worry about some national police goon showing up to take them to the same prison just for speaking their mind.
Squink,
Also from your article:
That article was interesting, its good to hear that there was at least demonstrations at the prisons against these actions. But the part I underlined again bothers me. The author refers to it as “the New Iraq.” Please correct me if I’m wrong, but innocents were detained and tortured for mush less than being in the wrong place during Saddam’s rule.
Its possible that my annoyance should not be directed at “the Arab world” but more towards the “Arab media” if such a thing exists. I read Aljazeera regularly, and I believe they were the first to begin criticizing the US and Britain for these atrocities, and I applaud them for it.
But where was this criticism in all the years that Saddam did far worse? Then spiral outwards: where was/is the criticism of Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia (the three countries that I can specifically point to torture)?
If Aljazeera is to be the model of an un-biased news media; if CNN and Fox are to be chastised with feeding the US with hand-selected factoids; where is the criticism of Arab/Persian/MENA countries?
Isn’t the OP like asking, “How can George W. Bush condemn the Zimbabwe election given the lame-assed pretense behind his ascention to the Oval Office?”?
Let’s remember that most folks in the Middle East already hated Saddam, so Iraqi atrocities pre-war were just lumped in with the bigger issue of “Saddam is a rat-bastard.” The only reason for the Arab backlash over this bruhaha is because we’ve been pompously telling them for years that we’re Better and Nicer and Superior, and this whole thing just deflates those claims big-time.
Is there an Islamic word for schadenfreude?
How much is much less? Being in the wrong place at the wrong time is a pretty solid description of innocence.
At any rate, Syria and Saudi Arabia are known to use torture to extract information and confessions from people suspected of involvement with crimes (including the “crime” of opposing the government). They are not generally known for sweeping up everyone in an area and taking them back to some prison to be randomly tortured. That would be a difference between Syria and Saudi Arabia on the one hand and Iraq–before and after the occupation–on the other. Different tolerances for different actions. (I consider all torture to be both wrong and counterproductive, but if the claim is hypocrisy for reporting (or not reporting) the same events, it should be noted the ways in which the events are–and are not–the same.)
And, of course, no one in Syria or Saudi Arabia invaded another country claiming (once the lies about WMD could be shrugged off) that it was for the good of the people who would no longer be subjected to random sweeps of innocents who were then detained without charges, and without notifying their kin that they had been taken, and who were then subjected to abuse and torture. The U.S. did make those claims, while proceeding to repeat those very actions.
I am sure that the U.S. forces have not engaged in horrible acts to the extent that Hussein did. On the other hand, to a person whose family member has simply disappeared and who hears rumors of torture and humiliation and sexual abuse for months emanating from the prisons controlled by the people who claimed that they were there to save one from that same fate, this is a very large news story, regardless of any nitpicks about hypocrisy in the media.
The Washington bureau chief for a Middle East newspaper was interviewed earlier this week on the NBC Today program and made an interesting observation. Paraphrasing here, but he said most if not all of Middle East media is state-run and/or state-controlled. He went on to say it is rather ironic that the current “freedom” in Iraq provides the opportunity to report on the abuses there, but which cannot be reported on back home.
We’re not going to be able to change the minds that are raised from birth to hate us.
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Law and order, infrastructure management, etc, are the responsibility of the occupying power. To not plan for or provide for them is more than just an oversight. To fire all of the police and then be surprised by crime and poor security boggles the mind.
Logistics and infrastructure are things that historically the US rocks at, which makes the utter incompetence of the current effort so much more painful.
Certainly not without trying.
Duckster hit on it. If you are a Saudi and you march to protest against the treatment of prisoners by your government, it will not be long before you’re labeled an agitator of some type and put in the jail yourself. March against US imperialism and suddenly you’re part of “the Arab street.”
