Please don’t make us look
May 6th, 2004 at 12:54 pmHow can it be that I see an American soldier leading a beaten Iraqi man down a prison hallway on a leash?
How is it that someone in an American uniform, sent halfway around the world on a mission so important that every international law imaginable was broken in the race to accomplish it, found the best thing he could do while there was force two hooded men to pretend they were having sex?
Why, in an effort to bring democracy to a people who have never known it, must we must first assault them and destroy their homes on their own ancestral land?
What does it mean that, in retaliation for the deaths of 2,800 of ours we’ve killed 10,000 here and 3,000 there and who knows how many elsewhere while calling it ‘freedom’?
And how could we have closed our eyes and allowed our good name to be used like this?
For that’s what we did – allowed our good names to be used. Looked the other way while a band of marauding politicians and generals hell-bent on slaughtering America’s prestige and goodwill unleashed the world’s most powerful military on an innocent and defenseless civilian population who have little or nothing to do with this country’s security, save their decision to fight back against an occupying force that came in the night to steal their country.
Sent over the most puffed-up and vainglorious among us to subdue a people who are different than we. And who might, just might, have known someone who knew someone who knew someone who wanted to do us harm.
Comforted ourselves with stories about how we had no other choice, and recited to ourselves lies about what our motivation was. So that when we went to bed at night we were not troubled at all, nor worried what might really be going on.
And thought never of the men and women and children who were filling up the latest examples of our fondness for prison-building.
The pictures of American soldiers torturing Iraqi men in Abu Ghraib prison, however, effectively draw a line in the sand. No longer can we say with any legitimacy, or with a straight face, or with honesty in our hearts – or even while looking anyone in the eye – that we are there to do good. That anyone’s interests are served. That what’s good for America is what’s good for Iraq.
No one’s best interest can be defined as having a harness placed on them, and then made to crawl on all fours to be ridden like a donkey.
But we are there for other reasons, other purposes. So we can remain pious in our church pews on Sunday morning, assured we’re doing the right thing for a poor, unfortunate people. So we can continue to consume a quarter of the world’s energy without having to give it a thought. So we can nurse our grievances and outrages at how we were attacked on that fateful day, and know that by God someone has to pay. So we can feel tough on the world’s stage without having to face the consequences.
So we can remain confident in our own superiority, the deep-down kind of superiority that is needed in order to treat other people as less than human, and tie them up, naked, to iron cots before beating them to death and pretending it ever happened.
That’s what happened. Sy Hersch says so. The New York Times says so. Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba says so.
And the soldiers who were there – that’s what they say, too.
Already, the disassembling and denials have begun. And the weak apologies by those who look to hide behind the dignity and pride of their fellow citizens. And the cover-up over who knew what and when, and the fake outrage of the political opponents.
The pictures from Abu Ghraib, however, are the truth.
Throughout 1945 and 1946, Germans of various stripes were forced by the victorious Allied armies to watch films documenting the horror of the concentration camps where so many of the Third Reich’s enemies were slaughtered during the Second World War. Up to entire villages at a time were herded into cinemas to watch such titles as “Bergen and Buchenwald: Atrocities – The Evidence” and “die Todesmühlen” (‘The Mills of Death’), montages of camp scenes designed to coerce the civilian population into recognizing their collective guilt for the genocide that went on in their name, and under their own noses.
A population that, until the day American and Soviet tanks went rumbling through the gates of Dachau and Mauthausen and Auschwitz, denied any responsibility for what happened, even when they could see the smokestacks of death in the neighboring town from their own kitchen windows.
Maybe its time for the same thing to happen here.
That, against our will, we’re made to look. Again and again.
And to see ourselves more than anything else.
The most puffed up and vainglorious, indeed.
Exactly on target, Mark.
Is it time to use the ‘N’ word now? At what point does it become correct to call fascism fascism? It’s not just bad apples when the apples fall so close to the tallest tree.
“Maybe its time for the same thing to happen here….”
I don’t know Mark, after reading this:
http://asmallvictory.net/archives/006749.html
one wonders if anything can be parsed through that universal defense mechanism; parity.
I’m so embarrassed, I’m never going to leave the house (let alone the country) again. It’s time to start appropriating a Canadian accent.
Excellent piece. Hit the nail right on the head. I’m passing this along to everyone I know.
Well, what if I don’t really want to see myself?
That is, unless it’s a dark shot of a woman laughingly pointing at my package!
Great article. The only thing is, that the better presented an argument against this whole fiasco … the more depressing it is to hear those who complain of too much traffic at Wal*Mart, STILL talk about making Iraq into a parking lot — even while they are looking.
Just saw Cabaret last weekend, so as you are asking how we could allow this to happen I’m thinking of Sally Bowles saying over and over, “it’s only politics, it doesn’t concern me”
Thats one way. That was in reference to the Nazis.
