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Patriotism and the Abu Ghraib paintings
Addison Ross
A couple of weeks ago San Francisco Capobianco Gallery owner Lori Haigh was beaten up because she displayed paintings by Berkeley artist Guy Colwell of US troops torturing Iraqis. Haigh's voicemail was also filled with profanity-laced threats and hateful diatribes
Haigh claimed her right to free speech had been violated. It goes without saying that she is absolutely right. On the other hand, as a liberal Haigh should at least be sufficiently consistent ask the simple question: Why would anyone do that?
Well, the answer is just as simple. Colwell deliberately painted American troops as a bunch of sadistic Nazis. His paintings were not an anti-war statement but an attack on the US. Saddam's thugs and his al Qaeda allies could not have done a better job of portraying a handful of rogue soldiers who humiliated — not tortured — Iraqi prisoners as being typical GIs.
In plain English Colwell acted with cold-blooded premeditation to libel American troops and his country, and in doing so he consciously aided and abetted the enemy. This is a fact that ordinary patriotic Americans have no difficulty in discerning, though Haigh appears to have a severe problem with recognising the obvious when she sees it — or then again, maybe not.
Now where are Colwell's paintings of a free Iraq? Where are his grisly paintings of Saddam's torturers at work? Where are his outraged pictures of the Twin Towers and other terrorist outrages? Can we now expect painting of a Saddamite mob burning the bodies of American contractors and then hacking them to pieces? Will Colwell paint the latest Khobar atrocity in which al Qaeda terrorists massacred 22 civilians?
Of course not. Colwell is a typical leftist hypocrite whose hatred is solely directed at the US. He no more cares about Iraqi prisoners than I worry about the welfare of ants. These prisoners' humiliation was just a handy excuse for him to libel his country and nothing more.
Like the vast majority of lefties, Colwell is a phony humanitarian and a vicious liar. "Liar?" you ask. Yes indeed. When he used the misbehaviour of a few to slime the reputations of those who are fighting and dying in Iraq, he perpetrated a vile lie. (The cowardly Teddy Kennedy did the same thing when he accused President Bush and the US Army of reopening Saddam's torture chambers).
This is what basically fuelled the anger that Haigh has felt and that Colwell, the man who wiped his boots on men whose company he is not fit to keep, did not have the guts to confront.
Once again, what was done to Haigh was inexcusable but the anger behind it is understandable.
Haigh believes she has lost her freedom of speech. This is a self-pitying and absurd view. It does, however, reveal the self-righteous and self-absorbed attitude of lefties. Did Haigh or Colwell welcome free speech for Iraqi's? Apparently not. Did this pair ever object to leftwing academics and their student thugs suppressing free speech on campuses? I doubt it.
That's the moralising left for you. It's not the men and women who defend America who are the "real patriot[s]", it is not those who liberated Iraq and destroyed a murderous regime, not to mention the Taliban. No sirreeee. The "real patriot" is a silly little leftwinger who displayed paintings showing US as a bunch of Nazi storm troopers.
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