1) I hope newspapers don’t print headlines that say, without quotations marks or “allegedly” or “claims to be,” that this was revenge for Abu Ghraib. I don’t think the timing of this “execution” is coincidental–for one thing, if Zarqawi himself was videotaped, that was a risk he probably took for a reason. But I’m not sure that Nick Berg wouldn’t have been killed despite Abu Ghraib, and I am sure that if it weren’t this murder it would be another.
My best guess is that Abu Ghraib led to this only in that Zarqawi saw an opportunity. What he was trying to do–scare us, anger us into more abuses and deaths of innocents, inspire other Iraqis to kill innocent Americans in revenge, frighten Iraqis out of working with our troops and contractors, getting private contractors to leave Iraq, simply get his name in the papers–I don’t know. It made me much more angry than fearful, and I’m a giant wuss, so if he was trying to scare the American public I think he miscalculated. But he might have a narrower audience–if I were a civilian contractor trying to build Iraq’s infrastructure, or an Iraqi cooperating with the Americans I have no idea how I’d react.
And yes, it is at least possible that he wants us to be outraged–provoking overreaction is a tried and true terrorist strategy.
2) Neither justifies the other. I think we all agree on that. I wish people would also refrain from saying that one keeps the other “in perspective.” Perspective about what? That we’re morally superior to Zarqawi and his band of thugs? Whoop-de-freaking-do. I’m a liberal, antiwar, anti-Bush partisan, and yet I could not be less in need of that reminder. The few people who need it–ANSWER, etc.–will not listen to it. That this is what the interrogators were fighting? Most of the Abu Ghraib prisoners had no more to do with Zarqawi than Nick Berg had to do with torturing Iraqi prisoners. Abu Ghraib will probably win recruits for Zarqawi and Sadr, and definitely makes it less likely that Iraqis wil cooperate with U.S. troops or turn in neighbors whom they suspect of working for the terrorists.
Right now, I am certain, someone in the Middle East is telling someone else that Abu Ghraib keeps Berg’s murder “in perspective.” So f**k perspective. Until we ensure that these abuses won’t happen again, I think being pissed at everyone is a perfectly healthy response. (That link is highly recommended; one of the better blog comments I’ve ever read.)
3) There are a lot of comparisons of the press coverage. Some people are saying that if the press releases the photographs of Abu Ghraib, they are obligated to release the video of this. I don’t know. I think the relevant comparison is the videos of Abu Ghraib rather than the photos. I find a still photo much easier to take; I don’t know if I’d watch the videos of Abu Ghraib. But I know I’m not watching the video of the execution. I couldn’t handle it, and I feel no obligation to watch Zarqawi’s sick propaganda. I would not believe what was in the photographs of Abu Ghraib if I had not seen them, but I have no trouble at all believing what was in the video. And–this does me no credit, but I know I will find it harder to watch a kid my age from Philadelphia with a name and a family on the news be tortured and executed, than an anonymous Iraqi prisoner.
My guess is Abu Ghraib will remain in the news longer than the Berg story, and some hawkish bloggers will call that a double standard, explicable only by a liberal or anti-American press. They’ll be wrong. There are a plenty of middling-to-good explanations for the likely disparity. Some of these apply only in the U.S.; some of them apply everywhere:
a) Not all of the pictures and videos from Abu Ghraib have been released yet. I doubt the same is true of Berg’s murder.
b) There will be Congressional hearings and court martials and other investigations of Abu Ghraib for the media to cover. You can bet Zarqawi’s war crimes trial would get press coverage, but unfortunately it’s not an option.
c) There is no way to prevent Zarqawi from doing this again short of killing or capturing him. The press has no ability to help in that task; the best they can do is not hinder it. On the other hand, I think it is quite possible to make sure that the U.S. military does not allow any more Abu Ghraibs, and press coverage can help make this happen.
d) We are American citizens, and our military is acting on our behalf and paid with our tax dollars.
e) It is not surprising for an Al Qaeda terrorist to murder an innocent person. It is surprising for us to torture people, especially innocent people. More surprising stories get more coverage, simple as that.
f) We are the most powerful country in the world. I’m not going to quote the Spiderman line about “with much power comes much responsibility”–I’m saying with much power comes much press coverage.
