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The Gruesome Wheel
Saturday, May 22nd, 2004 12:40 pmThere's something revealing about the coverage of and reaction to the Abu Ghraib torture. Compare the public outrage about Americans under the direction of the Department of Defense building a pyramid of naked prisoners and forcing simulated homosex to the mainstream reaction to the killing of 10,000 or so Iraqi civilians. All things considered, I'd rather be at the bottom of a naked pyramid than at the bottom of a bomb-destroyed building, but the torture of a few is changing things in the way that the deaths of thousands has not.
I suppose this should come as no surprise in a country where a blood, gore, and explosion movie is no big deal, but as soon as an erect penis is on screen the film gets stamped with an X rating.
Incidentally, videos of the beheading of Nick Berg seem a lot harder to find than coverage of the smoking towers two and a half years ago. I got a copy I could watch from http://video.bmj.net/Alluh_Akbar.wmv, but I downloaded some others (including the previous link) that had sound but no video, so maybe the MacOS X Windows Media Player has an issue. Kuro5hin presents a nicely collected list of oddities about the video. I think there's a negative correlation between video quality and conspiracy theories. The article has plenty of good points that aren't challenged by poor visual quality, though.
The reaction around the web for this story is telling, too. It seems that most sites that turn up on Google are politically right wing, with lots of comments to the effect of "See what the terrorists do to Americans! Let's go kill 'em!" It is this mentality that Ghandi criticized when he said "An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind." Muslim terrorists kill 3,000 civilians in America. The US military kills more than 3,000 civilians in Afghanistan. Muslim Terrorists continue mass public killings of varied sizes, targets, and locations. George W. Bush and friends suggest a connection between Saddam Hussein and terrorists and claim he is likely to use weapons to kill thousands of people. US military kills 10,000 civilians in Iraq. Terrorists continue to strike. Have any problems been solved? Has the retaliatory violence of the Israeli military and Palestinian militants resulted in any less violence?
During his interview with Tim Russert, George W. Bush made it very clear that he's a "war president." The subtext is that he is not a peace president. The country has been in a state of war for 32 of 40 months and, unless something surprising happens, 40 of 48. Is that an accomplishment worth commending? I don't think so.
I suppose this should come as no surprise in a country where a blood, gore, and explosion movie is no big deal, but as soon as an erect penis is on screen the film gets stamped with an X rating.
Incidentally, videos of the beheading of Nick Berg seem a lot harder to find than coverage of the smoking towers two and a half years ago. I got a copy I could watch from http://video.bmj.net/Alluh_Akbar.wmv, but I downloaded some others (including the previous link) that had sound but no video, so maybe the MacOS X Windows Media Player has an issue. Kuro5hin presents a nicely collected list of oddities about the video. I think there's a negative correlation between video quality and conspiracy theories. The article has plenty of good points that aren't challenged by poor visual quality, though.
The reaction around the web for this story is telling, too. It seems that most sites that turn up on Google are politically right wing, with lots of comments to the effect of "See what the terrorists do to Americans! Let's go kill 'em!" It is this mentality that Ghandi criticized when he said "An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind." Muslim terrorists kill 3,000 civilians in America. The US military kills more than 3,000 civilians in Afghanistan. Muslim Terrorists continue mass public killings of varied sizes, targets, and locations. George W. Bush and friends suggest a connection between Saddam Hussein and terrorists and claim he is likely to use weapons to kill thousands of people. US military kills 10,000 civilians in Iraq. Terrorists continue to strike. Have any problems been solved? Has the retaliatory violence of the Israeli military and Palestinian militants resulted in any less violence?
During his interview with Tim Russert, George W. Bush made it very clear that he's a "war president." The subtext is that he is not a peace president. The country has been in a state of war for 32 of 40 months and, unless something surprising happens, 40 of 48. Is that an accomplishment worth commending? I don't think so.
