KNOWING YOUR ALLIES:

Who's Afraid of Abu Ghraib?: The scandal won't determine the fate of democracy in the Middle East. (Reuel Marc Gerecht, 05/24/2004, Weekly Standard)

[I]s our situation in Iraq really in any way compromised by Abu Ghraib? Have the chances of democracy in the Middle East really been set back because sexually sensitive Muslims are so revolted that they won't embrace representative government? Or to put it more broadly, is America's standing in the Muslim world a popularity contest where our chances of success--whatever the mission may be--are directly proportional to how much an American president and his officials or the American people and their values are liked and esteemed?

LET US LOOK at Iraq post-Abu Ghraib. As disgusting as the tactics of the 800th Military Police Brigade may have been, they have not elicited much condemnation from Iraq's Arab Shiites and Sunni Kurds, who represent about 80 percent of the country's population. Most critically, the senior clergy of Najaf, in particular Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's preeminent Shiite divine who virtually has a de facto veto over American actions, has hardly mentioned the matter, let alone aroused the faithful against the moral pollution of the American occupation.

There are probably several reasons for this. Both the Shia and the Kurds, not to mention the Arab Sunnis who were on the receiving end of Saddam Hussein's wickedness, know very well what real bestiality is. They know real sexual torture--Saddam institutionalized rape as a means of destroying and preemptively neutering individual male and tribal pride. Though there are surely too few U.S. troops in Iraq, most Iraqis have had some contact with American soldiers. They may not view them as German children viewed World War II GIs, but they have certainly had enough contact to know that American personnel, with the rarest exceptions, aren't rapists, sexual deviants, or by reflex or training particularly violent people. If this weren't the case, the senior clergy of Najaf would have long ago declared a holy war against the American occupation, as they declared a jihad against the British in 1920. The young clerical militant Moktada al-Sadr would have tens of thousands of recruits, and coalition forces would be fortified in their barracks, not on the offensive.

Also, the Shiites and Kurds probably assume that the humiliated prisoners in Abu Ghraib are Sunnis (which may in fact be the case). Though the Shiites and Kurds have so far been remarkably restrained in their desire for intiqam--revenge--which is a leitmotif of Iraqi culture, they probably are not above enjoying schadenfreude. They also want the Americans to beat the ex-Baathists, Sunni Arab fundamentalists, and foreign Sunni holy warriors who are trying to drive the Americans out of Iraq and stop the march toward democracy. After all, democracy will inevitably empower Shiites and frustrate the Sunni Arab penchant for pummeling the Kurds. Their tolerance for unpleasant American tactics in this endeavor is probably quite high. Unlike much of Washington, D.C., they have not lost sight of the larger objective: creating a democratic Iraq where they and their children will never again know the horrors of dictatorship.

Which is why, of course, the Shiite clergy has been focused throughout the Abu Ghraib affair on the guerrilla campaign of Moktada al-Sadr, who is detested by the traditional clergy since he is challenging their religious leadership and Sistani's decision to cooperate with the Americans. They've also been watching the Marines at Falluja and the American decision to return Baathist soldiers to duty to placate and quiet the town, which has been a center of Sunni Arab resistance. The American decision in Falluja provoked Jalaluddin al-Saghir, a spokesman for Sistani, to warn that "members of the Baath party committed the most heinous crimes and created bloodbaths and the biggest mass graves in the history of mankind." A very healthy self-interest is an obvious and major reason why Iraq's Shiites and Kurds--and perhaps a decent slice of its Arab Sunnis--can watch the images of Abu Ghraib and maintain their equanimity. They have vastly more important things to worry about.

Fortunately, the Iraqis are more mature about such things than the punditocracy.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 17, 2004 3:05 PM