POW Flap - A few

POW Flap - A few days ago, Art Bell released clandestine photos of Taliban/Al-Quaeda POWs being transported under heavy restraints in the back of a C-130 transport.

The Washington Post comments on the Pentagon's response.

I wasn't originally going to comment on this story - it's from Art Bell, for chrissake - but one of Power Line's writers (John H. Hinderaker, aka Hindrocket) had this to say:

On the whole, however, I think it may be good for images like these to be circulated, especially in the Arab world. The rise of Islamofascism has been fueled by a spirit of triumphalism resulting from the U.S. government's feeble response to terrorist attacks after 1992. While most Americans were barely aware of al Qaeda and similar organizations and paid little attention to their attacks, the Islamists thought they were winning what to them was an all-out war. As a supplement to America's current strong military response to terrorism, images of terrorists being defeated and humiliated should help deflate the Islamofascists and cause potential supporters to melt away.

To a point, this is correct. And as we'll talk about in a bit, I don't even know where that "point" is.

But historically, treating POWs well is a good thing. Some of the best PR we ever gave democracy was in our extraordinarily humane (albeit secure) treatment of POWs in World War II. These German, Italian and (few) Japanese prisoners went home and told their wide-eyed countrypeople about that huuuuuge nation full of free people that were doing sooooo well they could feed POWs better than the free civilians in their own countries...

...and so on. Of course, there follows the big caveat to that approach in this case:

It is success that breeds enthusiasm, not failure. And in this war, crudeness is no liability. Remember that the terrorists use video footage of the decapitation of Daniel Pearl as a recruiting tool.

We're dealing with a vastly different culture than WWII-era Germans and Italians.

But I wonder if the Japanese don't provide a better example? There are parallels between WWII-era Japanese and Al Quaea. Raised in a culture that was no less absolutist, millenarian, morally lax with regard to violence against ones' foes, and prone to glorification of suicide than that of the Wahabi sect to which Al Quaeda belongs, many were nevertheless struck by the contradictory observation; a nation whose nerve they'd underestimated so completely was capable of such mind-warping firepower, yet such magnanimity to the vanquished. The few that surrendered, once they were safely in captivity, tended to be treated quite well (compared to what they'd been trained to expect, and to how they treated Allied POWs). It made an impression.

I'm not saying I have any answers here - just a few rather pointed questions, the last being "does how we portray ourselves to the worst of our enemies have an impact on how the world sees us".

The first, of course, being "do these pictures harm or help that image". On this question, I'm only asking.

Oh, yeah - and how in the flocking plug does Art Bell land a scoop like this?

Posted by Mitch at November 10, 2002 02:22 AM