04 July 2005
The law of reciprocity
After reading this report on the BBC website, one has to fear for the well-being of the remaining three US Special Forces team MIA in Afghanistan.
It doesn't take much imagination to conclude that whatever treatment was and is being meted out to innocent or guilty detainees in US military custody in Bagram airbase and elsewhere in Afghanistan and Iraq, for that matter, the same treatment or worse will be reciprocated towards any US military personnel captured by their enemies.
In choosing to flout common standards of decency exercised upon people in its custody, the Bush administration and US military have undercut their own moral standing in the eyes of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq. Civilians who would otherwise have been willing to cooperate with US forces, have been turned into passive or possibly active agents against imperial American will.
As an earlier post "Iraqi Misadventure = Global Nightmare" warned back in January, the power of the gun cannot prevail in a battle for the hearts and minds of the moderate Muslim community not only in Afghanistan and Iraq, but across the globe. Scandalous images and stories of prisoner abuse and murder continue to ricochet around the world, each revelation adding to the rising tide of disgust, anger and resentment felt in the moderate Muslim world.
Almost uniquely amongst western nations in the 20th and 21st centuries, the US places tremendous faith in the power of its military to exert overt and covert control over friendly and unfriendly nations alike. But perhaps equally unique for our times, has been the emergence of trans-national threats like al-Qaeda and other allied Islamic extremist organisations. Enjoying covert and tacit support from sections of the global Muslim milieu, they rely on essentially hit and run tactics to harass the US and its allies.
Super carriers, stealth aircraft, nuclear missiles etc offer very little advantage in winning this war. Because for every Islamic extremist they kill, there are another ten to step forward seeking martyrdom. It's like trying to knock out a bee colony with a baseball bat. The harder and more you hit it, the more enraged the bees become and even more of them seem to appear from nowhere. Unfortunately, the opportunity for a more intelligent approach to defeating such extreme Islamic terrorists fades further into black with each prisoner abuse and murder scandal.
I doubt very much that there's anything America can do now, to reverse or recover from the catastrophic fall in whatever esteem and respect it once commanded around the world, regardless of whether you're referring to Muslim or non-Muslim countries. So Americans should brace for continued acts of revenge against them whether at home or abroad.
And they can fall on bended knee to thank Dubya for it.
It doesn't take much imagination to conclude that whatever treatment was and is being meted out to innocent or guilty detainees in US military custody in Bagram airbase and elsewhere in Afghanistan and Iraq, for that matter, the same treatment or worse will be reciprocated towards any US military personnel captured by their enemies.
In choosing to flout common standards of decency exercised upon people in its custody, the Bush administration and US military have undercut their own moral standing in the eyes of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq. Civilians who would otherwise have been willing to cooperate with US forces, have been turned into passive or possibly active agents against imperial American will.
As an earlier post "Iraqi Misadventure = Global Nightmare" warned back in January, the power of the gun cannot prevail in a battle for the hearts and minds of the moderate Muslim community not only in Afghanistan and Iraq, but across the globe. Scandalous images and stories of prisoner abuse and murder continue to ricochet around the world, each revelation adding to the rising tide of disgust, anger and resentment felt in the moderate Muslim world.
Almost uniquely amongst western nations in the 20th and 21st centuries, the US places tremendous faith in the power of its military to exert overt and covert control over friendly and unfriendly nations alike. But perhaps equally unique for our times, has been the emergence of trans-national threats like al-Qaeda and other allied Islamic extremist organisations. Enjoying covert and tacit support from sections of the global Muslim milieu, they rely on essentially hit and run tactics to harass the US and its allies.
Super carriers, stealth aircraft, nuclear missiles etc offer very little advantage in winning this war. Because for every Islamic extremist they kill, there are another ten to step forward seeking martyrdom. It's like trying to knock out a bee colony with a baseball bat. The harder and more you hit it, the more enraged the bees become and even more of them seem to appear from nowhere. Unfortunately, the opportunity for a more intelligent approach to defeating such extreme Islamic terrorists fades further into black with each prisoner abuse and murder scandal.
I doubt very much that there's anything America can do now, to reverse or recover from the catastrophic fall in whatever esteem and respect it once commanded around the world, regardless of whether you're referring to Muslim or non-Muslim countries. So Americans should brace for continued acts of revenge against them whether at home or abroad.
And they can fall on bended knee to thank Dubya for it.