This whole us vs. them that Dignan is referring to is completely bogus. When I was in Jordan not long ago, I spoke with a leader of a Palestinian refugee camp who thanked the United States for its even-handed foreign policy of 50 years ago, when the US intervened to stop the seizure of the Suez Canal by American allies. He then went on to complain that we have lost objectivity in favor of standing united with our allies at any cost, and that’s why he was so strongly opposed to US policies.
Then there are the Qataris who are a hell of a lot more interested in trying to build a modern nation with all the accutrements, including golf courses in the desert, so they are too damned busy to take up arms or hit the streets in protest.
Contrast these folks to the Osama bin Laden types running around killing Americans, Saudis, Jordanians, Iraqis, and anyone else they can get their bloody hands on, and this idea of a single “them” is just a complete fiction.
There are commonalities among Arab nations, no doubt. But it is not true that they are our enemy, unless we make them so – which we’ve been doing an awfully good job of in the last few years. Summing up, to think that it is “us vs. them” can only be described as a simpleminded understanding of the world.
You don’t think this is a case of “Us vs. Them” on both sides? I have talked to enough Arabs and/or Muslims that believe 9/11 was carried out by “The Jews” or that we shouldn’t have “started” the war with Afghanistan or both, that I don’t think it’s just a coincidence. These are students at American universities; should I just believe that only the really crazy ones come over here to study?
What about the calls by Muslim clerics in Europe for Muslims to carry out attacks against the infidels in the West? How about the bombing in Spain or Bali, or the bombings in Israel, the attempted shoe bombing, or 9/11? Regardless of location the targets are the same: Westerners. The “bin Laden types” are targetting Westerners, and those that they think are cooperating with the West. How is this not “Us vs. Them”?
To my knowledge, Qatar is considered one of the more … modern Arab countries. Since Qataris want golf courses rather than to blow themselves up to take out “occupiers” this means? Of course there are exceptions of Arab countries that want to get along, but it still doesn’t change that we’re having to deal with an entire culture that is born angry and wanting to kill us. Though it seems you want to think that it’s our fault anyway.
It’s only an “us vs. them” issue if you let it become as such.
I think it’s fair to characterize it as an “Us vs. Them” conflict. The “War on Terrorism” is double-speak for “The War on Radical Islam”. As such, even when an Arab does not see him or herself as a radical, they do often feel some level of sympathy for those who fight for the Arab/Muslim cause against what they see as Western Imperialism.
I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to nitpick about the accuracy of perception on either side; what’s important is that the perception of the above manifestly exists, and the level of cultural and ideological polarity at this juncture is probably greater than it has been in some time.
This is directly relevant to the hypocracy debate. Imagine if an American citizen is accused of a crime, say, in China, and sentenced death. I think it’s fair to say many Americans who support the death penalty for the same crime would be up in arms because, quite simply, Chinese would be killing Americans instead of Americans. Us vs. Them.
The West, especially the USA, is terribly unpopular in the Middle East. We’ve been demonized by the state-run press and the Muslim clergy for rhetorical purposes for decades now. That our own policies and behavior sometimes mirror the stridently crafted cariacatures of American decadency and imperialism hardly helps with public relations.
That the Arab response to this travesty could be hypocritical is a validly arguable point. However, I think it hardly matters, even if it’s an accurate assessment of the general Arab mentatlity. As stated above, we’ve entered into the fray ostensibly justified by our high ideals, claiming to have been forced into action by a corrupt and dangerous dictator, whom we, as a duty to the people of Iraq for the damage to be done in the conflict, would replace with something patently better. I think the average Arab gets it. We’ve unilaterally made the decision to destroy their country, out of dire self-ineterest, and pitched this as a win-win endeavor for all who survive, because we, as defenders of Truth, Justice, and Freedom, would provide Iraqis with a much better life than they had under Saddam.
