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There's a bit of a buzz today with the release of new, "disturbing" photographs from Abu Ghraib, the Baghdad Correctional Facility where cases of abuse and mistreatment of prisoners in 2004 created a firestorm of far-left wing condemnation of the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq.
Are these new photos significant?
Of course the first batch of images were disturbing, especially as they represented the actions of rogue service personnel who in no way represented the U.S. military's increasingly powerful ethic of compliance with the laws of war and principles of non-combatant immunity.
But check out the take on this at JammieWearingFool:
They're being plugged as disturbing. Maybe I'll be disturbed by the fact the New York Times now has seven months of fresh material leading up to the election.
I figure they can't keep making up stores about John McCain, so this will give them cause to just keep bashing Bush.
Fresh material alright.
The left's already scrambling to put out the renewed meme arguing that the ultimate font of terror in the world resides in Washington and its wars of imperial agression:
Here's this from The Impolitic:
Frankly, I'm not as disturbed by the images of torture and mayhem perpetrated by American "warriors" as by some of the public response you can see at Wired.com where Abu Ghraib photos have been published. It's the ones that argue "this is a war and in a war. . ." and the ones that say "but these are Muslims and they would be happy to eat your children, yada, yada" that make me most ashamed to have any association with this self righteous and evil nation. They've made me evil too; Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld and their puppet George Bush. I'm part of it because all I do is complain. I don't risk losing my life to end it, nor even my freedom. All I do is blog and go about my life of comfort and safety.
I got a video in my e-mail yesterday. I don't know whether it was staged or real, but it showed some US military personnel walking through an airport while people stood up and applauded. No one could have been thinking of the archive of pictures on view at UnderMars.com They aren't returning from a parade ground, but from hell and a hell the United States of America created with eagerness and enthusiasm and lies.Men with plastic bags on their heads being beaten, smiling "warriors" posing with corpses, a man's severed penis in a mousetrap, blood and pain and shit; these are things many Americans think "you do in a war" even though you started the war and of course anyone caught up in the grinder is promoted to the ranks of the "terrorists" who bombed New York even though they didn't.
So clap when you see our soldiers; I'm sure nearly all of them are good people, but don't call them warriors. Warriors take scalps, soldiers are responsible for their actions. Warriors represent themselves, soldiers represent us and when there's blood on their hands, it's on our hands too and remember, when John McCain tries to tell you this is noble, this is about protecting your sainted mother, your back yard barbecue and your civil rights - it isn't. It's about water up the nose, the cattle prod up the ass, bloody teeth spilling out like corn from a popper; it's about rape, about shit and piss and blood on the floor being wiped up with the flag we're supposed to worship like some tawdry pagan idol.
It's about millions of homeless innocents, about a lost generation of uneducated children brought up in terror and squalor and hate. It's about people whose crime was fighting for their homes being tortured like John McCain who once was tortured by those whose homes and children he was destroying. It's about evil. It's about me and about you justifying it all by just calling it war.
The Impolitic's low traffic profile among the nihilist left-blogosphere belies its consistency as a template of the most hardened anti-Americanism among the antiwar, multiculturalist Bush-bashing hordes.
This is the blog that applaued the story of al Qaeda's rumored deployment of women suicide bombers believed to have Down's syndrome, praising the terrorists for their "brilliant" military adaptation against U.S. and Iraqi forces.
But to summarize, the abuse at Abu Graib was a reprehensible violation of America's commitment to the international law and norms of human rights protection in wartime.
Criminal prosecutions of the perpetrators followed, however, resulting in the convictions of eleven lower-ranking soldiers accused of committing physical abuse and sexual humiliation of Abu Ghraib detainees.
This Wall Street Journal editorial highlights a key international relations election issue that's been out of the media glare with so much talk about Iraq: Will the next president expand America's historic commitment to free trade, global markets, and the internationalization of economic opportunity?
The answer's less clear on the Democratic side:
Democrats claim the world hates America because President Bush has behaved like a global bully. But we don't recall him ever ordering an ally to rewrite an existing agreement on American terms -- or else.
Yet that's exactly what both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are now promising to do to our closest neighbors, Mexico and Canada. At their Ohio debate on Tuesday, first Mrs. Clinton, followed ever so quickly by Mr. Obama, pledged to pull America out of the North American Free Trade Agreement if the two countries don't agree to rewrite it on Yankee terms. How's that for global "unilateralism"?
Democrats sure have come a long way from the 1990s, when Bill Clinton pushed Nafta through a Democratic Congress. And the truth is that both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama have spoken favorably about Nafta in the past. Yet now they are sounding the loudest protectionist notes by a potential President in decades. More dangerous, neither is telling the truth about the role of trade in the U.S. economy. If either one makes it to the White House, he or she will carry the weight of this campaign protectionism while trying to lead the global economy.
Protectionism has been an important theme throughout the campaign. See my earlier post, "Iowa Voters Jittery on Trade Policy."
But the gains from trade remain largely uncontroversial among economists.
But note further WSJ's editorial, which highlights the gains to both Canada and Mexico from the North America Free Trade Agreement. Especially interesting here is Barack Obama's statements on trade. He campaigned as a free trader in earlier phases of his political career. Now he wants to roll back America's commitment to free international markets: He's like John Kerry on trade policy: He was for trade liberalization before he was against it.
What will the world be like in 2009, after George W. Bush exits the presidency? Not a bad place, but challenges remain, according to Victor David Hanson:
When President George Bush leaves office, will America once again be liked by most of the world? Not necessarily, since most current problems are either already getting better or not our fault.
When the next president takes office in January 2009, he or she will be confronted by a world that either understandably appreciates America or for self-interested reasons will challenge it.
On the positive side, the new president will see a Middle East without the Taliban in charge in Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein ruling Iraq. A stabilizing constitutional Iraq should result in a steadily diminishing American presence there.
In Europe, the French under Nicolas Sarkozy and the Germans under Angela Merkel will remain pro-American. But they will also expect continued American leadership. Both may talk grandly of the Atlantic Alliance, but in real terms they do little to help us in Afghanistan or elsewhere.
Most of Africa likewise is already friendly to the United States. And why not? President Bush extended more humanitarian aid to combat African hunger and disease than any president in our history.
But what of our enemies? Won't adversaries back off when the Christian cowboy George Bush rides back to Texas -- and we have a kinder, gentler commander-in-chief who offers hope, or at least change, to the world?
Hardly.
There are plenty of problems that both antedated George Bush and are likely to continue well after he's left office.
These problems include authoritarianism in Russia, which preceded the Bush administration, and Iran's nuclear challenge, which will be here for as long as it takes to disarm the mad mullahs in Tehran.
For more on the world after Bush, see "A New Middle East, After All: What George W. Bush Hath Wrought."
