John Ross on Islam

John Ross is the author of Unintended Consequences, a book about the "gun culture", and generally a damn smart guy. So when he writes about Islamic terrorism, he gets it right. Read it. Pay attention to it.

The events at Abu Ghraib probably violated the Geneva Conventions for treatment of "prisoners of war". I don't think many of the people there qualified as "prisoners of war". Some were common criminals, some were terrorists. Aside from the possibility that some innocent Iraqis or legitimate prisoners of war may have mistakenly been caught up and involved, who they were doesn't much matter.

What matters is culture.

The tactics used in the pictures that have been released, and discussed in the pictures that have not been released, are tactics designed to break down the psychological support structure of the Islamic culture. They are designed to turn a macho warrior into someone ashamed of himself, ashamed of his culture, ashamed of his friends... someone who is thoroughly cowed and ready to cooperate.

Is it pretty? No. But it's effective, and perversely, publicizing the pictures will make it even more effective, especially on those outside the prison. They'll see those pictures and know that it could be them; that American power has put their friends in that position. They'll be angry, but they'll also be afraid.

The people involved will be punished, because we're supposed to be above torture -- even psychological torture to get information that will save lives. But we're dealing with something that wasn't institutional and barely registers on the scale of "naughty things done by governments".

There comes a time when you have to prioritize. If we can goad a terrorist into taking on a tank with nothing more than his AK by calling him an impotent eater of pigs, I'll take that as a battle tactic. If we can save lives by making terrorists (NOT innocents, and NOT legitimate prisoners of war) prance around in women's underwear and making fun of their ... equipment, so be it.

The ends do not justify the means. Nevertheless, the two are not separable. For the nascent Iraqi democracy to thrive, it must first survive. The law of the jungle rules Iraq right now, more than any council or government or representative President. Before the law of man can take root in Iraq, it must be imposed, and in order to impose it, the American troops must be the biggest, baddest beast in the jungle.

Now that those pictures have been released, any Iraqi who is thinking of making trouble with a gun is going to think of those pictures -- and think again of the wisdom of pissing us off. Can a culture of machismo and misogeny respect a man who, captured, is led around on a leash by an American woman? Can it follow a man whose genitals have been the subject of public mockery? I doubt it.

It's not pretty. It's not moral. It's not justifiable. But neither is war. War dredges up the darkest part of the human soul and turns it loose to run rampant in a field of blood, because to leave an enemy alive is to be slain in your own turn. War is primevil; death is fundamental.

We've spent hundreds of years trying to civilize those impulses out of humanity. We've failed. Inevitably, we will fail. Survival is the need that calls to us all. When it calls, we must answer or perish.

Those fighting Iraq have answered, on both sides, and this is the result. While Iraqi and Al Qaeda insurgents use women and children as human shields, some few Americans laugh at naked terrorists and take pictures, and the newspapers write that we have abandoned our morality even as we court-martial the offenders?

We have abandoned nothing.

We fight for what we believe in. Sometimes, we lose to the external enemy; sometimes, to the internal one.