outrage
everyone is outraged that the outrage about the nick berg murder does not seem to be as outrageous as the abu ghraib outrage outrage. yuck. i am beginning to hate that word as i have never hated a word before.
but i'm going to say it: no, i am not as outraged about the nick berg murder as i am about the torture at abu ghraib. and it might make me sound soulless, but there you have it. i am upset, saddened, disgusted, disturbed, frightened, repulsed, and my resolve to see terrorists gone from this world is stronger than ever. but for my outrage about nick berg to equal my outrage about abu ghraib, that would have to involve me feeling a modicum of shock over the fact that al-qaeda killed someone in a brutal, terrible manner. wha? hello? this is al-qaeda. they do things like this on a regular basis; this is their MO. their reason for living and existing in this world is to commit acts of heinousness and murder and hate.
whereas the american people and military are in iraq to help. their function is stability and protection and good. this is obvious; the criteria and morals to which they hold themselves are incredibly high. and believe me, i know the goodness of the military exists: my grandfather, father and younger brother have all served or will serve voluntarily during wartime, and they are outstanding people, who i really love and respect more than i can express, and there are so many people like them, out there serving. so, you know, i'm going to go out on a limb and say that, yeah, my expectations of the american armed forces are just a wee bit higher than my expectations of al-qaeda. so that's why i'm outraged. those people who committed torture did the exact opposite of what they were supposed to be doing, the exact opposite of what america and others believed and trusted them to be doing, and in the process, severely damaged the faith and hope people placed on the armed forces. al-qaeda, in their murder of nick berg, did what they've been doing all along and only reinforced the idea that they need to be made to disappear forever.
i just think that if someone expects me to be just as outraged over the death of nick berg at the hands of al-qaeda as i am over the torture of iraqi prisoners at the hands of some american soldiers, that's kind of like saying, "hey! look! the terrorists are JUST AS BAD AS WE ARE, if not more!" and, well, that's not a comparison i really feel like making.
update: mark kleiman says it more succinctly.
Comments
right on. let's worry less about whether we're outraged enough and move on to fixing things. my suspicion is that those who bitch & moan about Nick Berg's death not overshadowing the prison abuses are doing so in the vain hopes that if people focused on it enough, they'd become as incensed as the authors -- thereby justifying the authors' newfound bloodlust. And who can blame them? It's a lonely business, wanting to nuke millions of innocents all by your self.
Atrios had a post about this recently that I thought described the typical evolution of attitudes among Iraq Hawk commentators very well.
America seems to be rapidly reaching a fairly monstrous state of mind. Last hour Tony Blankley was on the radio saying we needed to have a national conversation about what forms of torture we find acceptable. His nondescript liberal foil countered by saying that the guards at Abu Ghraib didn't participate in any such intellectual process -- as if that were the problem. As if a few mealy-mouthed speeches about social contracts and America's imagined imperative to democratize the world would be justification enough to put a hood on a man and electrocute him.
Things are not looking good.
what does mealy-mouthed mean?
unwilling to state facts or opinions simply and directly
Post A Comment