enough already

Let's begin by stipulating a few things.

The actions of those few soldiers (and possibly civilians) at Abu Ghraib were moronic, sadistic, and wrong.

All implicated should, and will, be prosecuted to the fullest extent.

Even if the total number implicated eventually climbs into the dozens (which is doubtful), that would still represent a vanishingly small percentage of the total number of US servicemen and women serving honorably in Iraq.

So far, not so controversial. But if I have any readers of liberal persuasion, this is perhaps where we will begin to differ.

First: The larger scandal—as distinct from the crimes perpetrated against some of the prisoners—is the complete breakdown of military discipline within the units in question. The root causes of this breakdown must be fully exposed, even (or especially) if it was due in part to gender integration. I am not casting aspersions on the majority of military personnel, who do not engage in proscribed sexual activity with their fellow soldiers. Nonetheless: like so many liberal notions, the idea that men and women can serve in close quarters, under stressful conditions, without an unacceptable level of hanky-panky is yet another triumph of ill-founded hope over basic human experience.

Case in point.

Second: Our heroic press needs to buy a goddamn clue.

It’s all Iraq troubles, all the time, in the Sunday Washington Post’s non-national-news sections.

On H3 in the Arts section, a debate about monster movies features a picture of the naked pyramid, with the caption, “An image from Abu Ghraib. Hollywood’s attempts at horror pale in comparison.” (Below it, Godzilla.) On C8, in the Metro section in an article about the Blue Angels performing at Andrews Air Force base, the crowd reaction includes, “Like many in the crowd yesterday, the Reeds said they strongly disapproved of the prisoner abuses shown in the photographs from Abu Ghraib.” Discussion of the prison abuse continues for six paragraphs.

Let's take roll: The brutal Afghan winter and the spectre of mass starvation; a quagmire to be found in a regrouping pause on the way to Baghdad; mass looting of Iraqi national treasures that wasn't; Dowdifying of presidential quotes in a vain attempt to buoy Joe Wilson's accusations against the Administration; the brutal Baghdad summer; a massive Shi'a uprising that wasn't; &tc.

And now an abuse scandal of massive proportions complete with cover-up that goes all! the way! up! the chain of command! that has thoroughly discredited the Bush presidency. Except, of course, that it's not massive, there's not any evidence of cover-up, and it has not discredited the Administration any more than the lunatic fringe of Democratic Underground can be considered a blemish on all Americans. But it is nonetheless a scandal—indeed, the first genuine one that the press has been able to seize upon. No wonder it becomes incorporated into stories about Godzilla.

Memo to our fourth estate: Enough already—if not for the sake of your own shredded integrity, then because you may well precipitate severe blowback upon your precious Boston Brahmin.

Yet the press is not alone in going to extremes over Abu Ghraib.

Colin Powell, US secretary of state, sought to placate Arab fury over the Abu Ghraib prisoners scandal yesterday but his apology and promises of justice appeared to leave business and political leaders gathered in Jordan unconvinced.

The intensifying diplomatic activity came after US state department officials privately acknowledged a failure to sufficiently work with foreign countries to win support for its war in Iraq last year.

Thus far, we have had the President's unprecedented acknowledgement of the abuses on Arab television; SecDef Rumsfeld's apology during his trip to Baghdad last week; and most recently, Powell's apology in Jordan over the weekend.

It is beginning to get unseemly. Not just because “Arab fury” is pathologically hypocritical: but also because the Administration appears to be fumbling towards the mirage of pan-Arabism.

We have stumbled in Abu Ghraib. But the logic of Abu Ghraib isn't the logic of the Iraq war. We should be able to know the Arab world as it is. We should see through the motives of those in Cairo and Amman and Ramallah and Jeddah, now outraged by Abu Ghraib, who looked away from the terrors of Iraq under the Baathists. Our account is with the Iraqi people: It is their country we liberated, and it is their trust that a few depraved men and women, on the margins of a noble military expedition, have violated. We ought to give the Iraqis the best thing we can do now, reeling as we are under the impact of Abu Ghraib — give them the example of our courts and the transparency of our public life. What we should not be doing is to seek absolution in other Arab lands.

Take this scene from last week, which smacks of the confusion — and panic — of our policies in the aftermath of a cruel April: President Bush apologizing to King Abdullah II of Jordan for the scandal at Abu Ghraib. Peculiar, that apology — owed to Iraq's people, yet forwarded to Jordan. We are still held captive by Pan-Arab politics. We struck into Iraq to free that country from the curse of the Arabism that played havoc with its politics from its very inception as a nation-state. We had thought, or implied, or let Iraqis think, that a new political order would emerge, that the Pan-Arab vocation that had been Iraq's poison would be no more. […]

We can't have this peculiar mix of imperial reach, coupled with such obtuseness. It is odd, and defective in the extreme, that President Bush chose the official daily of the Egyptian regime, Al-Ahram, for yet another interview, another expression of contrition over Abu Ghraib. In the anti-Americanism of Egypt (of Al-Ahram itself), the protestations of our virtue are of no value. In our uncertainty, we now walk into the selective rage of the Egyptians, a popular hostility tethered to the policies of a regime eager to see us fail in Iraq — a regime afraid that the Iraqis may yet steal a march on Egypt into modernity. Cairo has no standing in Iraq. Why not take representatives of a budding Iraqi publication into the sanctuary of the Oval Office and offer a statement of contrition by our leader?

We have a moral obligation to make amends to those who were wronged at our hands.

But enough already of the public self-flagellation.

UPDATE: Guess I could have spared myself the writing of this, and merely pointed to Mark Steyn.

UPDATE 2: And John O'Sullivan.