December 31, 2006

"MERCY FOR THE GUILTY IS CRUELTY TO THE INNOCENT"-ADAM SMITH

        John Burns stands out as the only trustworthy NYTimes Iraq reporter. Over the years he has kept the focus on the sadistic practices of Arab tyrants, hate spewing clerics, and assorted psychopaths. His accounts of Saddam Hussein's depradations have vividly personalized the mass tortures and murders and placed Saddam in the company of Stalin, Hitler and Mao. Burns retrieved the stories of families choking to death in clouds of poison gas, of individuals being tortured and murdered for no reason other than to feed the dictator's megalomania. Anyone following Burns's accounts over the years will have a hard time refraining from celebrating Saddam's death. Yet Burns, because of his personal honesty reveals a sickness- if not a death wish, then a vulnerability- at the core of Western liberalism.

In his riveting account of Saddam's last days Burns writes of a moment when he felt pity for Saddam:

"...I felt sorry for him, as a man in distress and perhaps, too, as a once almighty figure reduced to ignominy. But the expression of that pity to the Iraqis present marked the distance between those, like me, who had taken the measure of Saddam’s terror as a visitor, shielded from the worst of it by the minders and the claustrophobic world of closely guarded hotels and supervised Information Ministry trips, and Iraqis who lived through it with no shield.

That I could feel pity for him struck the Iraqis with whom I talked as evidence of a profound moral corruption. I came to understand how a Westerner used to the civilities of democracy and due process — even a reporter who thought he grasped the depths of Saddam’s depravity — fell short of the Iraqis’ sense, forged by years of brutality, of the power of his unmitigated evil..."

        Burns clearly prefers to think of himself as a liberal man of compassion and understanding, who can even identify with the common humanity he shares with Saddam. However, he is honest enough to acknowledge what
survivors made clear: that he suffers from a "profound moral corruption.", really a form of narcissistic self flattery. We're "better" because we're capable of understanding and sympathizing with our enemies, whether Nazis, Communists or Islamists, Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Saddam. After all, weren't they just human beings like us, struggling with inner conflicts, fears and wishes. Besides, "evil" is such a judgmental word, far too crude for our advanced sensibilities. And so the West succumbs to a relativistic psychological sickness which hobbles our efforts to forcefully prosecute a war against foes who sense our need for moral self flattery. However, as Adam Smith pithily suggested long ago, this self-flattery is really just a mask for cowardice, allowing us to inflict cruelty on the innocent by prolonging the war, while pretending to be merciful.
        While Horsefeathers would have preferred that Saddam be shot in his rat hole, we will celebrate the long delayed fate he so richly deserved and applaud the hangmen.