Is it too culturally insensitive to conclude that Arab culture is just inherently violent?

flipflop on April 22, 2007 at 12:07 PM

Well don’t know about that. It is incongruent to suggest that the Arab culture is just inherently violent, but oh by the way we are sacrificing our young soldiers to allow them to build a sustainable peace. Pick one.

I was trying to avoid watching the Cubs lose another extra-inning game at home today, and flipped over to “Band of Brothers”, the nuanced lefty production on WWII.

And the only scene I saw depicted the soldiers doing a lot of whining about war in general (npi) and their truck drives by a barn, where Russian soldiers had discovered hiding Germans, and the Russkies take them out in the yard, make them kneel down, and shoot them in the back of the head.

The Americans depicted just sort of shrug as they drive by. War is Hell, and sometimes the demons are on your team, I guess.

Heck, I got worse injuries from ’soccer mom’ shoppers last time I was at Wal-Mart during rush hour.
Literally.

Yes, it would royally suck if such a thing were to happen to someone who was innocent. But as others have alluded to above, war doesn’t give you any good choices. You only have bad choices and worse choices.

BTW, to everybody who was “horrified” by what happened at Abu Graihb, I urge you to read this month’s cover story by Mark Bowden (of Black Hawk Down fame) in The Atlantic Monthly. During interrogation of the guy who finally gave up Zarqawi, the subject was threatened with being imprisoned in Abu Graihb. The threat was persuasive.

Uh, for the record, numbnuts …… We’re the good guys, remember?

Professor Blather on April 22, 2007 at 5:05 PM

It’s hard to remember that when calling others numbnuts

Of course it works. It will take very little torture for me to tell you everything: My ATM Pin #, Where my stash is, what me and little Jenny did when I was 17 years old.

There is no doubt it works.

JayHaw Phrenzie on April 22, 2007 at 10:57 AM

I’m going to shoot this kitten right here if you don’t spill the details. Especially the part about little Jenny. If you have pictures, I’ll let the kitten go free.

If that means torture and death for 25 million Iraqis.. sucks to be Iraqi. ….
(side note: I’m repeatedly surprised to discover how much more liberal this place is than Townhall.)

Hiraghm on April 22, 2007 at 11:35 AM

Uh, for the record, numbnuts – it sure as hell isn’t a “conservative” idea to suggest that we’ll cheerfully murder tens of millions of innocents.

And suggesting that we might try to avoid torturing innocents isn’t exactly a “liberal” idea, either.

Jesus wept. Crap like this is how conservatives get a bad name and liberals get elected.

You can be hawkish on terror and willing to fight to win without becoming evil. We’re the good guys, remember?

That said, lives are at stake. Torture happens sometimes to good people. So does war.

Interesting article which poses some hard questions (pdf version of article here) “The detainee gave us names from the highest to the lowest,” Captain Fowler told the Iraqi soldiers. “He showed us their safe houses, where they store w…

Is it too culturally insensitive to conclude that Arab culture is just inherently violent?

flipflop on April 22, 2007 at 12:07 PM

No.

I dunno who said that, but they have a point.

End of line.

By the time this war is over, most of us in the ‘enlightened’ free world will have approved, accepted and encouraged acts to win that seem completely unacceptable to many of us now.

Yes, there is a great deal of historical animosity at play. But we cannot wrtie these people off when they are finally seeing the dawn of a new society.

There really is a new democracy in the ME. Let’s not abandon it during infancy.

… none, he slipped.

The darn trouble with not being occupiers but being allies, is the host country can do whatever the heck it wants because it’s sovereign.

In the case of this murderer his case is closed. You may execute him at sunrise.

Like I said, I’m not particularly sympathetic to the case of this particular Iraqi, who was setting IEDs. (I wouldn’t say they had probable cause to detain him, but more like reasonable suspicion.) I’m worried about the random guy who gets the treatment and didn’t know anything.

As am I (my reputation for being Pure Evil notwithstanding).