In the Arab press, a lot of the criticism of the U.S. is just scapegoating by a non-free press controlled by corrupt and brutal states trying to distract people from its own failures. (“Look, over there! Zionists and imperialists and crusaders!”) But in the rest of the foreign press–look, we have a tremendous amount of power, including the power to destroy people’s lives as well as the power to do good. Deep and gaping as the moral chasm is between us and Al Qaeda, we’ve probably killed ten times more civilians than he has in this war. If we go off the rails morally, the whole world’s going to suffer for it.
Does all of this make the difference in press coverage fair? I wouldn’t say that. But many of the things on this list also explain why 3000 New Yorkers’ murders got exponentially more press coverage than 3 million civilians killed in the Congo’s civil war. In both cases–it’s not fair, but the unfairness is not, for the most part, the press’ doing. It’s just the way the world works.
(edited to fix the usual typos & unclear phrases.)
I was hoping to do something along these lines, but was unable to get my mind around it all. Well done, K!
The fear vs. anger response analysis is spot on, in my opinion. I flinched each time a plane flew over Manhattan for months after 9/11, but I’m not fearful that someone is going to behead me. And much like the national response to the 9/11 hijackings and questions about how to respond if you’re on a plane that’s taken over, no American captured in Iraq in the future will doubt for a moment that this fate might be in store for them and they’ll resist as best they can (i.e., I suspect by the calm way he recited his bio info, that Berg had hopes he would survive his captivity).
This was calculated to enrage Americans, and we should ask ourselves why before we react to it. (And please don’t interpret that as “Blame America First”; it’s simply a warning that our rage can work to their advantage.)
You’ve also done a much more thorough analysis on the difference between showing the prison images and showing the beheading images than I could have done. For me it boiled down to accountability. We don’t own those photos of Nick Berg, the murderers do. Let their press be responsible for keeping them in their public’s eye. Oh, that’s right, terrorists don’t have free and open press. That doesn’t stop some folks from expecting all Arab press to “skew” it though. Thankfully, they’re being proved wrong.
I don’t know that he’s trying to inspire anger. He might have miscalculated; it’s probably no easier for Zarqawi to guess what a typical American thinks than for us to guess what he thinks. Or it might be that he’s going for fear in a narrower audience–the leaders of the rest of the coalition-of-the-less-and-less-willing, civilian contractors, Iraqis afraid of being labeled “collaborators”, etc.
But the idea that he’s trying to provoke overreaction is not one that can be dismissed out of hand. And so many people on the right are so sure that’s it’s impossible; so sure that more force is always the answer.
Terrorists absolutely do deliberately inspire overreaction and collective punishment. It’s one of the older tricks in their book.
This is a passage from a novel (“A Star Called Henry”, by Roddy Doyle, about the early IRA), so I guess it’s not convincing historical evidence, but what the hell.
And the British would hit back; they’d over-react. They always did. Over the next four years, they never let us down. It wasn’t that they made bad judgements, got the mood of the country wrong: they never judged at all. They never considered the mood of the country worth judging. They made rebels of thousands of quiet people who’d never thought beyond their garden walls. The were always our greatest ally; we could never have done it without them.”
In the 1970s, England had a policy that allowed them to detain IRA suspects, at length and in horrible conditions, based on one anonymous tip. The IRA used to call up and report mentally handicapped men, single fathers struggling to feed four kids, the younger brother of the guy who the English had just killed–always someone who was innocent; usually carefully selected to inspire the most hatred.
