The right wingers in the U.S. have supported torture, sexual humiliation and religious degradation. While no one would say that all or most or even very many troops have done these things, it is also the case that these are not isolated incidents. They were part of a policy approved at the very highest levels of the government.

By portraying them as "a few" isolated incidents, you are doing nothing more than repeating a series of lies passed along by the same Bush administration that entered Iraq on a pretext, had provided inadequate planning and leadership in the conduct of the war, and which conceived and ordered the torture of P.O.W.s in contrevention of American values, history, practice and decency.

Your politics have caused you to abandon your moral standards. Your minimization and denial of what has happened amount to approval of what has happened. You have become moral relativists. You have allowed terrorists to dictate your morals. That is really tragic.

Willysnout,

I find it hard to understand being disrepectful to something manufactured by a machine can in any way reflect on my or anyone elses morality.

Obviously, if we were discussing a Koran that had been hand transcribed by a cleric then that item would deserve a special respect.

Unfortunately, the Gutenburg Printing Press ended hand transcription hundreds of years ago.

Is is being disrepectful if I destroy my PDF copy of the Koran from my hard disk?

The idea that rules attached to books that were hand transcribed in the 10th century should be applied to a machine made book is rediculous.

In the 10th century, ALL written works were considered either Holy or priceless.

You really don't get it. What you think or I think isn't the issue. If the U.S. seriously wants to appeal to the hearts and minds of the Muslim world -- if that's not just one more of many empty phrases thrown at a credulous public by your president -- then it will have to pay attention to what THEY think. Not what we think, what THEY think.

Their religion deems it a grievous insult to defile a Koran. There is a whole series of rituals surrounding it. Think of Islam as a blend of evanglical Protestanism with respect to the personalization of one's faith and Orthodox Judaism with respect to the role than "law" plays in daily life, and you might begin to get a sense of it.

Now, if you insist on not paying attention -- if you regard stupidity and indifference as your American birthright and duty -- then go right ahead and keep ignoring all of this. And prepare for the U.S. military to have its ass handed to them by the very people whose "freedom" we have been told we are there to protect.

If we are there to protect their "freedom," I'd say one of the first manifestations is their "freedom" not to have their religion stepped on, pissed on, perverted and then photographed that way by those who claim to be on their side. To you, my thoughts are treason. To me, it's good old American common sense. You don't win friends and influence people by spitting in their face.

Choice is yours.

Just think, we could have avoided the whole lack of armor controversy. There would have been one less manufactured story by the MSM if we had only all worn giant korans. We could have walked around looking like schlepping sidewald venders in New York City safe in our knowledge that a good muslim would never harm his holy book.

Willysnout,

The problem that we have isn't with them being annoyed by maltreatment per se. Our problem lies with the selective bashing of the U.S., but NOT the adherents themselves. We also recoil from the foul stench of Islamic hypocrisy (Buddhist statues destroyed by the Taliban, the defiling of the Church of the Nativity are only two of the innumerable headliners there).

PSGI, we can't control what they do, but we can control what we do. If we justify torture, "sexual humiliation" and religious degradation by pointing to their bad behavior, then we have allowed them to determine our values and our morals. I am truly surprised that the American right wing, which for years has ranted and raved against the "moral relativism" of the liberals, would rush to embrace it now.

Oh, and before any of the Bushbots here pulls that little string on the back of their neck and trots out the "isolated incidents" line, check what this traitor had to say about it:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/21/60minutes/main618896.shtml

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22922-2003Dec22?language=printer

Willysnout,
There's no evidence that it's America's policy to torture prisoners. And one shouldn't say so unless they have solid proof, not speculation. Otherwise it's malicious gossip. Lke all malicious gossip it can have serious consequences.

Muslims value the Qur'an and are inclined to get upset if they believe it is abused. Therefore it was irresponsible of the press to mention the Qur'an incident even if the story was true, because it hurts America in a time of war. It also endangers our men and women in Irag. There is no purpose to publicly reveal that American quards may have touched a Qur'an in a way that Muslims may find offensive. Simply no purpose at all. Unless, of course one hates George Bush so much that they will do anything to make him fail in the Middle-East, even endanger Americans in the military.

As for your comments about the right-wingers. Because someone rightly criticizes the dangerous over emphasis placed on this issue, doesn't mean they support torture.

Willysnout, hatred has a way of turning around and biting the behind of the hater. Maybe you need to keep an eye on your derriere.

Willysnout, I'm getting so tired of their incessant whining about everything, I don't feel like accommodating them at all. I don't give a big rat's ass whether they like us or not.

Islamists started this problem by killing a large number of innocent people on 9/11, and have continued it by slicing off the heads, blowing up, and torturing more innocent civilians. What's to like about them? If they were in a first grade class, they would not have any friends on the playground.

Stop apologizing for them! They are out to kill you too, whether you stand up for them or not.

"If the U.S. seriously wants to appeal to the hearts and minds of the Muslim world--"
Apparently you think their hearts and minds can be changed to conform to yours. Think again. Extreme Islam can never be reasoned with. Ninth century thinking will never embrace that of the twenty-first.

This might give a new perspective on things willy.

Several essays on the topic here.

