Americans in Iraq, continued

In stark contrast to Colson, Mark Danner has another, far less rosy view of the American venture in Iraq and elsewhere: "Torture and Truth." Writes Danner:

For the insurgents, the path to such victory lies in provoking the American occupiers to do their political work for them; the insurgents ambush American convoys with "improvised explosive devices" placed in city neighborhoods so the Americans will respond by wounding and killing civilians, or by imprisoning them in places like Abu Ghraib. The insurgents want to place the outnumbered, overworked American troops under constant fear and stress so they will mistreat Iraqis on a broad scale and succeed in making themselves hated.

Danner portrays the US response as part of a larger, diabolical strategy pursued throughtout the world, from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

On the other hand, the editors of The New Criterion believe that much of the press's coverage of Abu Ghraib is an example of "Pursuing Moral Equivalence." Far worse has been perpetrated by the insurgents themselves:

Yes, what happened at Abu Ghraib was deplorable. U.S. officials, beginning with the President, have publicly apologized. Even as we write, the perpetrators are being court-martialed. The army has instituted new safeguards to make sure that there is no repetition of the abuse. And what about the chaps who incinerated those four contractors in Fallujah? Or the people responsible for hacking off Nick Berg’s head on videotape? Or the men who murdered Fabrizio Quattrocchi in April? Film of that episode was “too graphic” even for al-Jazeera to air. But who has time for those details when the effort to impugn America is going strong?

It remains to be seen whether the American (and British and Australian) presence in Iraq will ultimately be vindicated or whether it will be judged a failure. This very much depends on how ambitious the aim of the occupation is understood to be. If the US continues to assert its desire to make of Iraq a functioning constitutional democracy along western lines -- in the face of a largely unsupportive political culture -- then the risk of failure is rather high. If, however, the goal becomes merely to bring a modicum of stability to an otherwise unstable region of the world, then there is a better chance of this. But if especially American troops are not soon replaced with an international force, probably under UN auspices, even this may not come about.