EMPATHY, SHAME, AND OUTRAGE
In a must-read LAT op-ed, the great Chuck Freund reflects on the killing of Nicholas Berg, the abuses at Abu Ghraid, and the responses to both. Here's a teaser:
What Zarqawi's friends do is butcher Berg--there's no other word for it. They don't use a sword or an ax; they use a knife. You can hear Berg screaming as Zarqawi's gang hacks at his neck and then pulls at his head until it comes off his body. They then hold his bleeding head in front of the camera. The tape is appalling not only for its utter bloodthirstiness but also for the total absence of simple human empathy.
Elemental empathy is a primary measure of civilization. The shame that Americans felt at the Abu Ghraib images is rooted in such empathy. Even in the dehumanizing context of warfare, which strains the empathy of all its participants, this is savagery.
But if this is a moment of comparative atrocity, the issue becomes whether the Zarqawi horror is capable of having any effect on the Abu Ghraib matter. The probable answer is that although the murder tape obviously doesn't make pictures of prisoner abuse any less disgusting or shameful, it does offer many of those who feel disgust and shame a different context in which to perceive those images.
Read the whole thing.