It should be a concern, but you also have to look at it this way: If the Iraqis hadn’t used these methods and, in so doing, risked using them on the Wrong Person™ as well, then we most likely wouldn’t know about the bomb factory now, and how many innocents would have died because of that?

War is Hell, and there really is no perfect way of doing things. It’s all one long cost/benefit analysis, a continuous acceptable risk assessment and, no matter what you choose to do, you’ll end up with dirt on your hands.

At the end of the day, had this guy been innocent, he’d eventually have recovered fully from the beatings. Now, knowing that he wasn’t innocent, and if the Iraqis hadn’t slapped him around, none of the innocents blown to bits by bombs made in that factory would ever recover.

Again, war is Hell and there aren’t any perfect solutions, only less horrible ones.

Hiraghm on April 22, 2007 at 11:35 AM
(side note: I’m repeatedly surprised to discover how much more liberal this place is than Townhall.)

Heh. Make sure Andrew Sullivan sees that when he swoops by here on OUTRAGE! patrol.

Like I said, I’m not particularly sympathetic to the case of this particular Iraqi, who was setting IEDs. (I wouldn’t say they had probable cause to detain him, but more like reasonable suspicion.) I’m worried about the random guy who gets the treatment and didn’t know anything. It’s a moral concern and a strategic concern–once a guy gets horsewhipped with a power cord it’s kind of hard to get him to sing the Iraqi National Anthem.

One of the goals of this war–a very important one–was to free the Iraqis from a regime of arbitrary kidnapping and torture.

It was a goal, but maybe we’d be better served to think of it as a nice one rather than an important one. It’s unpleasant to think of governments doing bad things to innocent citizens, but such things are so prevalent globally as to make them more the norm than the aberration. And it’s hard to make the argument that it’s of America’s vital strategic interest that Iraq possess a government that is as nice to its citizens as our own–from China to Saudi Arabia to Rwanda, we’ve shown we’re quite capable of tolerating a wide spectrum of much less.

What’s truly important is that the Iraqi government does not aid and harbor jihadists, and that Saddam Hussein has been called to accounts for, over the course of 12 years, arrogantly and repeatedly defying the terms of the cease-fire that allowed his regime to survive in the first place. To the extent that this can be achieved by affording Iraqi civilizians greater liberty, wonderful. But maybe we need to stop being quite so concerned about that one, particularly when looking the other way can advance the simple cause of stabilizing a clearly bad situation.

One of the goals of this war–a very important one–was to free the Iraqis from a regime of arbitrary kidnapping and torture

I must have missed that particular news conference. If freeing the Iraqis from a regime of arbitrary kidnapping and torture was a very important goal of this THEATRE of the war, you can pay for it. To put it bluntly, f*** freeing the Iraqis. My army’s purpose is to make the world a better place for AMERICANS. If that means torture and death for 25 million Iraqis.. sucks to be Iraqi. The invasion of Iraq should always have been about pacifyingthe middle-east and ending the power of the cult of Islam. We’ve wasted far too much time and money worrying about the desert trash of Iraq rather than stomping them into a stain and using Iraq and Afghanistan as staging grounds for further progress in the war, such as the invasion of Iran and Syria.
Don’t care what happened to an Iraqi. We got a bomb factory out of him, fine. Give him a noodle and move on.

(side note: I’m repeatedly surprised to discover how much more liberal this place is than Townhall.)

Apparently the kidnapping wasn’t so arbitrary; they coughed up valid info. Would suggest that the Iraqi army had what cops in this country like to call “probable cause”. I could only read a couple paragraphs of that traitorous drivel before closing the window.

If we stay, we may be able to influence the Iraqi army in a more humane and professional direction.

When the Iraqis expand the level of pain that will be inflicted and the US changes nothing in the way we do things, our original position all of a sudden looks reasonable.

It’s called “good cop”, “bad cop”. When run properly the results are amazing. What you don’t see is the “good cop” trashing the “bad cop” to the terrorist. I can think of many other situations where that tecnique could work if we let it.

Of course it works. It will take very little torture for me to tell you everything: My ATM Pin #, Where my stash is, what me and little Jenny did when I was 17 years old.

There is no doubt it works.