Alright. Since even after editing (with thanks to pastordan for the proofreading), the letter was still a little too long to send as a normal Letter to the Editor. So instead, I expanded on the original letter, and now I'm thinking of sending it off to USA Today for their little Forum section. Again, any ideas, criticisms, or possible additional points for me to add are appreciated. I know it's likely a bit winding and possibly not quite cohesive enough, but that IS why I'm checking it past you guys. So here it goes...
The news from the Iraq front has been all too grave lately. The gravest: video depicting Nick Berg's violent death at the hands of masked militants. An utterly inhuman act, committed by men without compassion. As awful as that is, though, we should be even more saddened by how this tape is to be used.
There are many demanding revenge for such an act. Some wonder why we concern ourselves with 'petty' outrages over things like Abu Ghraib. Others clamor over how it is proof that the war in Iraq is all too necessary. Even more concerning is that the way incidents such as Abu Gharib are downplayed by prominent Media figures such as Rush Limbaugh, and even US Congressmen such as Sen. Steve King of Iowa, both of whom compare the tortures to mere 'hazing'. Others, like Sen. Inhofe, are outraged about the outrage, wondering why we are so concerned about it when we have problems like the Fallujah incident and the most recent video of Berg's death. They do not seem to realize the problems that this sort of behavior breeds.
What problems would those happen to be, though? The problem that should concern us the most is the way that incidents like Abu Ghraib and the Berg tape have slowly but surely caused us to sink lower and lower as far as how much we are allowed to tolerate. We, as a country, seem to have lowered ourselves to where we can only say that we were not as bad as Saddam as far as torture. We want revenge for what was marketed as an act of revenge itself, and we justify the Abu Ghraib abuse and torture as revenge over the death and mutilation of those in Fallujah, despite many of the acts commited in pictures preceding the actual deaths in Fallujah. We are, slowly and surely, playing the same game as the terrorist we try to fight, falling into a destructive eye-for-an-eye mindset.
It's true, at least one would hope, that our soldiers will likely never stoop to the grusome act of a slow beheading like what Nick Berg suffered. However, we cannot point to a heinous act like that, and believe the sins of those who had a hand in the tortures and abuses to be resolved simply by comparison. It is not a matter of not being 'as bad' as a dictator like Saddam. We've made ourselves out to be a moral authority to the world, and justified our actions in Iraq as for the sake of the Iraqi people, as a savior from the dangers Saddam posed. However, no matter what our motives were, what the motives of the soldiers who committed the acts in Abu Ghraib, or the motives of the all too opinionated in the states, there are clear consequences. The actions in Abu Ghraib make it all too hard to try and pacify an already skeptical, already riled Iraqi populace, as well as the neighboring Arab world. It also provides an excuse for acts commited by those in the video, an excuse that, while possibly ingenuous, can resonate all too well with the very hearts and minds that we're trying to win.
We must realize that to fight a war like this, we cannot play Al-Qaeda's game. We need to prevent them from being able to play the game at all. Heavy handed force against a country speciously connected to terrorists groups like Al-Qaida, out of some wayward idea of making America and the World safer only serves to undermine our prevention, no matter how much we are told that it is working. Violence should be the last, not the first, answer lest we continue the bloody cycle ad infinitum.