Abu Ghuraib, Nick Berg, the enemy and the press

A couple of my commenters have been challenging me on my reaction to the Abu Ghuraib and Nick Berg incidents.  So I thought I would use some of their own blog entries as a taking-off point for some more comments on that.

Rick of the Rick’s Place blog has been commenting in one-liners.  But I thought I would go to his longer blog post to say more than one line in response here and to expand on my earlier comments here.  In a May 12 post, he talks about the Berg murder, praises Sen. Inhofe’s comments, and says:

Do you recognize the enemy? I do. If you do not I will give you a hint: they are not prison guards and they don't work for the United States Military. No matter what the liberals want you to believe.

Every paper around the world was quick to show the pictures of what a few prison guards did to Iraqi prisoners of war. Today after the ritual beheading of an American civilian. not much outrage.

It is very strange to me the hypocritical philosophy that drives liberals. So quick to blame Bush and his policies on the war but so slow to pour their moral indignation on the true enemy of our country, and the treatment Americans get at the hands of the radical jihadist muslims we are fighting.

I’m not “outraged by the outrage” over Berg’s murder, as Sen. Inhofe was in relation to the Abu Ghuraib torture case.  But what does this mean in terms of the actual war in Iraq?

First, do we recognize the enemy?  The CIA is agreeing that the Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab Al Zarqawi is likely the murderer, as the tape claims.  Al Zarqawi was one of the alleged links between Saddam and al-Qaeda, on the grounds that Al Zarqawi and the small Al Ansar Al Islami group he backed were operating in Iraq and Saddam must have tolerated that.  There was a minor problem with that notion, which is they operated in the Kurdish-controlled areas of northern Iraq which was protected by the US-British no-fly zone.  Al Zarqawi’s group was vulnerable to a US strike directed against him and his group well before the invasion of Iraq, but the Bush Administration turned down plans to go after them on at least two different occasions.

This article points out that while Al Zarqawi has worked with Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network, including claims by Jordanian intelligence that he was part of the 1999 Millenium Plot that was broken up in Jordan, which in turn led to the arrest of the plotter carrying explosives to Los Angeles International Airport:  Iraq's bin Laden? Zarqawi's rise Christian Science Monitor 05/14/04.  But it also notes that Al Zarqawi competes with Bin Laden in the shadow world of jihadist militants:

He vies with the better-known network of Osama bin Laden for contributions from the faithful, credit for attacks, and even for prized terrorist recruits.

With the advent of the US wars in the region, he appears to have shifted his aims and moved his base of operations inside Iraq itself.

In terms of terror prominence, Zarqawi "would be No. 1 in Iraq, but Osama bin Laden is still No. 1 overall," says a US government official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In recognition of the danger he poses, the US has promised a reward of at least $5 million for information leading to Zarqawi's death or capture.

The article also notes near the end that some European intelligence agencies are still skeptical that Al Zarqawi is actually the perp in this case.  In the actual fight against terrorism, as opposed to the comic-book version, it’s not always easy to “recognize the enemy.”

But suppose that Al Zarqawi and his “decentralized network … known as Al Tawhid” (CSM article) really is the perpetrator here.  What does that say about US priorities?  Should we give priority to hunting Al Tawhid over fighting the Iraqi counterinsurgency?  Over hunting down Al Qaeda? Should we be trying to play off Al Tawhid against Al Qaeda, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” and all that?  The “moral clarity” of Good vs. Evil can start to get cloudy very quickly when it comes to applying practical approaches.

If the enemy is the Jordanian Al Zarqawi, in what way does the sadomasochistic torture of Iraqi prisoners – suspects to be precise – contribute to fighting him and his Al Tawhid network?  I haven’t yet heard anyone make even the ritual claim that the S&M playrooms at Abu Ghuraid provided a single scrap of actionable intelligence against Al Tawhid.  Or on anything else.

I’m not sure what news source or liberal commentators Rick was listening to that ignored the Berg murder.  On the day after the video was released, it was front-page news on every newspaper I saw.  Every antiwar blog I regularly read has posted some expression of outrage about it.  (Here a hint, Rick:  Those “liberals” they trot out on Fox News are what are known as “Fox Democrats,” i.e., they’re fake.  They wouldn’t know a real liberal if one came up and bit them on the leg.)

From the press roundups I’ve seen of Arab responses, most Arab Muslims that are hostile to the US in various degress also condemned the Berg murder.  Including Muqtada al-Sadr, the David Koresh-like theocrat who is inspiring the anti-US and anti-British intifada among the Shia in southern Iraq at the moment.  Including the anti-Israeli, Iranian backed-terrorist group Hesbollah.

