The tragic events that came out of Newsweek’s publishing an inaccurate story shine a light on some unfortunate facts. One is that Americans need to realize that the presumption of innocence is no longer granted to them, their policies, or their military. The war against terror and Iraq has led to some disasters and some atrocities.

The accidental bombing of civilians or the death of civilians simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time is tragic. We should not be surprised that the victims of mistakes are not cheerleading American policies.

The atrocities of Abu Ghraib — and those alleged to have taken place at Guantanamo — are just that: Atrocities. They are horrors both because of what they were in themselves as well as what they said about our self-image as a country.

Americans generally believe — rightly, in my opinion — that they normally act on the side of good and righteousness. But it is a fact that our soldiers are no less immune to the abuse of power than, say, UN peacekeepers in Africa are to using their power to obtain sexual favors.

But it’s one thing to be on the observing side of atrocities and quite another to be on the receiving end.

Those on the receiving end include, of course, the individuals who were so badly mistreated. But the victimhood of the atrocities is wider than just the prisoner involved. It includes those who identify, in one way or another, with that prisoner. I don’t mean fellow terrorists, I mean people who see the mistreatment of one Arab as indicative of treatment of all Arabs, the treatment of one Muslim as the treatment of all Muslims.

That, of course, is not the message the US government, the US military, or individual US soldiers is intending to convey. But that is the message that is received.

It just doesn’t work to say, “Oh, but they’re being oversensitive or paranoid.” So what if that’s exactly the case? The point is, millions of people are outraged and, to their minds, justifiably so.

To be perfectly clear here: I do not accept the behavior of ignorant mobs as somehow “justified”. Mobs are mobs and they are not “rational actors”. Those who take insult at the perception of a shadow, of a Nike or Coca Cola trademark are not “rational actors”. Here, I am speaking of those who do think about their actions.

In the US — but notably not in most of the world — abusing a book, even a religious book, even a book believed to be the literal word of God, is not a crime. Our freedoms of speech and religion make it thus. There is no American crime of “desecration” as we see sacredness as something outside the ambit of law. Because of both our laws and our multiple cultures, we realized that what one holds sacred may be meaningless to another, and that equation works in both directions. It is, I believe, a strength of our system of government that no laws can be made based on the beliefs of any single religion.

Having a right to exercise a freedom does not mean that every opportunity to do so is warranted. One does not have to be “PC” to be polite. One needn’t be an “accommodationist” to believe that “in your face” isn’t always the best way to communicate.

Desecrating a Qur’an, while perfectly protected by American law, is not a smart thing to do.

The Newsweek story has been retracted by its publishers. What they cannot retract is the things that happened as a result of that publication. The fact is that past US actions have led a significant portion of the world’s population to believe that the US is capable of intentionally desecrating a sacred book to make a political point.

Where once there was a sense that the US could be included among the Good Guys, at least in terms of its anti-colonialism, its general sense of noninterference in the affairs of a country, that is no longer the case.

The US is no longer perceived as among the Good Guys. For a variety of reasons — all debatable — the US is seen by many as an officious state that imposes its will by force, be it military, economic, or cultural. But this isn’t solely an “American problem”. A part of the problem lies in the Arab and Muslim world.

The first flaw lies in intolerance. Modernization has, as one of its features — and for some, costs — the fact that differences, even serious differences, must be tolerated. That goes for Westerners as well as Arabs.

But the West has not seen much in the way of reciprocity in this. Accommodations are made to permit believers in nontraditionally Western religions to practice their faiths freely. The reverse is not always the case.

Western states, valuing cultural diversity, have tended to welcome “others”, with greater or less warmth, depending on political and economic conditions. The reverse is seldom the case. In fact, the citizens of many Western states are now beginning to feel abused by immigrant populations which accept the benefits of a liberal society but who refuse to return that liberality.

To a certain point, most Muslim states have a reason to view the West charily. The history of British and French — as well as Italian and Dutch — colonialism is not one that rains honor on the colonialists. These countries often imposed “solutions” to political problems that were no solution at all.

But the colonial period really did end some 50 years ago.

The statute of limitations on historical atrocities has expired. I realize that many of the Arab intelligentsia — particularly those educated in Europe — don’t agree, but they’re stuck in an eddy of history. The world is not what it was in 1945. It is what it is in 2005. All the motives, all the suspicions, all the justifiable paranoia of 50 years ago are now defunct.

What both groups need to do is to learn to put things — rumors, news reports, gossip — on hold while the facts are ascertained.

The tragic fiasco that resulted from the Newsweek story has many fathers. There was less-than-sterling professionalism from the magazine. There was a partially credible history of abuse, by at least some American soldiers working in prisons with Muslim prisoners. There was gross intolerance and xenophobia put into action by those who immediately jumped to the wrong conclusion. The restraint needed these days came from a surprising quarter. It was groups like the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Muslim World League that called for investigation, not lynching. It was because they saw the point in waiting for truth to be discovered, as best it could be discovered, before calling for punitive action.

At the same time I’m disappointed by American groups whose default assumption was that this couldn’t be true. Abu Ghraib showed that, yes, it could be true. Those who immediately assumed a plot by the media to discredit the military weren’t much closer to the truth. The search for truth and the search for a way for vastly different cultures to co-exist are too important to leave to those who know better than the facts available to us allow us to conclude, no matter which side they’re on.

— John Burgess, a retired Foreign Service officer, was counselor for public affairs at the US Embassy in Riyadh, 2001-2003. He currently runs Crossroads Arabia (http://www.xrdarabia.org/blog), an organization focused on US-Saudi relations.