Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Farah the Torturer

Joseph Farah, of the Bush Bend-Over Brigade, makes his position on torture clear:

We MUST torture the terrorists, because if we don't "win" (whatever that means) in Iraq, we'll get killed by bin Laden!

I can't help but notice that Mr. Farah hasn't written all the glowing reports of how much Iraqis love us and are grateful for liberation and how he plans to start a pro-Israeli political movement in the Arab world for a year or so. Perhaps he's finally geting his head out of the sand - or out of, well, let's just say the opposite end of his digestive tract.

It disturbs me that he, like Rush Limbaugh (Farah is a personal friend of Rush, by the way), dismisses the scandal at Abu Ghraib as nothing worse than "fraternity hazing" (although he perhaps is giving himself a backdoor to weasel out of by mentioning only the photographs he has seen, and ignoring the allegations of rape and homicide - although wasn't one of the dead bodies of prisonbers shown in the photo?)
For one thing, hazing is consensual. For another, hazing in some cases is pretty bad, as the folks in these article can CAN'T tell you. And of course, the rapes and homicides should enter into the equation.
And Farah also trots out the old chestnut about how we need to do whatever is necessary to win and how it will make things easier for the Iraqis in the long run in we get over our squeamishness.
What he neglects to consider is the question of whether the people in Abu Ghraib were actually terrorists or anti-American fighters. In fact, like most pro-warriors, he simply assumes (apparently, it never enters into his mind to try to prove that all of the Iraqis in the pictures were terrorists, or even to argue the point) that we wouldn't be doing things to them if they weren't.
However, some contend that many of the prisoners were innocent. Obviously, the Guardian, being anti-war, is not exactly an unbiased source of information, but I have yet to see any of the pro-warriors address his concern. If they want to deny that there are innocent Iraqis in Abu Ghraib, that is one thing. Or if that any of the ones who may have been picked up by mistake in random sweeps or for offenses such as looting, stealing, or breaking curfew that don't necessarily signal hostility in a military sense, were not in the particular part of Abu Ghraib where these abuses were taking place, that also would be understandable. But instead, they ignore these questions and simply take it for granted that all prisoners are terrorists.

I'll admit that I don't have a problem with torturing terrorists for information or with the guy who shot a gun near an Iraqi's head in order to find out about a planned ambush. But I'd like to make darn certain that the only people undergoing this sort of rigorous interrogation are actual enemies, and when the torture involves actual pain and degradation rather than just instilling fear, I'd like to make certain that are genuine terrorists (i.e. they deliberately attack civilians) rather than simple guerillas (i.e. they attempt as much as possible to attack only military targets). Lawful or unlawful, I don't think that we can legitimately truly torture (the firing the gun thing doesn't count) people simply because they resist an invasion of their country without wearing a uniform to do so.

Of course, perhaps Farah doesn't care if the Abu Ghraib prisoners are innocent. If torturing a bunch of people can get the one or two terrorists among them to talk, then screw the innocent civilians (oops - that may be exactly what they did). Killing lots of civilians now will prevent killing even more later, you know, so let's forget distinguishing combatants and non-combatants.
Considering Farah's belief that Fallujah should be razed to the ground (which we nearly, but didn't quite, actually wind up doing), perhaps this is really his position. Looking closer at the Fallujah article, I notice that he didn't even seem to thnk that we should have bothered giving the civilians a chance to get out.

Perhaps Farah is really concerned for the Iraqis, and truly believes that they want us to rule them into a liberal republic. Maybe he really does care about the Fallujans and it grieved him to suggest that we might need to kill a lot of civilians now, but he supported it because he felt that the alternative would cause more deaths in the end.
On the other hand, maybe he was lying when he acted like he was so happ for the Iraqis; maybe he doesn't care one whit about liberating them and it was all a smokescreen. Perhpaps in the end he wants to raze Fallujah because he doesn't care whether it makes the war bloody or not, he wants those Iraqis DEAD, DEAD, DEAD!!!!! After all, dead Iraqis make life easier for Israel, and even give them more space to dump the Palestinians. (Farah in this article is obviously saying that Israel should transfer its Palesinian population to Iraq, although for some reason he is too chicken to actually say that he supports transfer).
For all the talk about neocons and Israel, I don't think that Israel's interests were the major factor in this war, although only a fool would deny that they played a role.
However, some of the pro-war people are definitely thinking in terms of "Israel first." (btw, Paul Wolfowitz, whom I consider a neocon, is NOT one of these, so this isn't a "Jewish thing"). Richard Perke is one. Joseph Farah (who is an Arab-American, by the way, this really isn't a "Jewish thing") is obviously another.

I don't mind the idea of transfer of the Palestinians, nor do I have anything against Israel. But the deviousness of Farah (in that he won't come out and say the word "transfer") and his constant fawning sycophantism about Israel, and his obsequious gushing over how wonderful it is, has become absolutely sickening.

That is all.

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