The world was sickened and revolted by the abhorrent, quasi-pornographic pictures that United States soldiers took of each other, torturing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib jail. The vile actions of those men and women quashed Washington’s claim to high principles for its Iraqi invasion and cast the US down to a very low moral ground. Now there are new pictures, taken this time not by American soldiers, but by Arab combatants — of an American civilian being beheaded by an alleged Iraqi Al-Qaeda group, of Palestinian militants holding high in triumph a bloody body part from an slain Israeli soldier alongside a copy of the Qur’an — a picture so revolting and outrageous that we could not, would not, publish it.
We were revolted and horrified by the Abu Ghraib photos. They provided proof of what till then had only been darkly hinted. We condemned them — not the photos themselves but the acts they portrayed. We cannot now keep silent when confronted by these new, no less depraved, photographic trophies of war displaying acts even more inhuman.
They are not only revolting, they are also devastatingly damaging. Just as the world was seriously questioning American and British behavior toward the people of occupied Iraq, these barbaric pictures appear. At a stroke, all the international good will and sympathy for the Iraqis and anger with the Americans that followed the prison photos has been dispelled. Washington has been delivered from its shame by ignorant, malevolent hands, acting with as little principle or morality as the Americans who took the prison photos.
It is hardly surprising that the Palestinian leadership has demanded that the Israeli body parts be recovered and returned for proper burial. Those photos are as much a political disaster for the Arabs as the prison ones are for the Americans. A picture can change everything. The Abu Ghraib photos blew away America’s attempts to claim the moral high ground in Iraq; these latest ones pull the rug from underneath the Iraqis and Palestinians, playing straight into Bush’s and Sharon’s hands.
It is already happening on Capitol Hill. US legislators, sickened by the beheading video, are saying that however vile the photographed mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners was, it was not on a par with the filmed hacking off the head of the luckless Nick Berg.
Slowly but surely, moderation and common decency are being squeezed from Iraqi affairs. There is increasingly narrower ground for the reasonable, moderate majority of Iraqis to stand upon. At the same time, rising extremism everywhere, including among coalition soldiers, celebrates its triumphs with bloody images of its savage crimes.