Maybe someday we will. Right now, many Iraqis are living in a war zone, out of work, maybe without running water or electricity, and fearful of deadly injury. Many must look back right now and say “At least if I did what Saddam told me to, I could live my life in relative peace and security, with some access to modern conveniences.” I’m sure they sincerely hope the US and the UN will make good on the promise of a better Iraq than Saddam’s, but are impatient. Maybe they wonder if they’ve been lied to. Maybe they wonder if all the terrible things they were told about Americans are true.
So more than a year has passed; the land is still in chaos; there are more American soldiers, not less; innocent civilians are still being killed in the crossfire between U.S. soldiers and so-called “insurgents”; and to top it all off, in the very prison Saddam would torture and humiliate his adversaries, American soldiers to the very same. And perhaps worse, the victims of the torture now are being forced to parade around naked, in front of women, simulating homosexual acts in front of jeering, mixed-sex crowds of tormenters, for no apparrent reason other than because these soldiers are depraved sadists. Just like Saddam.
I think it’s pretty easy to see how people could be outraged. It’s also pretty easy to see how horribly this hurts our efforts to “win hearts and minds” and secure a democratic peace in Iraq. When we do things like this, people get nostalgic even for the oppressive Baathist regimes of the past, including Saddam’s. Like I said, they’ve waited a year for peace and security. That’s a long time, even in war. It behooved us to demonstrate our unequivocable superiority to the despotic leaders of the past. We have clearly failed in that regard. Being held to a higher standard has always been a requisite for success in this conflict. We’ve clearly demonstrated much the opposite. Saying the Arabs should concentrate on their own abuses before they pick on our policies is absurdly unrealistic, and essentially irrelevant to all pertinant issues in this war. It’s a foolish point of view, quite frankly, and speaks of moral and intellectual laziness. If that is going to be our response to our failures in Iraq, we may as well relinquish all pretense of moral and ethical high standards and assume the role of imperial oil-mongers, as the Arab world suspects we are.
I do not mean this as a personal attack on you, but this point must be said: the strongest argument for an us vs. them ideology, regardless if one is an “us” or a “them,” in view view, is racism.
There are folks on the Islamic side of the equation who take blantanly racist rhetoric about Jews and Israel and use it to fan the flames of violence against its so-called big brother, the United States. Then there are folks on the Western side who subscribe to the racist Ann Coulter-type vision of every swarthy man being a potential suicide bomber, and think that our way of life is under attack by hundreds of millions of Muslims.
What a bunch of crap. Yes, a hell of a lot of Arabs and Muslims hate the US right now, principally for occupying Iraq and our current position toward Israel. It is only “our fault” in the sense that we did these things with the full knowledge that the predictable result would be more hatred of our country.
And I must ask, if the ENTIRE Msulim culture was “born angry and wanting to kill us,” why is it that they have only carried out a handful of attacks on America in the last few years? Are you unable to make a distinction between the people who debate issues and take political stands against US policies, and the people that plowed those jets into New York and the Pentagon?
The distinction between those two groups should be as clear as teh difference between, on one hand, those Americans who had a heartfelt view that we should liberate the Iraqi people from a dictator, and on the other hand, the Americans who had fun torturing helpless Iraqi prisoners.
Obviously one can hold political views without being sadists, I just wonder why this is apparently lost on you.
Ravenman, I’m suggesting that (on this side) the “Us” is the West, and “Them” are Muslims (with varying degrees of belief in fundamentalism). I’m perfectly aware of the difference between someone just being opposed to foreign policies and someone blowing up innocent people to protest those policies. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a nearly universal belief as I have with looking at Muslims worldwide and their hardline ideology on the Palestinian and Israeli conflict. Regardless of where they are from, I have never met or heard of a Muslim that was indifferent to the conflict or did not side with Palestinians.
You’re right, there haven’t really been regular attacks on America, but there have been attacks far too often on another member of the “West,” that being Israel.
Do you think that we should kick Turkey out of NATO because they are a Muslim nation with a Islamist political party in power?