"The Election Made Simple" Commentary

I've been delighted by the response to "The Election Made Simple" - thanks to all of you who have linked to it, thanks to all who have left comments. 10,000 plus viewers over the last day and a half may be small change to the big boys, but it's a lot to me.

As is predictably the case, having a lot of people who don't ordinarily read Abu Aardvark see just that post leads to some inevitable confusion. This isn't really a partisan blog, folks, even if I proudly accept my annointment to the sacred order of the shrill. If you're curious what kind of blog this normally is, the archives are right over there. But with the election little more than a week away, and the level of noise rising apace, I think that there is some value to clarity.

This election, ultimately, is a referendum on the Bush administration and its record. And to me, Abu Ghuraib is central to that record, both for its own unpunished moral horrors and for its catastrophic impact on everything else which America hopes to do in the world... from spreading democracy and liberal values to winning the war on terror. You don't have to agree.

At any rate, I appreciate the like minded for spreading the word, I appreciate an unfortunate number of those on the other side for demonstrating my point, and I above all appreciate the thoughtful disagreements ("A Small Victory", which I've never seen before, has such a thoughtful disagreement). I have to say that being called a "gin-soaked raisin-brained piece of moral idiocy" by the proprietor of one blog and a "frigging idiot" by another can only be taken as a compliment - obviously these are qualities which those folks value, even if I don't... so thanks, I guess.

I'm elevating the response which I wrote to the comments to date up here to a new post, since I think it hits on most of the main points, although everyone should continue carrying on the discussion at the original post:

"I think that a lot of good points have been made. Let me surprise some people, maybe, by saying that I completely agree with IKnowYouDidn'tAsk on one point - we agree that Abu Ghuraib offers a real, clear choice. We disagree on which side to choose, but that's okay: at least we are clear about the significance and implications of the choice. Please note that nowhere in my post did I tell anyone which way to vote based on the picture - only that the picture defines the choice.

"Would most Americans side with IKnow, if given that choice (as Mithras suggests)? Perhaps. I don't think so, and I certainly hope not. But if Bush were elected on that basis- clearly and honestly - then at least the rest of the world (and the rest of America) would know what America really is, and what it really stands for.

"The thing about Abu Ghuraib is that it really should unite us, and not divide us. There are a lot of people who supported the invasion of Iraq for reasons which they found compelling - and I respect that. Maybe it was WMD, maybe it was liberating the Iraqi people, in any case they grappled with the question, and came down on one side, and there is nothing wrong with that.

"I think that Saddam really was a horrific tyrant, and I don't agree with those who minimize his crimes or the horrors of the mass graves. But what gives us a moral leg to stand on in criticizing him is precisely that we don't judge ourselves by Saddam's standards. The mass graves are a horrific atrocity, but that doesn't make the horrors of Abu Ghuraib acceptable or put them into perspective... unless we want Saddam's moral calculus to become our own. Maybe you do want that, in which case we simply disagree. The election will decide where the American people stand on the question.

"But Abu Ghuraib has nothing to do with that original decision to go to war. It has to do with manifest strategic and moral failures, which go all the way to the top of the Bush administration, which have more or less made it impossible for the best intentions of the war's supporters to be realized. Abu Ghuraib and all that it symbolizes should enrage war supporters as much as it does war opponents... indeed, it should outrage you more, since it is your hopes and aspirations which have been crushed, not those of the critics.

"Jennifer (and the linkback to A Small Victory), if you want nuance go back and read the last two years of the blog. Plenty of nuance there. But with a little more than a week left to the election, it really does come down to a choice: vote one way or the other. No nuance in the voting booth. So I appreciate the sentiment, and I have the utmost respect for those who have rehearsed their reasoning for their vote on their blogs, but that wasn't the point of this post.

"Basically it really does come down to whether or not democracy will enforce accountability. This election is the only chance we have to show the world that we are not what this picture represents. If Bush wins, this tells the world that Abu Ghuraib really is who the American people are. And I don't want to contemplate that."

Comments

[No Preference]

Abu A,

I appreciate your calm and fair framing of the debate on Abu Ghraib in the last two threads. It is very useful to have a dispassionate voice on anything touching the "war on terror" during this election campaign.

I wanted to post this column from UPI because it addresses an issue which to me seems very important, but which is not being discussed by the media, nor by most liberal blogs. That issue is the degree to which the "war on terror" is shading into a war against Muslims.

The administration makes a public show of respect for Islam, but "objectively" (as Lenin would have put it) its actions tend to target Muslims in general. That is true both of policies here at home and policies abroad. The implications of this, not to mention even the fact that this trend exists, is very troubling.

Outside View: Picking on U.S. Muslims

[No Preference]

For some reason the html in the above post did not register. Here is the link to the story:

http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20041020-023958-1129r.htm