Piking Heads; Not Dead!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3096339.stm

This is only one example of the story of the proof of Uday and Usay Hussein. Of course, this is only a modern day version of the piking of heads and hanging them on the wall to demoralize the enemy. However, it's now televised.

Somehow, I'm perplexed at the display of the corpses to the Iraqi (and world) audience. This may seem horribly bourgoise, but while I was working out at the local health club, I was cross-training to the sight of Uday and Usay plastered on all four screens. I don't know which was more surreal; watching the equivalent of a public piking while working off my Butterfinger, or the fact that I had thought that the world had somehow gotten beyond that in this day and age (not cross-training, piking the vanquished).

So, this leads me to believe a number of possibilities. Perhaps the US believes that the 'Arabs' are so barbaric that only barbaric displays are the only way to scare them into submission. Perhaps next should be the dedigitation of captured Ba'ath party members on national TV. I tend to wonder if this is merely jingoistic mush or whether there is a cultural connection that assures this sort of display's effectiveness. Either way, as I know a number of educated individuals from this area who believ ethat this is an insult to the intelligence of all but the most basic, I woudl tend to agree.

On the other hand, what does this say about the US? Temporally speaking, this is just shy of a public execution, and such a display of these corpses on international TV is denigrating to the Iraqi people, and puts the US in a barbaric light itself. It isn't so much the event, but its handling as spectacle that disturbs me so deeply.

I don't know. It's too fresh for me to comment on this any further. However, I now feel that the tenor of the so-called 'war on terrorism' has taken on a new significance for me, and it isn't sitting well here. It's something for which I almost feel compelled to write apologies to my international friends about.