It’s absolutely disgusting on the IRA’s part, but that doesn’t really do anything to excuse the English policy–it just makes it criminally stupid as well as wrong. Being soft on terrorism is bad, but being tough and stupid is no better.
The headlines in San Diego say ‘revenge for Abu Ghraib’.
“In the Arab press, a lot of the criticism of the U.S. is just scapegoating by a non-free press controlled by corrupt and brutal states trying to distract people from its own failures. (“Look, over there! Zionists and imperialists and crusaders!”) But in the rest of the foreign press–look, we have a tremendous amount of power, including the power to destroy people’s lives as well as the power to do good. Deep and gaping as the moral chasm is between us and Al Qaeda, we’ve probably killed ten times more civilians than he has in this war. If we go off the rails morally, the whole world’s going to suffer for it.”
If we go off the rails morally the whole world is going to suffer for it. Which is why a little help now would be nice. If Europe wants to wait until we get bombed again before they decide to help out–well if they think they don’t like the result now, I suspect they will be horrified then. And that goes even if there is a Democratic president. Also, this isn’t support for a brutal response, but I think it is a likely description.
Zarqawi’s prefered audience may not be us at all but the Moslem world. The message would be that America has humiliated us but we will cut off America’s head. A group seen as doing something to counter our bad acts is bound to gain prestige. That type of reaction is what modivated Bush’s popularity after 9/11.
It may backfire as most Moslems recoil in horror at what is done in the name of their religion. Yet the longer we are there, and the more bad acts they think we perform, the more justified Zarquwi’s methods will seem.
Katherine: very well said. Likewise Edward and Fabius.
“It may backfire as most Moslems recoil in horror at what is done in the name of their religion. Yet the longer we are there, and the more bad acts they think we perform, the more justified Zarquwi’s methods will seem.”
I think this is actually one of the biggest problem areas in the Middle East. These kind of actions may or may not cause coreligionists to recoil in horror (I fear for many it does not) but it most certainly has not caused any large body of Muslims to act against it.
Sebatian – when’s the last time you made a citizen’s arrest of a KKK member or an abortion clinic bomber?
Oops. Your name deserves another s, Sebastian. A thousand pardons.
Well, our police do arrest abortion clinic bombers (and KKK members who commit trespass, arson, or whatever other crimes.)
I don’t think there’s much use denying that Muslim moderates are being shouted down, out-organized and outgunned if not outnumbered. Which is no justification of Bush’s foreign policy for me, because I’m pretty sure he’s making it worse.
I don’t think there’s much use denying that Muslim moderates are being shouted down, out-organized and outgunned if not outnumbered.
And ignored, let’s not forget, by rightists claiming that no Muslim ever speaks out against atrocities like September 11 (many, many did) or the mutilation of the dead bodies of the “civilian contractors” in Fallujah (I read at least three quotes from people inside Fallujah who said that the mutilation of the dead was not right – though it didn’t justify the US attack on the city).
“Sebatian – when’s the last time you made a citizen’s arrest of a KKK member or an abortion clinic bomber?”
Funny you should mention it, I was involved with some pro-life advocates who were getting a bit spun out. There were many late nights talking about the moral-wrongheadedness of taking any kind of terrorist tactic. I don’t know if they really would have done anything (and I would have turned them in if they had gone into the planning stages) but I feel I do my part with Christian fundamentalists (though I obviously am not one myself) whenever I get a chance. As do my Christian fundamentalist parents and brothers and my more mainstream Christian sister.
“And ignored, let’s not forget, by rightists claiming that no Muslim ever speaks out against atrocities like September 11 (many, many did)…”
Your obsession with ‘rightists’ is showing. I recognize it because I sometimes fall into a similar obsession with ‘lefties’. What rightists think about Muslims speaking out against atrocities is irrelevant. The question is what are other Muslims doing about fundamentalists who act in their name. At the moment the answer appears to be that they aren’t effectively fighting the fundamentalists physically or rhetorically.
