An excellent point

Fred Hiatt makes this important point in a Washington Post op-ed:

The United States and this administration in particular continually assert the moral right to behave differently than other nations. We will not be bound by the International Criminal Court. We insist that other nations give up their nuclear weapons while we keep our own. We wage war without U.N. Security Council approval. We publish annual report cards on everyone else's human rights records. The premise of this highhandedness is that the United States is, on balance, a force for good in the world -- a superpower that uses its might not to subjugate others but to allow them to live freely. This is a premise that The Post's editorial page on the whole accepts -- to the dismay of many readers. But any nation asserting such a high calling will be judged by an equally high standard. Are we better than the beheaders, the mass killers, the U.N. peacekeepers raping young girls in the Congo? That's not close to the right question. Do we behave as well as we claim, as we should, as we expect of others? That's the beginning of the right conversation -- and why it's fair to write more editorials about exceedingly mild Koran abuse at Guantanamo Bay than about the unspeakable mass graves of Hilla.

I agree with this completely. We can, and should hold ourselves to a higher standard. I would add the caution though, that when writing editorials on this subject, with the rest of the world looking breathlessly for any sign of U.S. moral failure. It is vitally important that any facts presented be correct. Beyond that, I would argue that it is only useful to present these facts in their proper context. I do want to know if a Koran is mistreated at Guantanamo. I also want to know who did the mistreating, how frequent it is been, and what, if anything, has been done to the person mistreating the Koran. I accept that the U.S. Government will at times inact inappropriate policies. I accept that that individual soldiers will at times behave in ways that demean their uniform and government. I will earnestly do what I can to correct these errors, but unless I am given factual information about the nature of the error, I cannot do little. I would also caution the writers of these peices, that a few times of crying wolf, when their is no wolf, greatly damages this cause.