The nicer we are, the more they resent us

A reader sent me this e-mail under the subject line, “No Korans, No ‘Koran Abuse.’”

One of your readers wrote, “The way to end the ‘Koran abuse’ is simply to take the Korans away. I don’t think there is anything legally that requires we provide Korans to war prisoners and terrorists. Frankly, it seems the harder we try to be polite and respectful to these prisoners the more we are hated.” [Emphasis added.]

Indeed. This reminds me of something you wrote a few years back. Let me paraphrase: “The more America does to overcome its perception of prisoner abuse, the worse America appears. The reason for this is built into the dynamics of human nature. Very simply, the better they are treated, the more unbearable and unjust seems even the fact that they are being detained. Thus what started as a demand for basic human rights has mutated into a demand to abolish the whole detainee camp.”

One must compare something to something else. Instead of coddling those captured out of uniform, had our military instead executed the worst of them on the spot, as was done to German soldiers caught in U.S. uniforms during WWII, the comparison reference point would be far different, and treatment expectations, and their reality, would be far lower and closer to that prescribed by Geneva for unlawful combatants. With a shift in comparison from what is being accorded now to summary execution, their simply being allowed to live would be considered a blessing.

If there is no difference between the treatment accorded captured legitimate combatants who are wearing legitimate uniforms, who are subject to control by a chain of command, fighting to defend their country, and the treatment of captured pirates, robbers, highwaymen, rapers, pillagers, and terrorists, the effect will be to encourage more piracy, robbery, ambushes by highwaymen, rapes, pillage, and acts of terror, and to discourage nations from adhering to the Convention at all.

Keep up the good work.

I like the reader’s reasoning. One qualification I would make is that we kept the terrorist prisoners alive, not just to be humane, but to get vitally needed information out of them. Yet since the reader is only proposing that the worst of the prisoners should have been executed, that would not necessarily have interfered with intelligence gathering, while it might well have had the salutary effects he describes.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 17, 2005 08:20 AM | Send