on sexual morality and the sexual abuse of children

Lawrence of Cyberia has a really good post about the reports of sexual abuse of child prisoners at Abu Ghuraib:

Can you imagine even for a second what would be the fallout if there was video evidence of soldiers in some Arab country imprisoning American children and raping them? Shock and Awe would be raining down on Damascus (or Tehran, depending which is next on the list); Bernard Lewis and the professional pundit classes would be interviewed ad nausaeum on CNN about how such depravity is a sad but inevitable by-product of "the Arab mind"; Gerry Boykin would be preaching that this is all you can expect from "idol-worshippers"; Charlie Krauthammer would be telling us that the only answer is for Israel to kill more Palestinians; some halfwit in Texas would murder his Sikh neighbor, because "they" all look the same to him; and the 10th Mountain Division would be storming through Muslim villages from Waziristan to Sana'a, kicking down doors and generally showing "the Islams" who's boss. And God only knows what light Tom Friedman would shine on the subject, based on some chance encounter with a Kerala fisherman he bumped into in the departure lounge at Dulles International... But when the shoe is on the other foot? Crickets chirruping... ...It’s difficult to know what to say when the rape of children is dismissed as student antics; especially by our unshakeably self-righteous culture that has been trumpeting to the world for the last 18 months that it is on some kind of divine crusade to lighten the darkness afflicting the backwards Muslim masses who suffer despotism, and torture and rape rooms etc etc. I do know that we need to see the video evidence that Sy Hersh and our elected representatives have already seen - and all the other evidence that the Bush Administration is too terrified to make public - no matter how bad it is. Because until we have it shoved in our faces in living color, we as a nation will never shut up with our denial and rationalization and belittling of what is being done in our names to people just like us. Won't it put our troops in the war zone at increased risk if we release such explosive material to the scrutiny of the whole world? Probably yes, but we can counter at least some of that backlash by showing at the highest level that we understand the gravity of what we have done. For once in his life, our President could actually take some responsibility for his actions, and specifically for what he has wrought in our various Abu Ghraibs around the globe: for the good of our nation here at home, he could release the evidence, and for the good of our standing abroad, he could resign. But of course he won't take responsibility, and neither will the rest of us. As a people, we will continue to claim that this is not how we really are, even when the whole world sees with its own eyes the evidence to the contrary, and notes that we allow the leaders who sanctioned the torture of prisoners to remain in their jobs, unchallenged and unaccountable.

As Lawrence also notes, a lot of people in the West like to denigrate Muslim culture for having strict ideas about modesty and sexual conduct. But if we look the other way from the sexual abuse of children, we've gone way too far in the other direction.