I think I here our president singing “Tomorrow Belongs to Me”.
By all means, let’s forget about the mutilated American soldiers burned, dragged through the street, and left swinging from a bridge.
Let’s forget the Webcast execution of Berg.
Let’s forget that the vast majority of these “humiliated” Iraqi prisoners likely committed even more heinous atrocities, and they’re still breathing; many of them now back on the street, plotting the death of Americans.
The abuse of these prisoners was inexcusable and disgusting, but it was no cause to be embarrassed of your citizenship. It’s war; it’s not a pretty thing. In any other chapter of human history, they’d have all been quietly executed.
Al Queda laughs at their ability to erode our resolve so easily, yet they aren’t smart enough to capitalize on the political clout that weak-minded, embarrassed Americans gladly hand them. I thank God for that.
“the vast majority of these “humiliated” Iraqi prisoners likely committed even more heinous atrocities”
Per Michael Kilian’s “Prisoner Abuse Formed Pattern” in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune: “Red Cross investigators said they were told by unnamed coalition military intelligence officers that an estimated 70 percent to 90 percent of Iraqi detainees proved to have been arrested by mistake.”
“In any other chapter of human history, they’d have all been quietly executed.”
I don’t take much comfort in the fact that the Bush Administration isn’t as brutal as Stalin, Pol Pot or Genghis Khan.
We simply have to adhere to a higher moral standard than the barbarians who executed Berg and the four contractors at Fallujah or we’ll just end up in a revenge-fueled vicious circle. Unfortunately, our military’s deplorable actions at Abu Gharib–which Hersh’s article indicates were effectively condoned up the chain of command, at least as high as Rumsfeld–sadly indicate that this higher moral standard is not being observed by this administration.
And it’s looking more and more like Abu Gharib was NOT an isolated incident:
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5184201&src=eDialog/GetContent§ion=news
The invasion of Iraq was a deliberate crime from the get-go. Iraq was not a threat. The thug the U.S. Government had promoted to attack Iran and, when the Kurds sided with Iran, gas Kurds, had started thumbing his nose at the U. S. The first Bush gang double crossed Saddam after Ambassador Glasby told him he could freely invade Kuwait. G. Bush Sr. used that invasion as a pretext to invade Iraq.
This war is simply about taking control of oil away from intractable Moslem owners and putting it in the hands of right wing “Christian” crooks bent on world domination. Of course, there are Moslem fundamentalists similarly bent on world domination, however improbable their dreams, so people of sense around the globe need to stop the fundamentalists of all stripes dead in their tracks – figuratively at least. The only alternative is the 1,000 year old war between Moslems and the European warlords will continue to heat up. There is no end in sight just now, short of chemical, biological, and nuclear holocost, unless persons of sense around the world wake up and take control of their countries in a way never seen before in history.
John Kerry at least is honest even if there are many things he doesn’t get.
Supercillious intellectual sarcasm, however on target, won’t help much. All who can write or speak need to learn how to win friends so the friends can be influenced to vote sensibly and further spread the word.
The war is about religion, oil, and power.
The owners of the oil need to sell it to the rich “developed” societies regardless, so there is no real advantage in taking it from them, even if it were not a crime against God and humanity to just take it, which, in case anyone in interested, it is.
Handwringing over pictorial exposure of long standard torture methods is rather silly and hypocritical. Where the hell were the “shocked” hand wringers when Bush gang were feeding the public transparent lies to set the whole thing up? Hello, remember Viet Nam?
Those who are guilty of not raising their voices loudly a year ago and two years ago can still do so now. Step one is stopping Bush and gang by any legal means – like calling for impeachment now and, failing that, voting for Kerry. The Bush gangers can be tried for treason later.
There are actually wiser candidates than Kerrey in the Libertarian party, but there is time for promoting them after Kerry is in the White House. It is unlikely a Libertarian could get enough support in the time before election unless some Zillionaire (like a member of Congress or Senator) backed him. At present I would fear wasting a vote.
Questions?
Aren’t Americans fighting for freedom? Hell no. The soldiers and their families just think they are. They have been duped by the American Government. They are fighting a religious war to project the power of the American WASP-Israeli-American elete. A most unworthy cause.
But hasn’t America been doing this for a long time? Yes. That’s no reason to do it for another day.
Can we really do anything about it?
The first requisite for disempowerment is to believe you are disempowered. Hundreds of millions are spent in media advertising to convince you that you are disempowered, that the Government is wise, and that you can trust the liars. You are hereby empowered. Go forth and be worthy of your power!
The Americans and Iraqi’s (and Afghani’s) killed by the Bush power grabs are all people loved by someone. A fitting memorial, the only fitting memorial, is to spread the truth and stop the mass serial atrocities ASAP.
Are we sentimental yet?
A real American,
Tobey