Having their cake and hating it, too (Or, Why Do You Hate Iraq?)
Mere days after Bush's grandiose talk of freedom and liberty in his inauguration speech, we get this from Iraq:
On the night of Jan. 5, Imaad and his mother, Um Imaad -- both of whom declined to give their full names for fear of retribution -- were watching a movie in the living room. As in most other parts of the capital for the past two months, their Adhimiya neighborhood has electricity about two hours a day. So the generators outside were humming at about 9 that night, and the television was turned up so they could hear.
Imaad said they were startled by a loud banging at the door. He went quickly to open it. When he did, Imaad said, there were about a dozen U.S. soldiers standing with their guns pointed at his head.
Imaad and his mother said the soldiers rushed in, ordering them to sit together while they searched the house. "You look poor," Imaad recalled one of the soldiers saying. "Why?"
Imaad answered in English: "I have not been able to find a job, although I'm a graduate of the College of Arts." His heart was pounding, Imaad said. His mother, a chatty widow who adores her son, sat next to him, shaking.
The soldiers went to search his bedroom. He heard laughing, and then they called for him, he said. Imaad went to his room and saw that the soldiers had found several magazines he kept hidden from his mother. They had pictures of girls in swimsuits and erotic poses. Imaad said the soldiers spread the magazines on his bed and put his Koran in the middle.
"This is a good match," Imaad said one of the soldiers told him.
"It was a nightmare," he said. "I will never forget those bad soldiers when they put the Koran among the magazines."
Now, this would seem to run entirely counter to Bush's talk of bringing freedom and hope to Iraq. Not only that, but the story goes on to say that Imaad, who once supported the U.S. presence in Iraq, now hates America with a passion -- and some of the descriptions make it sound like he's a prime candidate for al-Qaeda.
So you'd think that the right-wing blogosphere, so enamored of Bush's "freedom" talk and so supportive of our mission to bring democracy to the poor benighted Iraqis, would be outraged that one of the very Iraqi people we're trying to help would be treated like this. But you'd be wrong. Power Line calls it "unintentionally hilarious." LGF calls the story ridiculous and absurd, and its commenters range from calling the Koran itself "pornography" to implying the Washington Post is guilty of treason for even running the story. (UnFairWitness has collected many similar warblogger reactions.)
Before we go any further, we'll point out that the story does indicate Imaad slapped his mom after the American soldiers left, and that isn't cool in any culture. However, the prevailing warblogger opinion seems to be that it completely discredits Imaad's whole story, and we can't figure out why that would be the case. There's a particularly racist strain of condescension in the reactions when they say stuff like "You know how Arabs exaggerate," as if the whole incident was just made up because Muslims can't be counted on to tell the truth.
Is it just us or does it sound like there's a very bizarre disconnect going on with respect to the right wing's running opinion on the Iraq occupation? On the one hand, we're bringing freedom and democracy to those poor oppressed Iraqis, and if you have anything bad to say about that, you're a pinko liberal who wants Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to take over! On the other hand, though, when stuff pops up about American troops sodomizing inmates in Abu Ghraib or humiliating Iraqi civilians for no good purpose, it's, Oh, fuck those guys! Just a bunch of whiny towelheads! Why's everybody making such a big deal out of this, anyway?
Why? Because we, as a country, claimed to be the exact opposite of the kind of people who would do this sort of thing. Our entire moral authority in this mission is predicated upon making Iraqis freer and happier than they were before. Like it or not, we have to treat the Iraqis properly, because this is their country, not ours, we're dealing with. The Iraqi people will either be leaders in the reconstruction and democratization effort, or they can be obstacles; when we pull stuff like Abu Ghraib or the incident linked above, we turn them into the latter. And it's especially galling when we do so for no good reason whatsoever; what, exactly, was the point of pulling out those pictures and magazines? How does humiliating this ordinary, unassuming guy help us in our efforts to root out the insurgency? We may have, in fact, added to said insurgency by driving this angry guy right into the arms of al-Qaeda -- and for what?
You know, whenever one of us liberals talks smack about George Bush or his administration's ham-fisted handling of the occupation, some right-winger inevitably asks us why we don't want the mission to succeed, why we don't want democracy or a better life for the people of Iraq. Yet they turn right around and say Abu Ghraib was a mountain out of a molehill and they laugh at innocent Iraqis who've been insulted or abused by the occupying forces. So maybe it's time for us to ask them: Why don't you want a better life for the people of Iraq? How in the world can you claim to be so concerned about their welfare, so dedicated to their freedom and liberty, and yet be so singularly unconcerned -- even pleased -- when their lives are ruined?
Compounding this disconnect is the sad truth that many of these warbloggers, despite their alleged support for our democratic mission in Iraq, have a subtle (or not-so-subtle, in many cases) contempt for Islam in general. A lot of these people are the kind of folks we talked about in our previous post, who almost instinctively tar all of Islam with the "terrorist" brush anytime there's a terror attack. Well, guess what, guys: This may shock you, but most of the people in Iraq are Muslims. If you think Islam is some great, evil entity undeserving of our respect or our consideration, and thus we shouldn't feel the least bit concerned about pissing them off en masse, then we have to wonder why you were ever concerned about bringing freedom to Iraq in the first place. If you say "We must make Iraq free!" and then turn right around and say "All these Muslims are terrorists, so they deserve whatever they get," don't be the least bit surprised when they turn around and hate our guts.
Look, we're not naive -- we know the military has a job to do. We know that they have to root out and destroy the insurgent element in Iraq, not just for the good of the country but for their own safety. We're not going to stand in the way of accomplishing that, and we also understand that in the course of that mission, they're probably going to rough up some innocent civilians who didn't deserve it; it's unavoidable. But dammit, warbloggers, how can you call yourself a defender of freedom if you take pleasure in that? It's one thing to just ignore it when innocent civilians are humiliated, tortured, or killed; it's even worse to take some kind of perverse satisfaction in it. That kind of behavior strikes us as closer to Uday Hussein than any true patriot we've ever met.
"Oh, but come on, the guy was probably a terrorist." How the hell would you know? Just as you can't brand all Muslims as terrorists, you can't brand all Iraqis as insurgents. When an actual terrorist gets the crap kicked out of him in Iraq, yes, that's a good thing; but when an innocent Iraqi civilian gets the crap kicked out of him because someone didn't care enough to figure out whether he was a terrorist or not, that is a profoundly bad thing, in ways that the right-wing warblogging community appears incapable of understanding.
It's high time someone called out the 101st Fighting Keyboarders and demanded that they make a choice: You can either hate all Muslims or you can support our military's effort to bring freedom and prosperity to the people of Iraq, but you clearly can't do both. You have to decide whether our primary mission in Iraq should be rebuilding the country and uplifting its people, or kicking some towelhead ass. Pick whichever one you want, but once you do, you're stuck with it.
I'll even make you guys a little deal: If you want to let your basest instincts take over and declare that, yes, you think the primary mission should be rounding up the Ay-rabs and showing them who's boss, then declare that and I'll shut up about it. Won't ever pester you again on this particular subject. In return, though, you have to abandon any pretense that you're interested in this mission as a democracy-building exercise. If George W. Bush makes another highfalutin address about revolutionizing the Middle East through liberty, you don't get to cheer or bask self-righteously in the glow of his compassion. And you damn sure don't get to yell "Why do you hate freedom?" the next time I complain that Bush's people are botching the reconstruction.
The choice is yours, warbloggers. But make up your freaking minds.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 2:25 PM
