From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Body Language
Does it strike anyone else that last week was something of a milestone in American
culture? We refer to the aftermath of Uday and Qusay Hussein's deaths in combat.
To get an idea of what we mean, try to put Iraq out of your mind for a moment,
and imagine if in our debut
column, three years ago today (happy birthday to us, by the way), we had
ventured the following prediction:
Remains to Be Seen
Sometime in the next few years the U.S. government will kill two men. Then it will distribute photographs of their bloody corpses and later invite reporters into a mortuary to view the bodies close-up and videotape them. Those tapes will be widely aired in America and elsewhere.
This would have seemed rather far-fetched, even shocking, would it not? After all, the government occasionally kills people--in executions, for example--but to make a show of, say, Timothy McVeigh's corpse would have been a ghastly transgression of civilized norms, even to those of us who favor capital punishment.
Don't get us wrong. We support the decision to release the photographs and allow the videotaping of the Hussein brothers. The government's stated reason--that it was necessary in order to prove to the long-suffering Iraqi people that the Baathist regime is really dead--is sufficient.
There's another benefit upon which hardly anyone has remarked: the deterrent effect. Based on years of experience, Saddam Hussein made the mistake of thinking America was "soft," that fear of casualties or of antiwar sentiment would restrain us from fighting. The Washington Times carries a delightful quote from an erstwhile confidante of Uday, who says he last saw Saddam's lunatic son in early April, when Uday was "depressed": "His final words to me were: 'This time I think the Americans are serious. Bush is not like Clinton. I think this is the end.' "
Uday, it seems, got the message, albeit too late: America doesn't mess around. The graphic evidence of Uday and his brother's fate reinforces that understanding, and surely this will serve to concentrate the minds of other rulers who might be inclined to make an enemy of America. Seeing what happened to Saddam and his family can't help but induce other dictators to solve their differences with the U.S. peacefully.
What's astonishing about all this, though, is that nary a voice of protest has been raised here in America at this gruesome display. Oh, there's been the usual media navel-gazing--or, as Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales put it, "obsessive intra-media debate"--over what to show. (Answer, in most cases: everything.)
There's been some carping from overseas, too, with the Associated Press reporting that "the U.S. decision to show graphic images of Saddam Hussein's two dead sons was criticized by European commentators and human rights groups." The AP notes that "criticism of the U.S. step was harsh in Germany, where the government and most of the population opposed the Iraq war." One German political scientist tells the news service that "the U.S. display of the bodies was likely aimed 'to act as a counterweight to the continuously growing, rationally well-founded criticism of the Iraq war.' "
And of course Reuters gives us the obligatory "Arabs Shocked" story: "Televised images of the bodies of Saddam Hussein's sons shocked many Arabs on Friday, who said it was un-Islamic to exhibit corpses, however much the brothers were loathed." It's hard to take this sort of thing seriously, especially when the very next paragraph informs us that Arab TV stations showed the corpses too.
But while a few Europeans and Arabs complained, Americans--almost every last one of them--shrugged. A few people had made the legalistic (and wrong) argument that the killings were a "political assassination," but did anyone complain about the ghoulish treatment of the brothers' bodies? We kept our eyes and ears open all weekend for dissenting views on this subject, and here's all we were able to find:
- On "Fox News Sunday" yesterday, commentator Juan Williams remarked:
"What goes on with the bodies is troubling to me because I think you
don't mess around with people's bodies. I think that's just . . .
wrong." But he then went on to explain why he nonetheless thought the
decision to show the bodies was the right one.
- Friday's USA Today quoted James Ross of Human Rights Watch's New York office as saying "there's a concern about hypocrisy" because the U.S. complained when the Iraqis showed pictures of American soldiers they had killed. But Ross acknowledged that showing the pictures is not a violation of the Geneva Conventions.