Unfortunately for the US, all those and more are also outraged at the torture in Abu Ghuraib and other stations in the Bush-and-Rummy Gulag.  There’s also the embarrassing catch – and for Americans, a deadly one – that jihadists of the Al Qaeda/Al Tawhid type are open in justifying murdering noncombatant “infidels.”  They use videos of beheading “infidels” as recruiting tools among graduates of the radical madrassa schools.

The Bush Administration, on the other hand, claims to be bringing the blessings of freedom, democracy and Western civilization to the benighted natives of Iraq and other Arab lands.  The jihadists’ pictures of war crimes against prisoners have the gruesome virtue of being consistent with their extremist ideology.  The pictures from the Abu Ghuraib S&M playpen don’t do the same for the forces of Democracy and Christian Civilization.

But this brings us full circle to the priorities involved in the Iraq War to begin with.  One of the reasons I believed it was a colossal mistake was that it would be a distraction from the fight against the kind of transnational jihadist movements represented by Al Qaeda and Al Tawhid.  And it’s hard to see how a prolonged counterinsurgency war in Iraq, given the limited level of troop strength that the Bush Administration is willing to commit to the war, is going to strengthen us is undercutting the appeal of the jihadists in the Muslim world, especially in the Arab countries.

It may make some Americans feel better in the short run to know that American troops are killin’ A-rabs and sticking broomsticks up their rectums and forcing them to perform homosexual acts on each other and raping prisoners both male and female.  To some fans of Oxycontin radio, Real Men torture prisoners, I guess.

But if you care about making America and Americans safer from being killed by jihadists, you should think a little more carefully about who “the enemy” is and what it takes to fight them.

Another commenter is AOL-J’er Patrick of Patrick’s Place.  He’s been pondering how many of the Abu Ghuraib and Nick Berg pictures should be published:  Iraqi Prisoner Abuse Photos:  Should They Be Made Public? and U.S. Civilian Slain in Apparent Iraqi Prison-Abuse Retaliation.

In the second post, he asks:  “This act of brutality simply prompts the question again:  should more photos be released?  Is our "right to know" about what went on in that prison more important than protecting those who are directly in harm's way?”

When I look at the damaging results of the secrecy practiced by the current Administration, I lean very heavily toward disclosure.  I just don’t buy the sudden concern by Rummy’s Pentagon’s for the legal niceties of court-martial proceedings being the reason to keep the photos secret.  They could be released with the prisoners’ and defendents’ faces blanked out.

In the first post, he says:

My concern is over how these images will be used.  I see two problems, one of which is quite serious.

The lessor of the two evils is the political one.  Those who do not support the war -- and there are both Republicans and Democrats among them -- will embrace these images as more "proof" that the war was wrong and should never have been fought.  The photos, of course, will not really be proof of this; they will only prove that a select few did something terribly wrong.  But there are those who do not support the war who will count on the images' shock value to make their point for them and hope that their audience doesn't consider the bigger picture.

I agree that war atrocities don't in themselves determine the rightness of the war.  But I haven’t seen any polling evidence or other kinds of studies of this that would convince me seeing unpleasant images in itself increases support or opposition to a war.  Blaming the press is an easy out for irresponsible policy-makers and generals looking to duck blame for bad decisions and bad management.  But I don’t buy it.  If anything, shocking photos intensify attention to the war.  But if the reasons for the war are sound, dramatic pictures in themselves won’t make people oppose it.  Or support it more intensely, in the other case.

The far more important issue here, as I see it, is that we are further endangering our soldiers still overseas and those who are already in Iraqi custody.  This is already a powder keg issue in Iraq, with citizens up in arms over the release of the original images.

The torture going on in the gulag is undermining support for the US and increasing the likelihood that enemies holding American prisoners will treat them in equally cruel ways.  The Abu Ghuraib photos dramatically focused attention on the problem.  But it’s all too clear from the Administration’s response, and the generals’, that without the story becoming dramatically public, they wouldn’t have addressed the torture problem in any serious way.

With the Abu Ghuraib photos, we’re not talking about revealing information about troop movements during conflict.  We’re talking about exposure of war crimes that are wrong inthemselves and that are damaging the US with our allies and undercutting our longer-term effort against anti-American jihadists.

Rummy has his own brand of solution to the problem:

Mindful of the furor over photos of Iraqi detainees in the abuse controversy, Rumsfeld admonished the photographers and video cameramen who accompanied him that they must not photograph any detainee.

For Rummy, the photos were the problem.  Not the torture or the sweep arrests of Iraqis.