Demosophia

The "Good News" about Abu Ghraib

Just to second Armed Liberal's opinion, I get the impression that people don't quite view his position that this event is, in fact, "good news," as quite sincere. I know A.L. well enough, and his positions are close enough to my own, that I think I can vouch for the fact that he is sincere in viewing this as a positive. He is not painstakingly "looking for the silver lining," as many of his respondents appear to believe. In a few words, there is not an element of cynicism in his "realism."

Paul Berman wrote a book recently on the theme that "liberalism" in the 20th Century wasn't quite up to the task of defeating totalitarianism once-and-for-all, chiefly because it was a little naive about human nature. To combat Totalitarianism 3.x we may, in fact, need the equivalent of Liberalism 3.x, and in a sense that involves the recognition that whatever aspects of human nature that tend to rot the foundations we've establish must be confronted and expunged as they occur, regardless of the consequences. It's the "marathon view" of culture.

We be doin' it, and that is good news; because absent that element of realism and "grit" in the decoction of the elixir we're attempting to administer we're more or less doomed to keep going over the same old ground, interminably. So let the totalists and the professional pessimists have their little say, because what's revealed here is that they have no real long term strategy in the race. What this says is that we can probably defeat totalitarianism, though it'll be a very long haul. Longer than most of the naive liberals think... So it's the naive liberals that probably need the most compassion here; the folks like j. Kerry and e. Kennedy, whose faith is not yet on par with their doubts. They can be understood, in context.

As an aside, I once had a Jordanian roommate who had been a cadet at Sandhurst. He was, without a doubt, the best roommate I ever had. I thought the fellow was both philosophically deep, humanely genuine, funny, and loving. I regret that our friendship hasn't picked up where it left off in 1998 when he returned to Jordan to become part of the Abdullah regime. During his stint at Sandhurst, where he achieved the distinction of becoming the top foreign cadet at that storied institution, he was given a dispensation, because of his profound modesty, to shower separately from the rest of the Sandhurst cadets. We really need to understand how profoundly these pictures violate that sense of male modesty in the Muslim world. It really isn't the concept of "torture," in the sense that we normally think of it, that defines that sense of outrage. It's the violation of that sense of modesty that we have to understand, and speak to in compassionate terms. That will get us heard, and perhaps understood. Because, in fact, we have a common and rather profound sense of shame, that could form the basis of a new understanding and respect. We are not so unlike, after all.