We may not own the photos, but we do owe something to Berg as an American. Not being willing to face the realities of what the enemy is willing to do to defeat us seems like burying our head in the sand.
Just like the prison photos the video speaks for itself in a way that hearing about it can’t possibly!
This is acceptable policy by the terrorist. It can be argued whether the problems at Abu Ghraib were unofficial policy or a bad group of poeple, but the fact is the policy is changing for the better.
Is it not also our responsibility to do our best to influence the enemies policy with the same passion that so many work to change our own?
There has to be some strategy that can be implemented to accomplish that. I think showing the video would work to affect their policy of beheading prisoners.
It seems to me the least we can do for the American who died is to witness the enemies policy for dealing with it’s prisoners, so we can better understand our role and their role in the world. Know thy enemy!
Many Americans want to hide from the brutality of the enemy and focus only on our own brutality in war. This is self-defeating.
I think American’s need to face the horror of other Americans leaping to their death by jumping out of the WTC, we need to hear the tapes from the Newark flight, we need to see the reality of Pearl, Berg and Quattrocchi being killed. And, see the mulilated contractors.
This would shake America out of the slumber that many are still in. It would be ashamed to wait for another 9/11 for more Americans to wake and see who the real enemy is.
The terrorists have the best PR machine in the world between CNN, FOX, ABC and CBS. Americans need to stay better informed about the enemy. It doesn’t serve our purpose to turn the other way hoping that the Arab media will keep these tragedies and others in the public eye.
Excellent post. Lays out a lot of the issues quite well. As such, I don’t really have much to add, other than to say that we ought to study the statement (scroll down) put out by Zarqawi if we truly want to understand what they’re after.
This seems to be the key passage:
As for you are the Islam clerics then to Allah we complain about you, you see that Allah have founded the argument on you by the Islam young man who humiliated the strongest force in the date then broke its nose and destroyed its pride
We came to you that you learn from them the reliance meanings and derive from their doing the lessons of sacrifice and redemption to when you remain as the women you master only the slapping language and know only the way of wail and weeping
Then this appeals the world freemen and this it begs Kofi Annan and a third begs Amr Moussa and fourth he demands peaceful demonstrations and as if they did not hear to his saying ( ( O you the prophet incited the believers to the fight ) )
You were fed up with the fight of the conferences and the oratorical battles ohm came to you that you take the jihad way and carry the sword that sent by it the prophets master
And we beg from you that you do not be involved as usual in the denial of what will do it satisfaction of the Americans
This is tough language to interpret, but the gist it seems to me is a call to Islamic clerics to stop collaborating with the Americans.
Thoughts?
One thing that I didn’t see reported anywhere was that they said they were going to hang his head on a bridge in Baghdad to teach a lesson to the infidels. I know the body was found on a bridge, but I didn’t realize it was used as a warning.
By the way, that comment to which you linked was the work of a brilliant but troubled mind, no doubt.
Thanks for the link asdf. Though I can’t make much of anything out of that translation.
Terrorist statements are so bizarre. The Hamas manifesto includes a denunciation of the nefarious Zionist-Crusader activities of the Lions and Rotary Clubs. And Bin Laden sounds disturbing calm & scholarly when he’s calling for my death–he doesn’t sound like he’s foaming at the mouth.
I didn’t realize Berg was Jewish, though I should have from the name. Danny Pearl too. Probably not a coincidence.
The strange stuff about U.S. detention and his family suing Rumsfeld last month aside, his story reminds me of nothing so much as Charlie Dean’s (Howie’s younger brother).
The question is what are other Muslims doing about fundamentalists who act in their name.
Well, some of them have enlisted in the US army, Sebastian. Are you decrying their contribution? Or claiming it doesn’t exist? They’re “not fighting”?
Others are fighting in Afghanistan, against the real terrorist threat.
Others still are (in Iran, for example) supporting large numbers of refugees from a fundamentalist regime.
