NO PITY

the washington post recently published a review of a book detailing the rape of up to two million german women by conquering soviet troops as they entered berlin at the end of wwii.

a young man, one of three co-defendants accused of a brutal kidnapping, murder and rape in florida, has been moved to a safety cell because of threats by other inmates to do to him what he did to his victim.

an american intelligence official wrote some months ago that torture and humiliation are particularly feared by the muslims who the united states is currently at war with.

the reaction to the book has been revulsion at the russian crimes, the reaction to the threats against the florida rapist has been revulsion at the lawlessness in our prisons, and i imagine the reaction to the report by the american intelligence official was revulsion also.

in all three cases i disagree with the conventional reaction.

retribution is a dirty word today. our values have "matured" so that these actions are considered morally reprehensible. in fact, retribution is a necessary component of any well-ordered system of justice. in each of the three cases mentioned above i believe that the actions of those who sought revenge are understandable human responses to high crime.

german women fawned over adolph hitler. they were the ladies auxiliary of the wehrmacht. as the book notes, the russian lust for revenge was fueled by the equally unspeakable atrocities inflicted by the nazis in the siege of stalingrad. russian rape of german women is justified by these previous acts. it should not be condoned, much less encouraged but it is justified. russia was not the aggressor in wwii, germany was. an aggressor deserves retributive punishment. i'm sure there were "innocent" german women who were raped, innocent in the sense that they did not support the nazis and their rapes are not justified but actions in war cannot be judged by a standard requiring perfection and the desire of the russian soldiers for revenge and their method of extracting it was justified.

likewise though it should not be condoned or encouraged there is great justice in the brutalization of civilian criminals who have committed brutalities on innocents. there is a natural sense of street justice that is obtained and that is viscerally satisfying in an act of prison rape of a man who has raped a woman in our society. that sense of satisfation is not one that society should be ashamed of.

in war, we must use whatever means are necessary to break our enemy. one of the enduring images of the gulf war was the footage of a beaten, terrified and thoroughly humiliated iraqi soldier coming out of his bunker crying, begging for mercy and supportingly chanting "bush, bush, bush."

there may be truth in the intelligence officer's belief that there is something in the muslim culture or psyche that makes it particularly vulnerable to the threat of humiliation and torture. if so, we should exploit it. if by some miscalculation osama bin laden is captured alive he should not be accorded the human dignity of a civilized trial whose result would be to give him an international stage for his cause and make him the martyr every islamic believer aspires to. whatever would be considered most humiliating to him, and most horrifying to other muslims, should be done to him. perhaps shave his beard; parade him in front of cameras forced to wear a dress and high heels. publically anally raped. if that will horrify other muslims, we should do it.

there is a modern belief that "violence only begets violence." violence is man at his worst but it is not ineffective. violence ended world war ii. it will end world war iv also.

-benjamin harris