Conservative apologists for Abu Ghraib

There is a disturbing trend on the fringes of the debate over the horrific imagery from Abu Ghraib: defending, or attempting to minimize, the abuses. I'm not refering to the idiotic Limbaugh drivel about how Abu Ghraib was just a glorified hazing. I'm talking about fairly serious commentators doing the "yeah but" routine, such as Intellectual Conservative's Aaron Goldstein:


http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article3407.html


Goldstein writes, "Nonetheless, the self righteous indignation of the Washington Press Corps and the Left demonstrates they care more about toppling the Bush Administration than they do about the plight of Iraqis." He goes on to tell us that the abuses took place in January, not in April, as if that was important.

Now, as far as I know, these prisoners, the latest photo of which shows a naked man being bitten by an attack dog, are Iraqis, no? And certainly the sad story behind the specific Iraqi portrayed in one of these photos bruised, dead, and on an iced stretcher would count as an Iraqi plight. But so long as the President runs the risk of being "toppled", this is just grist for a partisan mill, I suppose.

Goldstein then rambles over to the story of the four contractors, for whom Fallujah got flattened. And you know, this was an awful thing. I am not going to minimize it, and I am not going to "yeah but" it. My initial reaction to such a thing was "Jesus wept" (not very Muslim of me, but I am a Christian after all. :-)

He suggests, however, that the media ignored this story. Now this was only a few short weeks ago, and I seem to recall this as the 24/7 story of the week. There was nothing but discussion of this incident, and I can remember the networks agonizing about how much charred flesh to show. So I have to ask - what the devil is the writer talking about!?

Then Goldstein gets really weird and starts talking about Sudan. Now as a Christian, I am more bothered by the Sudanese massacres than, well, just about anything. But is it not clear what Goldstein is attempting? He's like the vagabond snatching an old lady's purse while a murder fortuitously happens across the street: "Look, um... over there! That guy's much awfuller!!"

The fact is we all look up to the United States. Even in the parts of the world where they claim to hate the US and call it the "Great Satan", I'd bet good money that secretly many folks admire at least the idealistic democratic vision that Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, et al had in mind for a great Republic.

As a result, yes, the world wants to hold the US to a higher standard. And why not? I mean - would a great country known for its fairness and decency want to be on the same baseline as Britain, France, Canada... or Sudan - when evaluating how fair a society is to its prisoners?

I keep forgetting though, don't I... Britain is involved in this, too. And Canada's soldiers beat a guy to death in Somalia.

*sigh*