“Rightists”? It’s true it’s a silly word, like “leftists”, but it’s also true (as Edward has already elucidated in his much better post on this topic) that ignoring what moderate Muslims do and say against fundamentalist Muslims is a problem: and it’s a problem, as far as I can see, that tends to match up quite well with people who are avowedly on the right wing in politics. You, for example. Tacitus.
Meanwhile, Important Moderate Muslims denounce beheading as un-Islamic
This will sound harsh, but the prisoners of Abu Ghraib still have their heads attached to their necks. Those responsible for the mistreatment and abuse will be held to account. They damn well better.
The slaughter of Nick Berg should stand with the coverage of Abu Ghraib. I saw the video, I heard the blood-curdling screams as I watched a fellow human being die right before my very eyes. I saw the hooded men raise Berg’s head in triumph, all the while chanting ‘Allahu Akhbar’. After that, I cried. What took place was pure evil. This is the reality. These are unreasoning dead souls, and we are at war with them and their sick ideology.
Howard Kurtz, on Abu Ghraid, wrote: “And yet some people are questioning whether “60 Minutes II” should have done this. What would be the alternative: covering it up? Sitting on the story so the U.S. military wouldn’t look bad? Why not suppress all negative news and just salute?”
He could’ve written the exact same thing about the Berg snuff film. Jonah Goldberg articulates my thoughts quite well on this hypocrisy. Apologies in advance for the length.
So now we have an opportunity to see firsthand whether the media is willing to hold to its new standard on gratuitous and sensational images, showing them no matter how offensive and no matter what the consequences.
CNN’s Aaron Brown defended the release of the first wave of pictures, in response to my column, saying, “You don’t appreciate what happened in that prison until you see it.”
Maybe so. But that is a new standard for the media, one which is rarely applied evenly in all cases. If showing snapshots and images reveals the truth better than words, then why do networks refuse to show “so-called” partial-birth abortions? After all, that whole debate is over the nature of the procedure. Going to the videotape would surely settle it better than any news anchor.
The Abu Ghraib images are so shocking, so offensive and so sensational they will in all likelihood make America’s job in Iraq and the Middle East immeasurably harder for a long time to come. That means more American deaths – such as Berg’s – more Iraqi deaths and a diminished future for that country and that region.
I don’t support censorship. The government has almost no role in this. But if CBS showed the same self-restraint it did for, say, the Danny Pearl video, it could still have reported the story shedding light instead of heat.
I originally wrote that CBS should be “ashamed” for airing the photos. I now concede that might be too harsh. But, in conceding that, I’m showing more reflection and self-examination than I’ve seen from the entire media establishment amid the Abu Ghraib hysteria.
Instead, the major news networks tripped over themselves to celebrate their courage for broadcasting the images. The Washington Post received its own set of pictures, including an incendiary photo of an American female soldier parading an Iraqi prisoner on a leash. The Post’s only nod to journalistic context was their admission that they weren’t sure if the photos were staged or not.
What!?
If the Abu Ghraib scandal is the metaphorical – or perhaps literal – rape of the Iraqi people so many claim it to be, why isn’t there just a bit more media ethics thumb-sucking over a major American newspaper publishing photos it can’t confirm are real?
Obviously, very real abuses occurred at Abu Ghraib, but news operations don’t show pictures of rape victims, never mind actual rapes, even when they’re sure they’re real and the consequences for doing so are comparatively meager.
Peter Preston, the former editor of The Guardian, once told his reporters that there would be no bonuses for producing a scoop that got somebody killed, according to the Newseum’s Web site. “It is not necessarily a question of patriotism, it is a sense of realism that you don’t want to put the lives of your fellow countrymen at risk.”
Well, CBS’ scoop has gotten someone killed and there will be more deaths, on both sides, as a result of this story before it becomes history.
