We now have an Arab equivalent of Abu Ghraib.

Elsewhere on this board is an item that caught my attention this morning. That post says that Jordanian soldiers who were brought in by the UN as peacekeepers in East Timor have been implicated in many rapes of young boys and girls, tortures and murders. I am not surprised by this news because, as I have been saying many times on this board, there is a long history of Arab denial of human rights especially to young women from Asia who are brought in as household help by the wealthy families in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the many Emirate countries. Rape, murder,physical and mental abuse of these helpless women are quite common.

As appalling as Abu Ghraib is to us, we need to look at the other side of this equation and take the side of the innocent victims of abuse by Arabs.This has been going on for several decades now with no voices raised against that practice. The item about East Timor tells us that when people have power over others any thing is possible.

and it's always, ALWAYS, the women and children who suffer at the hands of corrupt power monger!!!!

When we are doing a brisk business in victimization ourselves.
That is one reason for moral outrage over Abu Ghraib.
It cost us the right to speak for the abused elsewhere.

That is part of the horror of torture we don't talk about.
Rendition makes us accomplises to torture, even when we outsource it to countries like Jordan and Pakistan.

That would be like Julius Striecher or Adolf Eichman excoriating the British for their treatment of India. Our protests are now laughable.

throughout our country who detest what is being done in our name in Iraq and elsewhere.

then by all means, let us be 'good Americans' and
protest the 'bad Arabs.' It is always right to reject
this sort of behavior.

But be aware that 'good Americans' are looked at like 'good Germans' were in the 30's by the rest of the world. People who let their own house burn down are not considered reliable property inspectors. Terri Shiavo IMO is the last straw. It makes us the official laughing stock of the world, and even our journalists haven't gotten the joke. Abu Ghraib and other human rights horrors have been exposed and ignored.

The rest of the world looks at that and worries that we have turned the corner into full blown fascism as a nation.

Your original post would have benefited from a more specific subject than 'we.' Surely 'I' and 'you' will acknowledge the horror, like the Korean women dragooned into 'comfort woman' status by the Japanese military in WWII. You and I, and a few folks here at DU will probably even write a LTTE about it. But if someone in Indonesia reads that LTTE, they will laugh ruefully at it, and say- 'Abu Ghraib'-- and everyone at the table will smile knowingly.

That, as a person of conscience, is an injury added to the pre existing insult. Do I have buyer's remorse? No, I didn't vote for the bastids. Am I pissed off? I am Mike Malloy level pissed off, and not to be trusted alone in an elevator with anyone wearing an elephant stickpin.

Would indeed ring hollow. Protests and denunciations by persons of left and progressive views, in the U.S., and elsewhere, would not, and ought to be made.

Yep, I feel better about Abu Ghraib already, because some Jordanian soldiers did something just as criminal, but since they're Arabs that makes it somehow worse. In fact, I'm gonna write it down:

US torturing, raping and murdering Arabs < Arabs torturing, raping and murdering Indonesians

Thanks!

as at Abu Ghraib. It only goes to show that we are not unique.Man's inhumanity to man ( or more properly, man's inhumanity to women and children) has a long and sordid history.