"You Don't Appreciate What Happened...Until You See It"

The title of this post was Aaron Brown's justification for CNN showing the images of US troops humiliating prisoners (Saddam's former torturers, thugs and enforcers, mostly) at Abu Ghraib prison. Yet this justification is very one-sided: the media's ability to suppress squeamishness and decency to convey Truth only applies, apparently, when the "Truth" reflects badly on America in general, and President Bush and his policies in particular. National Review's Nick Schulz used Aaron Brown's theme to showcase that discrepancy, but was too decent to show the truth himself, and only described it.

I feel that it is necessary to know the enemy, to understand the moral difference between them and us, to have a defense against the constant media drumbeat of defeatism and moral equivalence. As a result, I've seen some of the horrors undertaken by our enemies, and have a context for viewing actions seen through the dim and deliberately clouded lens of Western media coverage. In this post, I intend to expose the full horrors of our enemy.

Warning

Do not go beyond this point unless you are prepared to be shocked and outraged, and frankly, sickened. There is evil and horror here beyond what most people's lives have prepared them for.

National Review's article describing the contents of a video showing a few clips of torture inflicted by Saddam's loyalists. Here is the video. If you can watch this and not see a moral difference between that and what the US soldiers have done - horrible at it is - stop reading now and stay off of my property. I don't want you here.

The beheadings of Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg and Paul Johnson. Note the similarity of display between the Paul Johnson photographs and the beheading of the prisoner by Saddam's fedayeen. Does anyone doubt that the people who do this are evil? Does anyone think that this is limited to one group or subculture? Do you think they would show you more pity?

Lest you think that this method is reserved for Americans, here are a Russian soldier beheaded, a Russian civilian beheaded, and a Muslim civilian impaled.

Here is Frank Gardner, a BBC journalist, shot repeatedly in Saudi Arabia and left to die. Though calling out (in Arabic) "Help me! I am a Muslim!", the crowd standing around did not attempt to help him, even after the terrorists who attacked him had left.

War Nerd has a column on the genocide ongoing in the Sudan. (hat tip: Instapundit) This is text only, and while it describes a horrible situation, it is not as graphic as what is above. Unless you count the picture of the dying boy with the vulture waiting nearby. Basically, the Arab northerners are killing off the black southwesterners of the Darfur tribe (they've already pretty much done in the Dinkas), who are also Muslim but who are of a different racial type. This genocide will likely surpass Rwanda's ethnic slaughter of the mid-1990s, which killed about 1 million people.

So remember these when you hear people - frequently our own elected officials (I'm looking right at you, Ted Kennedy) or our own media (I'm looking right at you CNN) or our own columnists (I'm looking right at at you Christopher Hitchens) - tell us how terrible we are. I think we compare pretty damned well, myself.

In the Arab world, there is the concept of an "honor killing", where a woman who has dishonored the family is killed to restore their "honor". In many of these cases, the woman was raped, frequently by a male family member such as an uncle. Somehow, this makes the woman - or little girl - unclean and dishonored. Then her family kills her - sometimes because they are forced by social pressure and sometimes because they are genuinely outraged, at her - in order to preserve their "honor". This is sadly common in the Arab/Muslim world. Frankly, even after having to check the other images and videos in this post, I could not bring myself to post images of some of the dead girls, one as young as 7, that I found while researching this. I'm going to go off and drink heavily for a while now.

(I hope the links work: I couldn't bear to check them and thus see them again.)

Posted by Jeff at June 19, 2004 12:36 AM | Link Cosmos