We've heard a lot of jibber-jabber during the past two years over such abstract matters as "international law," "pre-emptive war," "American imperialism," "unilateralism," and on and on. Just lately opponents of the Bush administration have been trying to gin up a controversy by falsely claiming that the president claimed Iraq was an "imminent" threat.
But last week the government did something that in ordinary times would have been regarded as grotesque, and everyone seems to agree it was necessary. This proves that the Sept. 11 attack really did change America. By awakening us to the utter barbarity of our enemies, it weakened some of our civilized inhibitions about fighting back--and none too soon.
Those inhibitions, however, do serve a vital purpose. Weaken them too much, and you can end up with a culture of depraved bloody-mindedness, such as that which has prevailed of late among the Palestinian Arabs. America isn't in any imminent danger of going down this road; we just mention it as something worth thinking about.
We've
Already Won--and We're Still Winning
Quagmire fantasists no doubt see vindication in the recent spike in U.S. casualties
in Iraq. The Associated Press reports on the death of a U.S. soldier in a Baghdad
grenade attack:
The death brought to 49 the number of soldiers killed in a guerrilla war since May 1, when President Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq. In all, 163 U.S. soldiers have died in action in Iraq, 16 more than in the 1991 Gulf War.
While every death of an American serviceman is a tragedy, this sort of scorekeeping is silly. After all, World War II claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans, yet no one claims that war was a "quagmire." The real question is whether these casualties are in a winning cause.
Talk of "quagmire" in Iraq is awfully surreal, given that we've already won the war and ousted the regime. All that remains is to mop up whatever resistance that's left. And a report in today's Washington Post make clear that effort is proceeding apace. "As Iraqi fighters launched guerrilla strikes, the U.S. Army adopted a more nimble approach against unseen adversaries and found new ways to gather intelligence about them," reports the Post's Thomas Ricks:
Thousands of suspected Iraqi fighters were detained over the six-week period, many temporarily, in hundreds of U.S. military raids, most of them conducted in the dead of night. In the expansive region north of Baghdad patrolled by the 4th Infantry Division, more than 300 Iraqi fighters were killed in combat operations, the military officials said. In the same period, U.S. forces in all of Iraq have suffered 39 combat deaths. The continuing casualties--such as the four soldiers killed Saturday--are the direct result of the intensified U.S. offensive, the military officials added.
The best evidence that the enemy is losing: "At the beginning of June, before the U.S. offensives began, the reward for killing an American soldier was about $300, an Army officer said. Now, he said, street youths are being offered as much as $5,000--and are being told that if they refuse, their families will be killed, a development the officer described as a sign of reluctance among once-eager youths to take part in the strikes."
No Raisins Please,
We're Pakistani
"Pakistan has banned the latest issue of Newsweek's international edition,
saying an article on new interpretations of the Quran offends Islam," the
Associated Press reports. The Pakistanis, it appears, are passionately devoted
to the idea that mass murderers will be rewarded in the afterlife with an eternal
sex orgy, for the Newsweek
article reports on a German linguist's view that the notion that "martyrs"
receive 72 virgins is a mistranslation and they actually get 72 "white
raisins."
Dim
Bob
Quick, a trivia question: How many U.S. presidents have been impeached and removed
from office? If you said 10, you must be the senior senator from Florida. On
"Fox News Sunday," Brit Hume asked Bob Graham about his wacky comments
to the effect that Congress should impeach President Bush for liberating Iraq.
Here's Graham's response:
This is a very academic discussion. Tom DeLay and the other leadership of the House of Representatives are not going to impeach George W. Bush. The good news is that in November of 2004, the American people will have a chance to both impeach and remove George W. Bush in one step.
Later in the interview, Graham described himself as having "served two terms as president of Florida."
It's funny, isn't it, that whenever a Republican becomes president--Eisenhower, Ford, Reagan, both Bushes--the media stereotype him as not too bright. (Nixon was the exception; he was evil.) Imagine if President Bush didn't know the difference between an impeachment and a re-election defeat, or if he described himself as "king of the world" (which he sort of is). The media would be all over him. Somehow dumb Dems are able to escape such scrutiny--except, of course, at the ballot box.
