Sunday, June 19, 2005
Accusation fatigue
Mark Steyn, in an essay largely devoted to mocking Dick Durbin (nobody is truly mocked until Steyn has gotten in his whacks), points to the reason without calling it such:
Now let us turn to the ranking Democrat, the big cheese on the committee, Patrick Leahy of Vermont. Leahy thinks Gitmo needs to be closed down and argues as follows:
"America was once very rightly viewed as a leader in human rights and the rule of law, but Guantanamo has drained our leadership, our credibility, and the world's good will for America at alarming rates."
So, until Guantanamo, America was "viewed as a leader in human rights"? Not in 2004, when Abu Ghraib was the atrocity du jour. Not in 2003, when every humanitarian organization on the planet was predicting the deaths of millions of Iraqis from cholera, dysentery and other diseases caused by America's "war for oil." Not in 2002, when the "human rights" lobby filled the streets of Vancouver and London and Rome and Sydney to protest the Bushitler's plans to end the benign reign of good King Saddam. Not the weekend before 9/11 when the human rights grandees of the U.N. "anti-racism" conference met in South Africa to demand America pay reparations for the Rwandan genocide and to cheer Robert Mugabe to the rafters for calling on Britain and America to "apologize unreservedly for their crimes against humanity." If you close Gitmo tomorrow, the world's anti-Americans will look around and within 48 hours alight on something else for Gulag of the Week.
We Americans are quite used to being accused of human rights violations by every dirtbag -- and every apologist for dirtbags -- on the planet. Activist American leftists and their anti-American supporters abroad have been accusing America of atrocities at least since the mid-sixties. According to the left, the United States and its soldiers or agents were criminals by virtue of our dealings in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Chile, Cuba, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Israel, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Angola, Somalia and Ethiopia (I'm sure that I've forgotten a few). We know that wherever we go, whatever we do, we will be committing human rights violations -- at least according to international NGOs, the BBC, most European media, most American professors, most activists in the Democratic party, and most members of the United Nations. Fine. We understand that according to their decadent sense of right and wrong we're the most evil country on Earth. We know that we cannot change thinking of this sort and we've learned to live with it. We come to our own conclusions about right and wrong without reference to what other people think. This may be extremely impractical of us insofar as it makes it very difficult to win this war, but it describes our emotional state and it explains why many Americans cannot be motivated to give a damn by any amount of hysterical rhetoric on the floor of the Senate or in halls of the United Nations.
I will start caring what the world's chattering classes think when they hold non-Americans -- Africans, Arabs, and Chinese in particular -- to the same standards. Until they do, I am forced to conclude that these critics of America are either racist to the core -- they simply expect less of Africans, Arabs and Asians -- or politically anti-American. There is no third explanation. Until then, therefore, I will support our military, knowing full well that the world has never seen a serious war without some violations of law, and that this war is almost certainly the cleanest counterinsurgency since the invention of counterinsurgency.
CWCID: Steyn link via Instapundit.
6 Comments:
By 
Sluggo, at
Sun Jun 19, 11:36:00 PM:
An outstanding, VDHesque post. Just look at the perspiration dripping from the Downing Street Memos. There's just so much invested in the US being in the wrong.
Thanks, TigerHawk.
By ScurvyOaks, at
Mon Jun 20, 10:17:00 AM:
Bravo, TigerHawk. Very well and rightly said.
By 
, at
Mon Jun 20, 12:09:00 PM:
Why am I a racist, anti-American or a nonsupporter of our military if I think that human rights violations are inevitable in war (as you note in your last sentence), but that my country should not claim never to commit any, and should try to do even better? M.
By Gordon Smith, at
Mon Jun 20, 08:57:00 PM:
"Human rights violations are not accidents; they are not random in distribution or effect. Rights violations are, rather, symptoms of deeper pathologies of power and are linked intimately to the social conditions that so often determine who will suffer abuse and who will be shielded from harm." - Paul Farmer
I, too will support our military men and women who are following the orders of their superiors. I will not stand up for torture, however. I will not stand up for Chinese, Sudanese, Taliban, or American torture. I will not say torture is o.k. because it happens during a war. I will not say torture is o.k. because Americans do it.
If you're going to be pro-torture, then come out and say it. Accusing people of conscience of having some sort of character flaw when we point out our own nation's human rights abuses is absurd.
Close all the torture chambers, all the rape rooms. And start here, in America, where we claim to stand tallest for the rights of the individual.
By Gordon Smith, at
Mon Jun 20, 09:04:00 PM:
[sorry for two-posting!]
Ken Melhman must also resign as chairman of the Republican National Committee for defending a Republican ad that compared Democrats to Hitler.
All Republican elected officials must refuse and return any money from organizations associated with Grover Norquist for directly comparing Democrats to Nazis.
Senator Rick Santorum must step down from his leadership position within the Senate for his comments comparing Democratic use of the filibuster to Nazis.
Senator James Inhofe must step down as Chairman of the Committee on Environment and public works, for his likening of the Democratic supported Kyoto treaty to Nazism.
Senator Jeff Sessions must be censured for his likening of a Democratic sponsored bill on stem cell research to Nazism.
Representative Steve King must also be censured for comparing those who support abortion rights to Nazis.
A sense of the Senate resolution rebuking former Senators Tim Cole and Phil Graham for their comparisons of Democrats to Nazis must also be passed.
from MyDD.
By TigerHawk, at
Tue Jun 21, 02:04:00 AM:
M - I don't think we've every claimed to be perfect. The vast majority of the "revelations" of the last year or two (including Abu Ghraib) came from internal investigations launched at the instigation of the military. Potentially criminal acts happen, and they are investigated. I've heard no claim of perfection. My point was a narrow one -- the issue is getting so little traction among average Americans because the Western left (both foreign and domestic) has been screaming about American "abuses" for so long that we are burned out and tuned out. I know that I am.
Screwy - I don't believe that I've called for Durbin's resignation. That is just so much partisan stupidity. Comparing anybody to Hitler or Nazis is just silly, and very poor politics. I don't know about all those other guys, and what they said. I'm sure it was also idiotic.
As for the broader point, I certainly agree that we have to think hard about what we are doing when we incarcerate and interrogate. I also think there is no defense for actual torture. I do think that it is time that we re-open discussion about what should and should not be acceptible coercion for an entirely nihilistic enemy that itself recognizes no Geneva Convention or Marquis of Queensbury rules, even as individuals. That is, a jihadi soldier is not an unwilling conscript like the next poor Karl in the Wehrmacht, but is himself a walking war criminal by definition. There is exactly no hope that Western soldiers will receive any reciprocity. Even the Nazis at least acted like they believed in the Geneva Convention when Westerners were involved. That does not mean you torture, but I do not understand why you can't humiliate them. What is so wrong with wrapping them in the Israeli flag? Or taking advantage of their fear of female immodesty? A lot of the outrage over the really bad stuff has been blunted, I think, by legalistic outrage over trivial stuff.
