Seymour Hersh has been making the rounds with his latest big fat GOTCHA, like a dog with the biggest juiciest bone he's ever found, and I've decided that it's not really the factual inaccuracies, or the obvious glee with which he pushes the hyperbolic notion that this is the My Lai of our age, or even the fact that he obviously hasn't bothered to look around the corner at what might happen should we really blow it as badly as he claims we have. Nope, what bothers me about Hersh is the way he treats the very idea of shame, as though it's a prerogative of Islamic culture that we've failed, in our typically Philistine-like way, to give proper credence, as though inducing shame were actually equivalent to mass murder!
Isn't it the ultimate example of Tu Quoque that Hersh perceives the exposure of shame as something especially and uniquely damning the West, while it simultaneously absolves the East of any responsibility for giving birth to Totalitarianism 3.0 or the suicide terrorist as a "smart weapon?" Even if our clandestine services did, in fact, routinely inflict the sort of shame on Muslim men that these pictures suggest, does it really amount to atrocity? Is it equivalent, for instance, to Amritsar?
Just why is it that we think it's fair for the Muslim world to characterize the entire US as equivalent to our lowest common denominator, when they obviously expect a pass on the issue of suicide terrorism, even while an enormous plurality (majority?) of folks in the Middle East support it whole-heartedly? Does shame (both theirs and ours) really deserve that much deference?
What I'm driving at here, and possibly giving only inept expression, is the anima mundi expressed eloquently by Frederick Turner that elevating the avoidance of shame to the degree played in both Western Counter-enlightenment culture, and the world of Islam, dulls our capacity to recognize both beauty and ugliness. And it is only that capacity for experiencing Beauty that holds out any real promise of guiding both our cultures out of this mess. It seems to me that we don't have to indulge in the sacrilege that suggests we abandon our best motives in deference to our worst. This event has given us a golden opportunity to cross an immense cultural divide, but not if we listen to the likes of Seymour Hersh... because he's just far too ashamed of his own culture, and far too fearful of that shame, to participate in any sort of communicative act that goes much beyond rank condescension falsely masquerading as "respect."
If we did, in fact, engage in the sort of things Hersh claims are all but routine in our prisons, just how does that "shock" the Arab Middle East, as an Arab pundit recently claimed on PBS Nightly News, when it really appears that they expect much much worse of us? In fact, wouldn't one be tempted to think they might be a little relieved at these revelations, as opposed to the stark contrast that they fear? I mean, perhaps it'll result in a net decline in the balance of shame in the Middle East, if we can deal effectively with the muckrakers and their shameless cultural perversions, rather than succumb to them. (And it can't really be that tough to deal with, can it? I mean, they aren't really very formidable.)
Now, I'm not attempting to rationalize these things. The events at Abu Ghraib were pretty bad, although I would like to know whether that fellow standing on the box was really connected to a power source, or he was merely told that (which would be something reminiscent of an episode of Fear Factor). But I think I can live with the fact that we fall well short of perfect, and I damn well expect the people of the Middle East to make that leap as well, because I don't feel inclined to condescend to their absolutely ugly self-image. I'm prepared to see something amazing. And, for their part, if they really expected perfection of us then their eventual disappointment was inevitable.
The deep and abiding social problems that persist in that land weren't created by us, and it's just possible that a sense of understanding that emerges from some source other than the Arab world's own tortured self-image, might actually be something to celebrate. But we really do need to do something about this Western media establishment, because it just isn't "getting it." I don't think I want to give up on democratizing the Middle East, avoiding Wretchard's "Second Conjecture," just because Hersh wants to milk the Gotcha for all it's worth. I think I can give it the proper weight without consulting a media community that no longer has any respect for any damn thing other than the latest and greatest Tu Quoque. Anyway, I think this is part of the reason we're in the Middle East in the first place, and it certainly doesn't represent the reason we ought to get out. What we need, instead, is a thorough fisking of the Counter-enlightenment notions that would equate the exploitation of shame with mass murder. It says something about the philosophy that holds such a value, that it just isn't quite, er... rational.
Seymour Hersh has always been a muckraker, and that's probably all he'll ever be. My Lai? C'mon, it's time to grow up a little.
[Update: Here's a link to an article by VDH that struggles with some of the same issues I've raised in this post.]
excellent post. as often happens, you put into words precisely what i was thinking and so i've nothing to add.
Posted by: Blixa at May 4, 2004 01:37 PM