Why is this hard to figure out?

Michelle Malkin linked to this Townhall column, in which Jeff Emanuel asks why human rights groups like Amnesty International don’t condemn al-Qaeda for the torture and murder of Pfc. Kristian Menchaca and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker. This looks like it’s going to be the new wingnut talking point when issues like torture and massacres come up. In this context, the most important reason that human rights groups generally don’t highlight terrorist acts is this: that’s not their function.

Amnesty International was set up as an advocacy group for political prisoners and victims of state torture. They didn’t issue a statement investigating the BTK killer, because that’s beyond the scope of the organization. They focus on abuses by national governments, because these are the abuses that Amnesty International can stop.

Amnesty International’s reports of human rights abuses in South Africa helped secure the release of Nelson Mandela. Their dispatches from Chile helped galvanize an international effort to induce Augusto Pinochet to step down, and Chile is a democratic country today. Their work in Afghanistan helped President Bush build an international coalition to drive the Taliban from power. Again and again, human rights groups have demonstrated that they can have a real impact on the actions of national governments.

But no amount of reporting on the savagery of the BTK killer would have induced him to cease his reign of terror. And issuing condemnations of al-Qaeda would not move bin-Laden to give up terrorism. There is no shortage of reports of al-Qaeda’s savagery in the media, and no shortage of investigation of the network. Al-Qaeda is already condemned and pursued by the international community, so it’s hard to see how a condemnation by Amnesty International would change anything.
Amnesty International can’t influence on the actions of serial killers, and they can’t influence the terrorist groups.

But Michelle Malkin doesn’t understand Amnesty International’s function, and she doesn’t understand how they operate. So she winds up trying to figure out why they issued reams of reports on Hussein’s abuses and the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, but haven’t commented on the murders of Tucker and Menchaca.

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That’s the big issue that Malkin is highlighting: the new wingnut talking point that international human rights groups can’t be taken seriously unless they issue a press release every time a terrorist strikes. But this is a Malkin column, so there’s a lot more that’s wrong with it.

Let’s start with the Townhall column that she linked to. In it, Jeff Emanuel condemns the silence of various human rights groups, including the United Nations, in the face of a monstrous terrorist attack:

Interestingly silent on this and other atrocities carried out by the insurgents in Iraq are the “human rights” groups who seem to spend every day accusing the United States of torture, war crimes, and various human rights violations.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called the Iraq war “illegal,” and John Pace, former UN chief of Human Rights for Iraq, has said that human rights conditions are “as bad now as they were under Saddam,” but was it America that filled mass graves with hundreds of thousands of murdered Iraqi civilians?

I’ve already pointed out that one can’t reasonably expect Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International to issue a press release. But Emanuel is flat wrong when he accuses the UN of ignoring the brutality of al-Qaeda. A quick search of their website reveals numberous reports, all of them characterizing al-Qaeda as a serious threat. Kofi Annan didn’t hold a press conference, but let’s face it: if Annan issued a statement every time the insurgents killed an American soldier, he’d have time to do little else. It would be a lot easier to take Malkin and Emanuel seriously, if Bush attended the funerals of all of our fallen servicemen, or if Donald Rumsfeld bothered to sign the sympathy letters to their families.

Emanuel also complains that any human rights organization would condemn the various abuses of the United States, because our soldiers haven’t beheaded anyone. As if beheading were the only crime that anyone should ever be concerned about. Torture all you want, go from house to house killing people at random, but don’t behead people. Because that would be barbaric.

Of course, Malkin manages to find an even more distorted item to link to. In this video, Bill O’Reilly and Laura Ingraham also pick up on the talking point, and bash Amnesty International for failing to condemn al-Qaeda. But O’Reilly goes on to identify Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, the BBC, and the International Red Cross as organizations that are actively helping terrorists.

Ingraham wasn’t willing to go that far, but did say that Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) is being used by al-Qaeda as a recruiting tool. Unsurprisingly, she failed to produce evidence for the claim. But groundless assertions and lunatic rantings about the Red Cross/al-Qaeda connection will never prevent Malkin from approving and linking to a story. In fact, I think those elements are now required for a story to meet with her approval.

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The reason it bothers me so much when people like Malkin push stories like this is that we Americans, unlike most people in the world, can have a real impact on the actions of our government. But al-Qaeda is beyond our influence. If a million of us march in the streets and demand an end to the beheadings, it will have no effect. I can’t vote to replace bin-Laden as the leader of al-Qaeda. I can’t have any impact by demanding that my congresswoman pass a law that regulates the practice of terrorist beheadings.

But we citizens of the United States can help shape the policies of our government.
Every two years, we get the opportunity to hold our leaders accountable. If enough Americans demand that the Bush administration end the torture, and the extreme rendition, and the detentions of innocent people (including a 10-year-old boy), then those abuses will stop.

So we citizens have a responsibility to find out what our government is doing. And when our government is causing suffering and death, we have a responsibility to do what we can to stop it. The fact that it is in our power to effect change gives a duty to make the attempt.

But Malkin urges us to shirk our duty. She tells us not to worry about the reports issued by Amnesty International. She excuses our abuses, and tells us to focus on the terrorists. She serves the same function that the state journalists in North Korea serve, offering up true accounts of the atrocities committed by official enemies while dismissing reports of our atrocities. For her and her fellow kommissars, the reports of torture and massacres are either enemy propaganda, or irrelevant anomalies carried out by a few “bad apples.”

At least the journalists in North Korea can tell themselves that their countrymen couldn’t stop the abuses even if they knew about them. I don’t know what Malkin tells herself to salve her conscience.

UPDATE: Bustardblog points out that in 2005, Amnesty International issued a 56 page report that documented and denounced various tactics of the Iraqi insurgency. While it’s ridiculous to ask them to issue a report every time an atrocity occurs, the fact is that they have highlighted abused by the insurgents, despite the fact that such documentation falls outside of Amnesty International’s core mission.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 22nd, 2006 at 6:12 am and is filed under Middle East, Media, Iraq, Torture, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.