As abuse scandal grows, U.S. finding fewer friends

By Tom Hundley
Chicago Tribune

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The scandal has muted worldwide response to the beheading of an American in Iraq, with some people saying the beheading of businessman Nick Berg by Islamic militants was an understandable retaliation for U.S. actions in Iraq.

German and French officials and citizens express vindication for their decision to stay out of the Iraq war, and they are beginning to question their overall security relationship with the United States, analysts said. In Poland, the abuse scandal has deepened the unease about the country's military participation in the occupation.

Moderate Arab states are taking the unusual step of publicly condemning Washington. "As someone living in the West, I have never felt so angry as I am today," Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Qatar's ambassador to the United Kingdom, said before the Berg slaying was reported.

Such public expressions of anger, rare for Persian Gulf diplomats, mark a seismic shift in the attitude of pro-West Arab governments. Qatar hosted the command center for U.S. generals directing the Iraq invasion and was base for warplanes that dropped the first bombs in the war.

In addition to Qatar, other U.S.-friendly Arab governments, including Jordan, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, have unleashed state-controlled media to condemn the United States. Some are advocating stronger action to force a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

"We are talking about the nature of an imperialist, immoral, racist and crusader president who should be driven out of Iraq," a columnist wrote in the English-language Bahrain Tribune.

Other Arab newspapers conspicuously played down the Berg killing. "In normal circumstances, I could condemn the slaughtering of the American, but we are living in abnormal circumstances. I cannot condemn it now," said Egyptian columnist Nur Al-Huda Zaki, of Al-Arabi, who told The Associated Press most Arab newspapers would avoid any coverage that implicitly condemned the beheading.

A notable exception was in Kuwait, where several newspapers covered the Berg slaying on the front page.

The Mexico City newspaper Reforma ran a front-page photo of Berg and his executioners with the headline: "Between the law ... and the law of retaliation."

The implication, that Berg's killing was eye for an eye, was in keeping with the dominant view in Mexico that the United States has brought its troubles upon itself.
 
The three major Palestinian newspapers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip published wire stories on the beheading on their front pages but added no comment and published no photos.

"We know such actions won't help the Iraqis. It won't liberate them," said Hamed Abdulkareem, 36, of Gaza City.

But Sawsan Al-Masri, 24, smiled when asked about the beheading. "He deserved it," she said of Berg. "... Do you think what the Americans did to the detainees was less ugly?"

Some Arabs deplored the Berg killing mainly because it diverted attention from the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.

"Such revenge is rejected," Mustafa Bakri, editor of Al-Osboa weekly newspaper in Egypt, told The Associated Press. "The American administration will make use of such crimes just to cover their real crimes against Iraqis."

The charge of U.S. hypocrisy also has been leveled in Turkey, where the government has supported the United States but most Turks have opposed the war. Some parliamentarians have been particularly harsh toward Bush.

"Ordinary Turks were appalled at the abuse of the Iraqi prisoners and later by the murder of the American businessman," said Omer Madra, founder of Open Radio, an Istanbul station. "But they are not surprised. The Turkish population is aware of a certain double standard ... that while the U.S. preaches democracy and human rights, it does not always practice them."

The worldwide outrage over the abuse complicates the Bush administration's efforts to involve other countries. U.S. diplomats express fear member nations of Bush's "coalition of the willing" will find Iraq more trouble than it's worth. Hopes of persuading NATO to take a role have all but vanished.

Members of Britain's Parliament are demanding Prime Minister Tony Blair withdraw British troops, and fresh opinion polls indicate only 28 percent of Britons think their troops should remain in Iraq.

Government officials or opposition politicians in Portugal, Hungary and the Netherlands have raised doubts about their participation.

Portuguese Prime Minister José Durão Barroso, whose country's contribution to the occupation consists of 128 police officers, said: "You cannot, in the name of the struggle against terrorism and for the sake of freedom, contravene the very values and principles on which that struggle is based."

The brutality has "confirmed everyone's worst fears, and confirmed feelings, in France and Germany especially, that they were right to stay out of this mess," said William Drozdiak, director of the German Marshall Fund's Transatlantic Center in Brussels, Belgium. "More and more Europeans are openly expressing their fear of getting too involved with the U.S.... ," he said. "They are questioning whether a security relationship with the U.S. is becoming a negative instead of a positive."

In China, the government has restrained its criticism, a decision analysts said reflects Beijing's concern over its record of mistreating prisoners, particularly political and religious dissidents. Among the Chinese people, though, disappointment crept in alongside anger.

"This is the real America ruled by Bush," a participant wrote in one of China's largest Internet chat rooms. "This ugly behavior exposes the reality of so-called democracy and freedom."

Said another contributor: "I cannot believe what happened. I used to believe America was the best country in the world."

So shocking were some photos that even some staunch critics abroad, such as supporters of Fidel Castro in Cuba, had a hard time believing the images. "Are these photographs real?" one Havana resident asked. "Was it one group of soldiers or the whole army?"

Chicago Tribune correspondents Michael A. Lev, Hugh Dellios, Laurie Goering, Gary Marx, Michael McGuire, Catherine Collins and Mohammed al Waheidi contributed to this report; background on the Qatari ambassador and Arab newspapers was reported by The Dallas Morning News.