I'm still trying to sort something out, so maybe someone can help me.
The ICRC has indicated in its own independent study that on at least one occasion, United States occupation forces have tortured to the point of death (the ICRC examined the corpse) Iraqi citizens who are (by definition) innocent, since they've not been convicted of anything.
But the Iraqis - using a method of execution that we consider to be extremely humane, so much so that it's how we slaughter the cattle we eat for food - are psychopaths, and "evil incarnate", etc., etc., etc.
Peter David summed it up, essentially, as being that the Iraqi resistance has been watching The Untouchables lately, in that they've decided to start doing things The Chicago Way...
"They pull a knife, you pull a gun. They send one of yours to the hospital, you send one of theirs to the morgue. That's the Chicago Way, and that's how you get Capone."
Peter, Brian, Rob, John, and myriad others, though, are calling for us to escalate it even further. There seems to be a serious groundswell of people saying "fuck this, let's nuke them!"
So is the general consensus, "Hey, wait! Only we are allowed to torture people to the point where they die, dammit! Screw this, where's my LGM-118A Peacekeeper missiles?!"
Because I really and truly don't understand how anyone can honestly think this guy's death wasn't 100% completely retaliatory for (and completely equal in stature to) the occupation force's actions.
Damn Derek, I didn't know you had gone "full peacenik" on me. Here's what I said:
"If you think that this is the results of Bush's policy in Iraq, you are right and wrong. Right in the sense that the terrorists are trying to create an uproar in this country over our invasion of Iraq. And wrong, in the sense that this is a random act which wouldn't have happened if the coalition had not invaded Iraq."
Derek, maybe you think that if we leave them alone, they will go away. And while that might be true for a while, Radical Islam will come back with a vengence since they want us dead. Not for invading Iraq. Not for invading Afghanistan. Because they don't like western culture and they want it replaced with their own Sharia culture. They want women in the US wearing Burqas, they want to force us to wear long beards and pray five times a day to Mecca. And if we don't, then they have no problem killing us by the millions.
Seriously, are you not seeing this?
Brian,
No, I don't see that at all. I see that historically, by and large the Islamic culture has stayed fairly ensconced in the Middle East with the sole exception of times when Fundamentalist Christians decided that they had to "conquer the unbelievers and convert them to the One True Way Of Christianity or Smite Them From This Earth".
And we wonder why, maybe, they hold a grudge? We (the west) were in the business of doing the "convert or exterminate" gig a long time before they got into it.
Meanwhile, they see our usual middle-eastern policy as more of the same. We ousted them from their Holy Land, and prop up the government that keeps them from it (or, if it does allow them access, treats them as second or third class citizens).
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, "Hey, ya know, maybe if we WEREN'T constantly fucking with them, they might not have any problem with us."
The "they want us dead" is FUD, just as is the FUD from the other side saying "all americans want to exterminate islam from this earth" There may be elements at the moment that want to kill Americans "today", but that's not out of some vicious hatred for "All Things American" as it is because they're pissed off at the way we pimpsmack them around for not being More Like Us.
After all, if they're not going to have a Representative Democracy in Iraq, which is the One True Government Style Which All Countries Must Have, we're not going to hand over control, right? No, we're not trying to convert them to our ways. Not at all.
We're meddling, constantly, and THAT is what makes them hate us. Stop the meddling, permanently, and eventually the hatred will go away as well.
And why the use of derogatory terms like "peacenik"? It's entirely possible to be against the Iraq Invasion without being a "peacenik" who thinks war is never the answer.
Derek,
It's hard for me to have a coherent conversation about this, but... I can tell you that these guys only respond to power. That's all. The radical ones won't sit down and talk, they're all already criminals...
Those radical ones are the ones that need to be put down like the dogs that they are.
"Criminal" or "Freedom Fighter" is a definition largely determined, in the end, by who's left standing as the winner.
Maybe they only respond to power because the west has been holding our own power over their heads for years? Our superior technology, their inability to adequately defend against it, etc.
Perhaps, just PERHAPS, our constantly pushing them around with OUR power is what made them come to think that "power is what you use to get respect"?
"Perhaps, just PERHAPS, our constantly pushing them around with OUR power is what made them come to think that "power is what you use to get respect"?"
Or perhaps these thugs are using a perverted form of Islam to try to rally people around to defeat the "Infidels" and make themselves more powerful.
Let me ask this question. Do you think the guys who did this would have let Nick Berg go if the prison thing never happened?
Brian,
I can't speculate, but I think it's certainly more likely that he'd at least not have been slaughtered as part of a public access show style video.