Now we’re hearing demands that all of the photos collected by the Pentagon be released immediately. Never mind that if the U.S. government releases pictures of POWs being humiliated we’ll be violating the Geneva Convention – again.
More to the point, releasing more photos won’t advance the story any better than words would, and new photos would do even more damage than the first batch.
But, as I said, it’s time to put up or shut up. If the media wants to advance the Abu Ghraib story rather than wallow in it, its course is clear. It can help Americans “appreciate” the Nick Berg beheading by showing it over and over. I don’t know if that would be a good idea, but at least the press would be consistent.
Those who know me well, know I love to proselytize. So forgive me for my sometimes sanctimonious somnolent ruminations.
Being “pi**ed” off at everyone doesn’t help one iota. You see emotion and ignorance are the enemy. The soldiers who did those horrible things were full of emotions: contempt, disgust, prejudice and probably depression, frustration and they were probably “pi**ed” too. These emotions led to the escape mechanism of abusing prisoners – yes, their abuse was to vent their own emotional imbalances.
Everyone vents now and then. However, folks with excessive emotional imbalances are more prone to harm those around them, intentionally or unintentionally. So for Praktike or you or anyone to let circumstances add to your own distress is counterproductive and in truth, falling prey to these lower forces that feed on hate, fear, anger and discord.
I have responded to these negative events in my own way and created a little test which is designed to fight evil within each individual and to strengthen them so that they can walk through any hellish circumstance and remain completely calm and collected.
There are scientific principles at work which are basically entirely unknown to the larger world at this time and remain in the cloistered domain of the theoretical physicist. One of these concepts is the power of thought. Your physics teacher may have taught you about radio signals heading out into space and being received by other worlds, but this is not just true of radio signals – is true of thoughts as well. Have you ever been around a very angry person only to find you’re suddenly angry as well? What about laughter and humor – have you been around someone who made you laugh just because they were laughing? Know any old married couples who finish eachother’s sentences and know exactly what the other is thinking about? These are manifestations of thought form transference. Just like a radio receiver which can pick up classical, rock or reggae stations, your mind can pick up hate, fear, anger and sadness. The whole human emotional spectrum is reverberating around you.
In Abu Ghraib – the prison is bombarded with residual thoughts of the worst sadists – is it any surprise then that our some of our soldiers suddenly succumb to their worst instincts when they collide with these waveforms from the past.
It was very foolish to use the same facilities. It would have been the same if the GIS used Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen and used them as prisons for Nazis.
So there is more to all these things than meet the eye. Violent emotions are what caused these circumstances in the first place. Fanaticism is really just emotional imbalance. Emotion is kept in check by reason. Islamist fanatics have little reason to contain their emotions and thus their actions illustrate this ignorance. We must be wiser,much wiser.
To defeat this enemy – we must forsake all lower emotions and become beacons of reason in the darkness of emotional despair. You have compassion and understanding already, as do most here, all you need now is to add your reason and understanding to the collective to stabilize the violent emotions that are causing all this suffering. These signals don’t dissipate – they reverberate – and peace and harmony can only arrive if you add your unemotional reason to the mix of human events.
Everywhere I look, even in the more literate blogosphere, I see mostly hair-pulling and name-calling. Emotion spread by folks who are completely unaware and therefore unprotected from these negative happenings.
They have succumbed.
You must not.
Like some virulent plague, the root cause must be isolated and stamped out – and that root cause is unchecked emotion.
For truth, justice and the unemotional way, I remain…
SDAI-Tech1 😉
Jonah Goldberg is a yutz. CBS’s scoop only “got someone killed” if one accepts the terrorists’ premise that Berg’s execution was revenge for Abu Ghraib, which it wasn’t. Berg was taken on April 9, long before this story ever broke publicly, and if there’s one thing Al Qaeda isn’t known for, it’s releasing prisoners. Berg was dead from the word “go,” it was only a matter of the terrorists finding the right pretext.