And More, Abu Ghraib

Mark Steyn in his Jerusalem Post column, gives his clear-headed take on the "scandal":

In contrast to hyperventilating Kennedys, the American people seem to be able to distinguish between the actual, specific abuse, which is wrong and should be punished, and the attempt to burden it with some highly selective generalized significance, which is rightly seen as a lot of baloney.

In that sense, I deeply regret President Bush's apology. I'm often dismissed as a Bush apologist, but I decline to be a Bush apologist for the Bush apology.

If he wanted to apologize, he should have apologized to Ahmed bin Jihad, or whoever the fellow in the dog collar is, and left it at that. But to be coerced into apologizing more generally is very foolish. What happened at Abu Ghraib is terrible because it's an offense to American values, not Arab ones.

It's ridiculous to insist that America has to apologize to Arab thugocracies in which what's merely simulated in those photographs is done for real every day of the week.

As for the allegedly seething Arab street, my advice to it would be to lay off the interviews, or at least not to respond to the pictures by saying things like, "They wanted us to feel as though we were women, the way women feel, and this is the worst insult, to feel like a woman."

When you imply that being an Arab woman is analogous to perpetual degradation, you remind Americans that being "insensitive" to certain cultures is not necessarily a bad thing.