Is
This Guy for Real?
"Rep. Dennis Kucinich called for a $60 billion effort to provide universal
preschool and proposed paying for the plan with a 15 percent cut in Pentagon
spending," the Associated Press reports from Ottumwa, Iowa.
OK, we've gotta ask. Is Dennis Kucinich a real person? Sure, Democrats take some pretty loopy positions at times, but the idea of compromising our national defense in order to waste $60 billion on nursery schools, of all things, is just too over the top to be believable. Could it be that some conservative satirist--Chris Buckley? P.J. O'Rourke?--has taken up ventriloquism, and Dennis Kucinich is his dummy?
Jail
to the Chief--II
A couple of weeks back we
noted that Al Sharpton and John Kerry, speaking to the NAACP convention,
both boasted that they had spent time in jail. (Kerry, who by the way served
in Vietnam, apparently was arrested for protesting the Vietnam War.) This isn't
good enough for Marcus Belk of Jersey City, N.J., who is leading a group that
seeks to draft someone who's in prison now--congressman-cum-convict Jim Traficant
of Ohio. With Traficant's permission, Belk last week "filed a signed 'Statement
of Candidacy' form with the Federal Election Commission," reports the Associated
Press.
"Myself and several of my friends were thoroughly dissatisfied with the current choices in the Democratic field," Belk tells the AP. So tell us, Marcus, where did yourself go to school?
It's
Always Bridges and Parties With This Guy
"After more than 40 years in the Senate, Ted Kennedy, 71, is still the
icon of American liberalism. Yet he has also been at the center of recent attempts
to bridge the party divide over issues ranging from education to prescription-drug
benefits."--Time, Aug. 4 issue
Hopeless
in Reuterville
An entertainment icon of the 20th century is dead. Comic, actor and singer Bob
Hope, who turned 100 May 29, died last night. Hope managed to outlive Vincent
Canby, the man who wrote his obituary for the New
York Times.
For the folks at Reuters, Hope's death is yet another occasion to dip into the quagmire:
During the Vietnam war Hope was criticized for being a "hawk" who supported the conflict. But he said he was really a middle-of-the-road supporter who wanted the war ended and even tried twice to visit Hanoi and arrange prisoner releases. His support of the Vietnam [sic] played a major part in eroding his national reputation with many Americans questioning whether he was funny anymore.
These days, many Americans are questioning whether Reuters is honest anymore--or, indeed, if it ever was.
Just
Like Old Times
Those who expect Howell Raines's departure from the New York Times to attenuate
the paper's relentless politicization may be in for a disappointment. Here's
a passage from the food column in yesterday's Times magazine, written by one
Jonathan Reynolds:
If you see a whole monkfish at the market, you'll find its massive mouth scarier than a shark's. Apparently it sits on the bottom of the ocean, opens its Godzilla jaws and waits for poor unsuspecting fishies to swim right into it, not unlike the latest recipients of W's capital-gains cuts.
This is a food column, for crying out loud. Aside from the inappropriateness of the political commentary, this is really bad writing. We had to puzzle over it for several minutes before we realized that in Reynolds's metaphor, both the tax cut and those who benefit from it are fish.
Meanwhile Mike Marshall, editor of the Mobile (Ala.) Register, recounts a correspondence he had with Gail Collins, the Times' editorial-page editor, over Maureen Dowd's dowdification of a quote from President Bush back in May. (If you've forgotten what this is about, click here.) Collins proclaims herself satisfied that Dowd used the unedited quote in a subsequent column, even though neither the Times nor Dowd has ever issued a correction of the original misquote. Result: Dowd's column will no longer appear in the Mobile Register.
