I have been running around the house for days or maybe weeks ranting about the fuss over the Marines who desecrated the dead bodies of the Taliban soldiers. My annoyance stemmed from the fact that no one showed righteous indignation at the brutal beheadings of Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg. So when I heard Rick Perry make his statements during the debate in regards to the incidents of the Marines and brought up Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg, I started cheering – literally. ”Finally someone is speaking out!” Then today, I came across this article which says it all – perspective folks, perspective!
From the Wall Street Journal -
Notable & Quotable
Journalist Asra Nomani writing in the Daily Beast, Jan. 19:
At this week’s Republican presidential debate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry talked about the recent video of U.S. Marines urinating on the dead bodies of alleged Taliban fighters in Afghanistan: “Let me tell you what’s despicable,” he said, “cutting Danny Pearl’s head off.” . . .
As a friend and former colleague of Danny’s myself, I must admit that I, too, watched the video of the Marines and thought of the horrific video the terrorists had shot of Danny’s murder. At that moment I thought to myself: You want to see horrible? Watch the video of Danny’s death. I know that, in principle, there is no comparative analysis to be done on abuse, horror, or crime. But the truth is that we are engaged in a very ugly war, and the ruthlessness with which Danny was murdered is an expression of the extent to which our enemies will express their brutality. It was so horrible that a guard in the video, holding Danny down, retched and was thrown out of the room. Such brutality does not sanction abuse of the Geneva Conventions or other codes of military justice, but Perry, a man with whom I agree on not much, is right that the Marines’ conduct should be discussed in the context of the larger war. . . .
As a society, we shouldn’t seek moral equivalency, because we are then doomed to live according to the lowest standards of humanity. But we also don’t live in a moral vacuum. We don’t live in a utopia. We’re in a war.
What was done to Danny is an indicator of the kind of war we’re in. That is why I was particularly disturbed, as an American Muslim, to see national American Muslim organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, and the Islamic Society of North America fire off press releases of condemnation for the Marines’ video. There are so many outrages inside our Muslim community—from honor killings to honor assaults, including the cutting off of the noses and ears of girls and women in Pakistan and Afghanistan—on which these organizations aren’t so rabid.
To suggest we violated cultural norms in a way that the people of the region don’t do is to give the people of the region a pass. The legacy of the degradation of bodies in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region is historical. When the Taliban laid siege to Kabul in 1996, they dragged a former Afghan leader, Dr. Mohammad Najibullah, from a United Nations compound, cut off his penis while he was still alive, stuffed it into his mouth, and hung him from a lamppost to send a message to the community about the new sheriffs in town.Journalist Asra Nomani writing in the Daily Beast, Jan. 19:
