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Published: Sep 16, 2005 01:41 PM
Wed - April 14, 2004
A Thug By Any Other Name Is Still A Thug
Some acts are so heinous that
appeals to religion, political causes, or cultural referents cannot excuse
them.
Where
were you
when the world went nuts?
From New York, where Islamic fascism took 2,000 lives three years ago, my wife and I watched in disbelief the horrifying images from Fallujah, Iraq: Americans torn from their cars by a joyful mob, beaten, bloodied, dismembered, and set ablaze. Hung from bridges like so many slabs of meat, while their murderers giddily posed for pictures beside the charred bodies like fishermen showing off a record catch.
The images turned our stomachs, but it's the killers' laughter—and an ominous sense of déja vu—that haunted me afterwards. Haven't we witnessed this scene before? White supremacists clasping hands over broken black figures? Nazis standing with one jackboot poised on the shoulders of crumpled Jews? Saddam Hussein's own fedayeen militia sharing cigarettes as the corpses of political opponents rot in shallow graves behind them?
A friend emailed me yesterday that the developments in Fallujah, and throughout Iraq, were unsurprising in light of the U.S. occupation. "When your country and your culture are under assault, you fight back any way you can," she wrote. "What happened was terrible but ultimately understandable in light of our flagrant disregard for international law." My friend has the soul of a social reformer. As a fellow Jew, I know that the brutalities of the Holocaust are forever seared into her consciousness. She once led protests against South African apartheid and marched for broad recognition of gay civil rights. Had she come of age during the 1960s, she would have rallied against segregation too.
Yet her politics prevent her from linking extremist Islamic thugs with other thugs who used similar tactics. And she is not alone. Something about the underdog status of the so-called Iraqi "insurgents" (many of whom are apparently neither Iraqis nor revolutionaries) appeals to many intelligent, compassionate liberals of my acquaintance. It's not that these friends lack patriotism. Far from it. Defending the poor and oppressed of our own society, as they often have, shows great love for democracy. But they take it as an article of faith that all cultures and beliefs deserve respect, that tolerance is essential for world peace, and that the rise of terrorism over the past few years is principally due to Western oppression and lack of understanding.
I consider this kind of moral relatavism dead wrong.
Don't misunderstand me. The world—and especially the Middle East—could benefit from considerably more tolerance and understanding. I recognize the value of brotherhood and feel proud that liberals of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s united different races and ethnicities in the worthy pursuit of equal rights for all Americans. But I sometimes fear that liberal thought has lost its way since then. Many of my liberal friends embrace brotherhood not merely as a powerful means to realize social ends but as an end in itself, whose utopian goal is a world in which all ideas are equally respected. This goal is impossible to realize. Worse still, its pursuit is dangerous.
Tolerance does not imply the absence of moral boundaries. Tolerance does not mean accepting the excuses of men whose desire for personal power motivates them to brutalize others. When I hear friends rationalize the torture and mutilation of American civilians, when they speak of such acts as the inevitable product of an chain of consequence over which the perpetrators lacked control, I can't help feeling that something has gone terribly wrong with their moral compass. It is one thing to say that all beliefs and cultures deserve recognition; it is quite another to say that they warrant respect.
God's greatest gift to mankind was our ability to make choices: To choose between democracy and despotism, between capitalism and communism, between life and death, between right and wrong. The men of Fallujah made such a choice, just as Americans chose on September 12, 2001 to exercise restraint, rather than taking to the streets of New York to burn Muslim mosques and to murder innocent Muslim people. I believe that Americans made the right choice that day because I also believe that it is neither "understandable" nor defensible to set men deliberately ablaze, even when one's country and one's culture are allegedly "under assault."
Some acts defy justification. Some acts are so heinous that appeals to religion, political causes, or cultural referents cannot excuse them. Some acts are inherently evil. The killings of Americans in Fallujah were one of these acts. And it is our collective duty to condemn them—not because we are liberals or conservatives—but because we are human beings.
