It is an unhappy truism that minor atrocities committed by Americans or Israelis are more heavily weighted than much more egregious atrocities committed by the "Other." Yaacov Lozowick notes a sadly ignored story coming out of the Iraq we are now leaving; the Iraqis are reverting to form and torture (real torture, not the minor league torment of the American version of Abu Ghraib) is back in fashion:
Navel Gazing, Torture and Other Boring Trivialities
As the Americans leave, the torture ramps up and freedoms are restricted. Americans can claim they owe little to Africans murdering Africans in jungles (see previous post), but the emerging regime in Iraq is emerging from an American intervention, and whether you like it or not, what happens in Iraq impacts on the US (and Europe, and elsewhere). This is where the naval gazing sanctimony and lazy (im)moral refusal to make distinctions between gradations of evil nor act upon them slip from unpleasant intellectual omissions to life-endangering callousness.
Africans torturing, murdering and raping Africans; Iraqis torturing, murdering, and raping Iraqis; (fill in the blank) torturing, murdering, and raping those who look like them; all are non stories if they cannot be used as a weapon against Israel and America.
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