| “World Opinion Be Damned!” by Alex Epstein dated June 3, 2004 and ARI ‘s Press Release for it dated June 7. |
We review ARI’s press release along with Mr. Epstein’s article. When we quote the press-release, which in turn quotes the article, we omit our quote-marks. When we quote the article directly we include them. The press release begins:
In response to international outrage over Abu Ghraib, American politicians and intellectuals have declared that America needs to make a concerted effort to win over “world opinion.” “In fact,” says Alex Epstein, a writer for the Ayn Rand Institute, “the hypocritical and unjust condemnations of America for Abu Ghraib demonstrate that appeasing ‘world opinion’ is depraved and suicidal.”“Abu Ghraib” is used as a euphemism for the recently exposed U.S. torture at the Abu Ghraib military base in Iraq. Mr. Epstein pretends that no U.S. politicians or intellectuals were outraged over the existence of torture but rather they thought the American public should be convinced torture is praiseworthy. (Actually the only people who thought it praiseworthy were neocons.)
“Throughout the Middle East,” observes Epstein, “torture – real torture ... is official policy and daily practice. Yet there are no worldwide condemnations of the dictatorships that practice such atrocities ... . But when a handful of American prison guards subject a handful of Iraqi POWs to comparatively mild humiliation, ‘world opinion’ condemns America.”Thus the outrage over Abu Ghraib is hypocritical because it holds America to a higher standard than the Middle East. And despite the two battered corpses of Abu Ghraib the torture is not real torture. And it was confined to a handful of people. And neither the U.S. government nor the torturers were the ones humiliated.
Right before this Mr. Epstein says:
“All of this [world outrage against U.S. torture] evades one blatant truth: the hatred being heaped on America over Abu Ghraib is undeserved.”Emphasis his. Then, as we have seen, he continues with an account of Arab torture, suggesting that because Arabs torture people, nothing is wrong with the U.S. doing it too. Apparently Mr. Epstein thinks the Middle East should determine our standard of what is right.
This reinforces the beginning of Mr. Epstein’s article:
“It is a testament to the perverse priorities of our politicians and journalists that the biggest American outcry over Abu Ghraib has been not about the gruesome decapitation of American Nicholas Berg by terrorists, but about the fact that many Arabs and Europeans are mad at us.”Mr. Epstein evades the source of that anger: U.S. torture. He pretends that the American outcry is merely over what Arabs and Europeans think, when actually the outcry is over their own government engaging in torture. Why make the comparison Berg vs. Abu Ghraib? Is his murder, right after the revelation of Abu Ghraib, supposed to justify the United States turning further to barbarism? Again Mr. Epstein insinuates that U.S. torture is not so bad, look at what the Arabs do.
The press release continues:
“So-called ‘world opinion’,” explains Epstein, “is not some unanimous and just consensus, but the irrational and unjust opinion of the world’s worst people ...”World opinion may be varied but why focus on the worst people? Mr. Epstein goes on to list the usual straw-men: Islamic fanatics, socialists, the United Nations. Missing from world opinion are those who love America and hate seeing its people turned into barbarians.
The press release continues quoting Mr. Epstein:
“The proper response to these people [those who express outrage over U.S. torture] is ... to identify them as our ideological and political enemies, to kill and demoralize the violent ones, and to discredit the rest.”ARI’s perverted reasoning only discredits ARI.
Mr. Epstein then denounces President Bush for not being harder on Muslims, and urges him to destroy “Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian Authority.”
He concludes his article:
“Every attempt to appease ‘world opinion’ preserves and emboldens our enemies. America needs leadership with the honesty and courage to say, ‘Let world opinion be damned ! ’ ”It’s true that world opinion as such means little. What matters is whether or not that opinion is correct. In the case of U.S. torture, the civilized world – including a big chunk of grassroots America – is absolutely right.