Peggy Noonan is sobered by the prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq, and rightly so.
Because we are a free-press, free-expression nation in the media age, we tell the world our sins. Many will not receive the latest in a way that involves jumping up and down and exclaiming, "See the fruits of free inquiry, what a country!" Publication of the photos and reports we've seen so far inflames our enemies in a time of active war. This is a danger to us. At some point down the road some terrorist will testify that it was the picture of his masked and naked countrymen posing behind them that sealed his commitment to jihad. And yet there is no way around this. In fact this scandal is like a little metaphor for the Iraq experience itself: Whatever your opinion was, there's now no way round it but through it.The best we can do is what we've done and had no choice but to do: Reveal these things for all the world to see. Redress, reform, repair, reprimand and remove.
As she does so often, Noonan also notices an overlooked aspect to the events.
The most distressing of the scandal photos is, to me, the one of an American woman, a GI, who is laughing, holding a cigarette and aiming her fingers as if comically shooting or aiming at a group of prisoners, presumably Iraqi. They are naked and hooded. She looks coarse, cruel, perhaps drunk. And as I looked at her I thought Oh, no. This is not equality but mutual degradation.Posted by Alan at May 6, 2004 06:28 AMCan anyone imagine a WAC of 1945, or a WAVE of 1965, acting in this manner? I can't. Because WACs and WAVEs were not only members of the American armed forces, which responsibility brought its own demands in terms of dignity and bearing; they were women. They apparently did not think they had to prove they were men, or men at their worst. I've never seen evidence to suggest the old-time WACs and WAVEs had to delve down into some coarse and vulgar part of their nature to fit in, to show they were one of the guys, as tough as the guys, as ugly at their ugliest.
But the young woman soldier in the scandal photo--she looked, shall we say, confused about these issues. It was chilling. Perhaps we should be worrying about that, too.