Bauer: Despite Prison Abuse, U.S. Retains 'Moral High Ground' in Iraq
by Bill Fancher and Chad Groening
May 14, 2004
(AgapePress) - A pro-family leader says the American treatment of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib may be deplorable, but that it doesn't offset the fact that America has the moral high ground in the war on terror. Meanwhile, a media watchdog group is calling several mainstream news outlets to task for reporting greater outrage over the prison-abuse scandal than for the execution-style murder of a U.S. citizen by Islamic terrorists.The grilling of Pentagon leaders, hearings featuring military leaders, and special congressional sessions to review picture of alleged prisoner abuse have dominated this past week in the nation's capital. Gary Bauer of American Values was asked if too much is being made of the scandal.
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Gary Bauer |
"We don't know all the facts yet, and we've got to wait to see what those facts are -- but as repugnant as some of the images are, I think that we need to keep it in perspective," Bauer cautions. "These events at the prison pale when compared to things that have happened in every war the United States has ever been involved in."Bauer has been particularly critical of the mainstream media's apparent anti-American bias regarding the prison-abuse scandal, noting that the major media outlets have little problem devoting much time and space to the images coming out of the prison debacle -- but seem unwilling to give much attention to the brutal murder of American contractor Nick Berg. That barbaric act, he says, is further proof that the moral high ground belongs to the United States.
"The people [from the Abu Ghraib prison] who have broken the rules need to be brought to justice," he says, "but this in no way eliminates the moral high ground that we have facing the jihadists that are feverishly working to try to kill us all."
Moral Equivalency
A spokesman for the Washington-based Media Research Center says there is a vast difference between sexual humiliation at the Iraqi prison and the brutal murder of Nick Berg. But like Bauer, MRC spokesman Tim Graham says the liberal media is painting a false picture of moral equivalency, with only the American offenses being amplified.
"The mistake is if the media holds our government accountable but never scrutinizes what the enemy does in the same way," he explains. "We are not saying that we only have to be as good as the enemy -- [but] the media seems unwilling to grant the idea that in any way we are morally superior to the enemy."
Graham says there is a double-standard in the media when it comes to accountability, accusing the media of suggesting to the public that the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison is more of an outrage than the decapitation of an innocent civilian.
"But again, we are in a war on Islamic terrorists," he says. "So it seems to me that the media would want to hold our government accountable; and they want to offer no scrutiny to our enemy, no matter how savage their killings are."
And Graham says the liberal networks have given the Iraqi prison abuse story far more coverage than they did last year to the grim discovery of mass graves of Iraqis who died at the hands of the Saddam Hussein regime. For example, MRC reports that since April 29, NBC's news broadcasts have aired almost 60 stories about prisoner abuse -- but in all of 2003 and 2004, the network aired only five stories on the mass graves, which contained an estimated body count of as many as 300,000.
