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I agree with the letter writer who exposed the haughty assumption that Americans don't care about Abu Ghraib anymore. Because it really isn't a journalist's job to report their own interpretations and call them public opinion. I mean, nobody really knows what Americans think, do they? When was the last time anybody asked, in a non-biased way?
But I also have to object that, by one important measure, America seems to have let it all pass: If we cared, we would have stopped this by now. Abuses continue in prisons, even domestic ones. Bills limiting interrogation techniques seem always to get lost somewhere in Congress. Who hired these people -- Congressmen -- anyway? We did. So stop pretending that America cares but is being hoodwinked by politicians. The responsibility to stop this is ours.
My first encounter with torture was not with Abu Ghraib, but with foreign students in the '80s. I was nearly forced by conscience into an ill-conceived marriage to keep my boyfriend from being deported to the U.S.-allied country where his friends were being tortured and killed. I had to see my country for what it was, good and bad; I had to grow up and claim citizenship and responsibility in a superpower. When did so many other people get a free pass on growing up?
I hope that journalists, both courageous and cowardly, will keep publishing photographs like these, right in our faces. The point is, they're being published, so nobody can say they didn't see them.
