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Turning Shame into Outrage

(Los Angeles Times) Charles Paul Freund - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - the Jordanian militant who is reportedly responsible for the videotaped butchery of Nicholas Berg - may have inadvertently delivered his enemy from its own demoralization. Americans were feeling so shamed, dishonored, and demoralized by the repulsive images of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib that even many prominent war supporters were reconsidering the effort. So in "retaliation" for the Abu Ghraib abuses, Zarqawi stages a singularly abominable execution of a private American citizen. The probable effect is to offer many Americans an exit from their own moral horror. Elemental empathy is a primary measure of civilization. The shame that Americans felt at the Abu Ghraib images is rooted in such empathy. But if this is a moment of comparative atrocity, the murder offers many of those who feel disgust and shame a different context in which to perceive those images. Zarqawi has reminded his enemies that, unlike him, they are at least capable of shame. Zarqawi's righteous snuff movie is a gift to his enemies, and, one hopes, an unwitting suicide note.
2004-05-14 00:00:00
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