An American Expat in Southeast Asia

LHM, I read the blog you suggested. I'm not going to comment on every item because it would take too much space. Rather, I will say that in no way would I want to live in a theocracy, be it Muslim or any other. I was born and raised Catholic, and though I'd now call myself "secular" you know what they say: "Once a Catholic, always a Catholic."

There are a variety of aspects of Islam that I object to. Most of these elements ultimately go back to the incontrovertible fact that Islam has not gone through a Reformation, and that the secular Enlightment has not penetrated the Muslim world. Of course, the Enlightenment remains highly controversial in the West, as the battles over issues like evolution, gay rights and whether or not America is a "Christian Nation" would attest.

Mudville and most of the rest of the "support the troops" sites are right wing, and there are some common threads among the right wing. One is that any criticism of the war or its conduct is unpatriotic at best, treasonous at worst. A subset of this view is that opposition to torture, "sexual humiliation" and disrespect for the Islamic faith of detainees is tentamount to "taking the side of the terrorists" and/or siding with Islam against our country.

Most of you are so bound and determined to hold these views that you will actively reject contrary facts, and condemn as traitors those who discover and publicize them. This can be seen vividly in your reactions to the torture, which was indeed a policy as Seymour Hersh has shown and as retired Gen. Anthony Zinni has confirmed.

My answer to the right-wing condemnation is as follows. First, as I've said, I'm anything but a Muslim. I find their religion interesting, but that's because I find a lot of things interesting. To study something is not to sympathize with it, but rather to understand it. Islamic Law is, to me, too harsh, and the faith in general is un-Reformed and therefore not something I could consider for myself.

Secondly, I think your president -- I will never consider Bush to be "my president" just as you never considered Clinton to be yours -- invaded Iraq on false pretenses. So, I oppose the war. However, my view is congruent with Zinni's. Now that we're there, we have to finish the job. I just wish I really knew what the "job" is. Your president has defined "the job" in unachievable terms. Iraq will never be a Western-style democracy because it is an Islamic culture, and Islam does not allow for our system.

Thirdly, I "support the troops" as much as any of you do. In fact, probably more so to judge from the $11,000 I have spent to date on care packages for them. These are Americans in harm's way, and when it comes to their welfare the politics stop at the water's edge. My packages include a letter with no mention or hint of political content. No left-wing "code." I wonder if the right-wingers who send packages to the troops could honestly say the same.

Fourthly, as it concerns torture, etc., those things are wrong and they are wrong at all times and in all places. I don't care what terrorists do to us, it is wrong to torture and "sexually humiliate" prisoners, and it is wrong to purposely degrade their religion. It's also not very bright, and if there's one thing I expect from the leaders of my country it is intelligence. We have 300 million people in this country, which statisticall means we have 4 million adult geniuses. I want some of them to be working for the government.

Finally, I don't think we do each other or ourselves as a whole any favors by avoiding the truth. We're all entitled to our own opinions but we're not entitled to our own facts.

Willy, that was well said, and thank you for supporting the troops.

You are wrong in saying that democracy is incompatible with Islam. Just have a look at Turkey. It's not necessarily a Western-style democracy, but it IS a democracy.

As you said, we are not entitled to make up facts. It is a fact that Islamist rioters used the Newsweek story as a pretext to kill fifteen people. It is a fact that most members of "The Fourth Estate" consider themselves politically liberal. It is a fact that these few isolated incidents are being portrayed in the press as part of a pervasive pattern, while the extraordinary lengths to which our military has gone to accomodate and demonstrate respect for Islam is ignored. It is a fact that arhabi will seize on these press reports, inflate them, and use them to recruit more suicide bombers to kill Iraqi women and chilren.

Given these indisputable facts - that this story has already gotten people killed and will result in more people getting killed - how can it be considered a "good thing" to not only publish it in the first place, but to continually beat the drum?

The only rational conclusion that I can see is that the press wants to see George Bush fail than it want to see peace in the Middle East succeed.

I would suggest that people actually take the trouble to learn about Islam before making pronouncements on it. I would never become a Muslim nor would I want to live in a Muslim society, but in a world where the tools of mass destruction are only getting cheaper and easier to obtain -- regardless of what your president might want to do about it -- it would be smart if the U.S. would bother to learn about Islam at least to the degree necessary to avoid pointless and outrageous offenses against the overwhelming majority of Muslims who are not terrorists.

When the U.S. government dreams up and then implements a policy specifically aimed at degrading the Islamic faith and values of P.O.W.s, as well as at torturing captives, we do OURSELVES no favors. If you want to hate Islam, go right ahead. Obviously most of you do. But as a practical matter, I don't think it's a good idea to degrade the religion at a time when we need at least the acquiescence of the Islamic world in bringing "freedom" to it.

As for torture, it doesn't work. It is against what we stand for. It is wrong at all times and in all places. Those of you who continue to insist, in spite of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, that these were isolated incidents and not a policy are nothing more than useful idiots. You are being played for fools by people who lack the morals, ethics and values that we Americans ought to be living by.

The truth is always its own reward. Hiding from the truth doesn't change the truth. But for the first batch of Abu Ghraib photos, you people would be denying that any torture or degradation took place. The second batch will show just how sick you've been to defend the U.S. government.

You are moral relativists. You claim to be for truth and freedom, but when push comes to shove you will toss them away to avoid embarrassment. This country didn't get to where it is today by lying to itself, and it's not going to survive too long if we insist on doing it now.