A number of folks have called my attention to this posting over on one of my favorite Internet stops, Joshua Micah Marshall's Talking Points Memo. It may remind you a lot of…well, of the previous post on my site here.
One reader of this site recommended I read James S. Robbins on "Comparative Barbarism." I don't know that we need someone to explain to us that beheading Nick Berg is a more savage act than humiliating prisoners but it doesn't hurt to make that point. Robbins is wrong though that "No one has sought to justify these actions [the prison tortures], not even those who committed them." Take Senator James Inhofe, for instance.
I don't think most of America will buy the argument that some seem to be making that the Nick Berg video somehow minimizes or erases the torture pix. The lesser of two evils is still evil. If there really is a strategic justification for the torture practices, I'd love to hear it. At the moment, it seems like both a moral failing and a foolish thing to do in a land where we wanted to be "greeted as liberators." The fact that there are maniacs out there capable of worse doesn't change that. (As Jon Stewart notes, we can't possibly "out-psychopath Al-Qaida.")
Thanks to all of you who wrote about this issue. Unfortunately, I am so swamped with e-mail that wishes to engage me in one-on-one political debate that I can't answer much (if any) of it. I'm not quite in Deadline Hell at the moment but it is getting a little warm…