Positive Liberty

I thought Thomas Friedman’s August 26 article in the New York Times was spot on. Unfortunately, it’s available only to subscribers, but here’s a taste:

Dive into a conversation about America in the Arab world today, or even in Europe and Africa, and it won’t take 30 seconds before the words “Abu Ghraib” and “Guantanamo Bay” are thrown at you. Yes, both are shameful, but Abu Ghraib was a day at the beach compared to what Al Qaeda and its Sunni jihadist supporters have been doing in Iraq, yet none of their acts have become one-punch global insults like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

Consider what happened on Aug. 14. Four jihadist suicide-bombers blew themselves up in two Iraqi villages, killing more than 500 Kurdish civilians–men, women and babies–who belonged to a tiny pre-Islamic sect known as the Yazidis.

And what was the Bush team’s response to this outrage? Virtual silence. After much Googling, the best I could find was: “‘We’re looking at Al Qaeda as the prime suspect,’ said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a U.S. military spokesman.” Wow….

Ask yourself this: If Osama bin Laden were running against George Bush for president, how would Karl Rove and Karen Hughes have handled the Yazidi murders? Within an hour, they’d have had a press release out saying: “This genocide of Iraqi civilians was inspired by bin Laden. We accuse bin Laden of the mass murder of 500 women and children. Bin Laden has killed more Iraqis and Muslims than any person alive. Support bin Laden and you support genocide against Muslims.” And they would have repeated that point on every network, every day….

Bin Laden has created a situation in which the U.S. occupation in Iraq is viewed as entirely “illegitimate” and therefore any violence there by Sunni jihadists against Americans or Iraqi civilians is considered entirely legitimate “resistance.”

Quite so. And a parallel problem is the seeming absence of specific heroes in this war. In World War II, the government stopped at nothing to show civilians the heroic fighting men. But this war has no Audie Murphys, and one has to look hard to find the government promoting any specific heroes or acts of heroism, except for the State of the Union Addresses. In fact, the closest thing the war has to a hero is Pat Tillman, who has been seized by the left as another opportunity to portray the American war effort as a heartless machine of murder. Why this silence? Is it because the Pentagon fears that any Audie Murphy they put forward will be savaged by the media? That’s probably true, but that should not stop them. The home front needs heroes they can put a name and a face to–not just a constant stream of statistics, victims, and generalized praise for brave soldiers.

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