April 19, 2003

If good reporting can be judged by the enemies it makes, then al-Jazeera must be doing something right. The Arabic-language TV channel provoked rebukes from the U.S. government and military officials in the early days of “The War on Iraq” (al-Jazeera’s phrase) when it rebroadcast Iraqi footage of dead and captive U.S. soldiers. Shortly afterwards the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ expelled al-Jazeera reporters from their trading floors.

Viewers watching the fourth day of the war on al-Jazeera television would have seen these items:

• When coalition sources were announcing the surrender of Iraq’s 51st Division and its commander, General Khalid al-Hashimi, al-Jazeera’s Basra correspondent was interviewing al-Hashimi, who said his troops were in Basra, defending the city.

• A group of Iraqi fighters and citizens were shown in Mosul, and one of them said into the camera: “At the urging of Saddam, we will kill the Americans, and we will kill anybody who does not fight the Americans!”

In little more than half a century international law and institutions grew from embryonic dreams into strapping adolescents. But now they stagger under an all-American punch.

In the ashes of World War II, the U.S., towering above its defeated enemies and battered allies, might have chosen to impose a unilateral Pax Americana. But Americans knew the burdens of war. Led by Harry Truman, Americans made three wise choices.

"Disgusting” and “absolutely unacceptable” were the terms used by General John Abizaid to describe Iraqi and al-Jazeera television broadcasts showing dazed and wounded American prisoners of war and corpses of American soldiers.

The general is right. Article 13 of the 1949 Geneva convention on prisoners of war, a legally binding treaty to which nearly all nations—including the U.S. and Iraq—are parties, requires that POWs be “humanely treated.” It specifies that they “must at all times be protected, particularly . . . against insults and public curiosity.”

Western ideas about good cities descend from Athens, Jerusalem and Rome. From Athens we inherit two seminal ideas: that the good life is the life of moral and intellectual excellence, and that the good city is one that makes this good life possible for its citizens. From Jerusalem comes a third idea: that a city’s excellence is also measured by the care it exhibits for its weakest members. And from Rome we inherit the idea that a city’s beauty is warranted by and represents its greatness.

When are religious leaders obligated to speak out against tyranny and atrocities? When is it prudent for them to keep silent so they can fight another day? These are two of the timely questions raised by a pair of small films making the independent circuit: Amen, by celebrated filmmaker Constantin Costa-Gavras (Z and Missing), and Bonhoeffer, a documentary by Martin Doblmeier.

Both films use real-life stories and both succeed, to a point, in convincing us that spiritual and physical sacrifices must be made in the battle against evil.