Really? Then explain Daniel Pearl. How about the six Israeli soldiers yesterday that were murdered and mutilated. Or the original four American contractors that were mutilated and videotaped. Or could it have been that they knew what would get put on the front page of the news and would draw sympathies for their cause from the anti-war crowd. BTW, I'm sure it was a coincidence that Nick Berg was Jewish...
"Peter, Brian, Rob, John, and myriad others, though, are calling for us to escalate it even further. There seems to be a serious groundswell of people saying "fuck this, let's nuke them!"
Hmm...I'm not calling for us to nuke Mecca. If we really wanted to commit genocide and erase Islam, it would be pretty damn easy. Pull troops back, turn key, enjoy all the free parking in Mecca. That's not what I'm calling for...I'm calling for Americans to wake up and realize that we are in a war. And we can't lose this one...
Reminds me of this exchange from the movie "Aliens:"
VASQUEZ
All right, we can't blow the fuck
out of them...why not roll some
canisters of CN-20 down there.
Nerve gas the whole nest?
HUDSON
Look, man, let's just bug out and
call it even, okay?
RIPLEY
(to Vasquez)
No good. How do we know it'll
effect their biochemistry? I say
we take off and nuke the entire
site from orbit. It's the only
way to be sure.
We're actually fighting several battles, one of which involves terrorists who don't give a rat's ass about Iraq or its people -- and the Iraqi people are slowly beginning to show that they don't want their kind around (the others are against the remnants of the former corrupt ruling regime, and against smaller bands of lawless power-seekers looking to grab control). The Iraq war is providing a very convenient backdrop for these terrorists and they're doing their best to use it to gain maximum propaganda benefits. If they didn't have the convenient excuse of "prisoner abuse" to justify their murders, they'd just find some other excuse. The last thing we should do is pack up and go home. You deal with these thugs the way you deal with all terrorists.
Something that Nietzsche wrote in "Beyond Good and Evil" comes to mind. "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you."
"Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny?" :-)
Wow. If you invade a country, bomb, murder and torture their citizens... they don't like it! Even if you're not torturing them as much as the last guy!
The whole invasion of Iraq has been a gigantic recruitment drive for terrorism. Step by step, it's provided more and more propaganda for anyone looking for a reason to hate the USA.
However, to put the whole "humane" thing to bed (I don't know about you, but over here we kill cattle with bolt-guns), this description was posted by a friend of mine who went to the trouble of downloading the video:
"When you hear the word "behead" you automatically think of Hollywood's version of a beheading--a big strong guy, a massive, impossibly sharp blade, and a quick, one stroke death.
"This is not what happened. Mr. Berg's head was sawed off with what amounts to a big kitchen knife. He screamed (and you hear every blood-curdling scream) until his vocal cords were severed; he managed three or four impossibly pain-filled shrieks before that happened.
"But he wasn't dead yet, and the guy killing him wasn't done cutting yet. He made his way around Nick's neck, sawing into the back of it, pulling and jerking to disconnect the bones of his cervical spine, much like you would when you gut and clean a large fish."
http://www.livejournal.com/users/msginnyo/159612.html
Hey, not a nice way to die. Neither is being tortured to death in Afghansitan by Americans in their prisons (so newspapers report) or have bombs dropped on you in Iraq - for what? Hallburton? Cheney?
Some lousy dictator who was handy for America - I believe Rumsfeld paid Saddam a courtesy visit - outlived his usefulness. Oh, and of course it was unfinished business from Daddy's cock up war (Bush the first). Oh, and oil.
Where's the big picture? America supporting the dictators of Chile, usurping democratically a elected government in Nicaragua, with client states all over the Middle East (Saudi Arabia - hey, did you know that's where the Al Quaida bombers came from, not Iraq - although there's plenty being recruited there now I'm sure - yes, Saudi Arabia, land of beheadings and torture, as unpleasant as Iran was when America supported the Shah and turned a blind eye to his secret police, and we all know how pear shaped that went) ...
Where do you begin? The lumbering giant is on it's first Empire, China, waiting in the wings, will be on it's second, and where will American self-righteousness go then? A long way away I hope.
Now, let me see where my list if of all the countries in the world America has f'cked up.....Oh my, that IS a long list.
(We saved your asses in the second world war is the stock response, of course to this. Well, baloney, I'm sure I could go further back and find where the UK saved America's backside, but equally, the US only came into the second world war very reluctantly, after Pearl Harbour, making sure that it got a return on its investment with lend-lease)