Sometimes the choices we make are difficult. Sometimes they are easy.
A thug by any other name is still a thug.
From New York, where Islamic fascism took 2,000 lives three years ago, my wife and I watched in disbelief the horrifying images from Fallujah, Iraq: Americans torn from their cars by a joyful mob, beaten, bloodied, dismembered, and set ablaze. Hung from bridges like so many slabs of meat, while their murderers giddily posed for pictures beside the charred bodies like fishermen showing off a record catch.
The images turned our stomachs, but it's the killers' laughter—and an ominous sense of déja vu—that haunted me afterwards. Haven't we witnessed this scene before? White supremacists clasping hands over broken black figures? Nazis standing with one jackboot poised on the shoulders of crumpled Jews? Saddam Hussein's own fedayeen militia sharing cigarettes as the corpses of political opponents rot in shallow graves behind them?
A friend emailed me yesterday that the developments in Fallujah, and throughout Iraq, were unsurprising in light of the U.S. occupation. "When your country and your culture are under assault, you fight back any way you can," she wrote. "What happened was terrible but ultimately understandable in light of our flagrant disregard for international law." My friend has the soul of a social reformer. As a fellow Jew, I know that the brutalities of the Holocaust are forever seared into her consciousness. She once led protests against South African apartheid and marched for broad recognition of gay civil rights. Had she come of age during the 1960s, she would have rallied against segregation too.
Yet her politics prevent her from linking extremist Islamic thugs with other thugs who used similar tactics. And she is not alone. Something about the underdog status of the so-called Iraqi "insurgents" (many of whom are apparently neither Iraqis nor revolutionaries) appeals to many intelligent, compassionate liberals of my acquaintance. It's not that these friends lack patriotism. Far from it. Defending the poor and oppressed of our own society, as they often have, shows great love for democracy. But they take it as an article of faith that all cultures and beliefs deserve respect, that tolerance is essential for world peace, and that the rise of terrorism over the past few years is principally due to Western oppression and lack of understanding.
I consider this kind of moral relatavism dead wrong.
Don't misunderstand me. The world—and especially the Middle East—could benefit from considerably more tolerance and understanding. I recognize the value of brotherhood and feel proud that liberals of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s united different races and ethnicities in the worthy pursuit of equal rights for all Americans. But I sometimes fear that liberal thought has lost its way since then. Many of my liberal friends embrace brotherhood not merely as a powerful means to realize social ends but as an end in itself, whose utopian goal is a world in which all ideas are equally respected. This goal is impossible to realize. Worse still, its pursuit is dangerous.
Tolerance does not imply the absence of moral boundaries. Tolerance does not mean accepting the excuses of men whose desire for personal power motivates them to brutalize others. When I hear friends rationalize the torture and mutilation of American civilians, when they speak of such acts as the inevitable product of an chain of consequence over which the perpetrators lacked control, I can't help feeling that something has gone terribly wrong with their moral compass. It is one thing to say that all beliefs and cultures deserve recognition; it is quite another to say that they warrant respect.
God's greatest gift to mankind was our ability to make choices: To choose between democracy and despotism, between capitalism and communism, between life and death, between right and wrong. The men of Fallujah made such a choice, just as Americans chose on September 12, 2001 to exercise restraint, rather than taking to the streets of New York to burn Muslim mosques and to murder innocent Muslim people. I believe that Americans made the right choice that day because I also believe that it is neither "understandable" nor defensible to set men deliberately ablaze, even when one's country and one's culture are allegedly "under assault."
Some acts defy justification. Some acts are so heinous that appeals to religion, political causes, or cultural referents cannot excuse them. Some acts are inherently evil. The killings of Americans in Fallujah were one of these acts. And it is our collective duty to condemn them—not because we are liberals or conservatives—but because we are human beings.
Sometimes the choices we make are difficult. Sometimes they are easy.
A thug by any other name is still a thug.