Get
Me Rewrite
"America's prison population grew again in 2002 despite a declining crime
rate," the Associated press reports. Of course, this should read: "America's
crime rate declined again in 2002, thanks to an increase in the number of criminals
behind bars."
Hot
Enough for You?
It's even hotter than usual in Phoenix, the Associated Press reports:
About 2,000 inmates living in a barbed-wire-surrounded tent encampment at the Maricopa County Jail have been given permission to strip down to their government-issued pink boxer shorts.
On Wednesday, hundreds of men wearing boxers were either curled up on their bunk beds or chatted in the tents, which reached 138 degrees inside the week before. Many were also swathed in wet, pink towels as sweat collected on their chests and dripped down to their pink socks.
"It feels like you are in a furnace," said James Zanzo't, an inmate who has lived in the tents for 1 1/2 years. "It's inhumane."
Joe Arpaio, the tough-guy sheriff who created the tent city and long ago started making his prisoners wear pink, is not sympathetic. He said Wednesday that he told the inmates: "It's 120 degrees in Iraq and the soldiers are living in tents and they didn't commit any crimes, so shut your mouths."
Kind of puts things in perspective, doesn't it?
What
Would We Do Without Experts?
"Experts Say US Economic Recovery Is Finally Here--Maybe"--headline,
Agence France-Presse, July 27
What
Would the Dixie Chicks Do Without Experts?
"Experts Say Country Music Can't Afford to Lose the Dixie Chicks"--headline,
San Antonio Express-News, July 27
We
Certainly Hope So
"Docs Often Very Upset When Patients Die"--headline, Reuters, July 25
Who
Knew?
"Hogs Found Wallowing in Waste"--headline, Toledo Blade, July 26
Not
Too Brite--CII
"A drunken motorist who crashed and left his baby son crying in the car
wreckage when he fled the police has been jailed for four months," Reuters
reports from London.
Oddly Enough!
Life Imitates the Onion
"Newly Unearthed Time Capsule Just Full of Useless Crap"--headline, the Onion, Oct. 14, 1999
"Much-Anticipated Time Capsule Yields Wet Crud"--headline, Associated Press, July 24, 2003
Picture
This
"Hundreds of Test-Tube Babies Celebrate in U.K."--headline, FoxNews.com,
July 26
Uday,
Qusay and a Ferocious Igpay
"German police deployed a helicopter Monday to track and kill a ferocious
little pig after it attacked some cows, chasing one around a barn until it died,"
Reuters reports from Berlin. "Police launched a search for the pig, scrambling
a helicopter, which located it in a nearby field. 'We surrounded the field and
a marksman killed it with a single shot,' said [police spokesman David] Brauers."
This unilateral targeted assassination is an outrage against civilization. It was likely aimed to act as a counterweight to the continuously growing, rationally well-founded criticism of Germany's support for the swinish Saddam Hussein.
(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Michael Segal, Kevin Gowen, Al Bullock, Steven Platzer, Fritz von Carp, Marty Young, David Schlosser, Rosanne Klass, David Schwartz, C.E.Dobkin, Robert LeChevalier, Natalie Cohen, Jack Connolly, Irfan Khawaja, David Cushing, Scott Ott, Michael Siegel, Robert McCarthy, Jim Lucas, Harry Shualy, Ruth Papazian, Brian Barnhart, H.J. Farmer, Aaron Spetner, Randy Giedry, Rod Pennington, Robert Fredericks, William Adler, Brandt Zembsch, Yitzchak Dorfman, Jennifer Ray, Aaron Gross, Greg Zychowicz, Ben Filippini, William Schultz, Mark Schulze, Brian Ballard, Michael Hutchison and Karen Giles. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Paul Gigot: Iraqis' greatest fear is that America will cut and run.
- Robert Bartley: The BBC and New York Times scandals show that "objectivity" is dead.
- Kay Hymowitz: He's mendacious and obnoxious, so what accounts for Michael Moore's appeal?
