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Thank you Salon for having the courage to publish these photos, knowing as you must the harsh backlash you will face from the O’Reily and Limbaugh crowd.
Several have said that by publishing these photos, has put our troops at risk. They claim that the pictures are so incendiary that they will inflame Muslim passion against the U.S. and incite terrorist attacks. And this may, in fact, be true- making these pictures public may indeed have the end result of inciting terrorist attacks on America or our allies, although it seems that radical fundamentalists hardly need much justification beyond their long standing and deep-seated grievances against America and western culture. This is unfortunate, but the blame does not lie with Salon or other newspapers who shed harsh light on these photos.
It is not the pictures themselves, but the acts of abuse and degradation depicted therein that provoke radical fundamentalists to action. The pictures are mere evidence of actual acts committed by American soldiers and agents, funded by American tax dollars, and condoned implicitly or explicitly by American government officials. The photos provide silent testimony of real actions- and it is those actions that Muslims, and for that matter most of the civilized world, considers atrocious. If the American government wants to prevent pictures like these from leaking out and inflaming Muslim passion, we- the government and citizens of the United States- need to make sure that these kinds of acts do not occur in the first place. If our government treated detainees with basic human dignity, and refrained from shackling them to bed frames with underwear on their head, then there would be no pictures.
We must demand humane treatment of detained prisoners, at Abu Ghraib or Gitmo or even at secret black site prisons around the world that our government doesn’t want to acknowledge. We need to insist that legislation like the McCain amendment banning torture really is the law of the land, and not just a piece of paper to be signed and then disregarded at the president’s whim. We need to hold our government responsible for acts like these that were committed in the name of the American citizenry. This doesn’t mean punishing a few low-ranking soldiers for individual acts- it means holding the entire chain of command responsible for the actions committed and encouraged under its direction and control.
There are no rules in war? The enemy has done bad things too? Didn’t they behead people on camera? These are not excuses and do not justify or condone abuse of detainees in American custody. Terror is not justifiable in the name of fighting terror, and the ends do not justify these means. The term “war crime” exists for a reason- there are some actions that are beyond even what is considered permissible in the brutality of war. Saying that the enemies’ actions are justification for our own acts of abuse is to say that we are no better than they are- to sink down to their level in a race to the bottom of depravity. When Bush & Co. were selling this catastrophe of a war to the public and congress, we were repeatedly told that Saddam was a “monster who tortures his own people.” Who is responsible for tortures committed after Saddam’s fall?
These pictures of abuse have nothing whatsoever to do with the Danish cartoons, as others have already eloquently explained (kudos alarajrogers). If you feel the need to see the danish cartoons and haven't already, do a Google search.
