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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Salon is bad because they haven't published a Danish cartoon that nobody needs to see in order to understand the violence that some incited because of it, but they're also bad for publishing photos of torture that everybody needs to see in order to understand what's being done in our names?
Anybody who has paid any attention to the news in the past couple of weeks could draw that cartoon from memory based purely on having heard or read it described time and time and time again. We get it. We know what it looks like. If we really want to see it, we can find it on the Internet.
Where else are you going to find these torture photos? What words could possibly adequately describe what they depict? And these are nothing compared to what we still haven't seen.
Some of the comments here have helped me to understand the desire of some people to not know the truth, because I'd almost rather not know that any rational Americans could possibly think this way.
Walter Shapiro is a classic windbag, so full of himself he seems unable to resist making proclamations such as the following: “We are ashamed to live in a country that somehow came to accept that torture and prisoner abuse were simply business as usual.” I yield my liberal credentials to no one, but this is precisely the sort of arrogant and overblown nonsense that robs liberals of their credibility. Once again we have a liberal assuming that only he and his ever so sensitive friends are outraged by the crimes at Abu Ghraib, without offering any evidence that the country as a whole accepts such crimes as “business as usual.” Come on, Walter, it’s a big country with lots of decent people in it who were and are outraged by such crimes, including even some members of Congress. And I don’t think Walter needs to feel ashamed of a country where crimes such as these can be exposed and condemned.
Salon, moreover, desperately needs to regain its balance. Not a cartoon in sight, cowering before the Islamofascists, and now these photos, preaching to the liberal choir, hardly an act of courage. You’re all over the crimes of the Bushies and the US military, as you should be, but day after day innocents are murdered by Islamic thugs and we hear not a peep, view nary an image. Get a clue, Salon: crimes are being commited every day by both sides, and both sides need to be condemned with equal fervor. A rigorous intellectual honesty is absolutely necessary to establishing and maintaining the respect and authority that I would hope Salon would seek for itself. Otherwise this publication risks becoming a Fox News-type outlet for liberals and sinking into the insignificance and mockery that Fox News has so richly earned for itself. I’m reminded of the saying that “the fish rots from the head.” Someone at Salon needs to get a grip on the editorial rudder.
I wonder how many of the letter writers that are shocked, shocked about yet another release of Abu Ghraib photos have ever worked in a prison, psychiatric hospital, homeless shelter, on a police beat, or even in an urban public high school? For those people living in Candyland, who have never even watched an episode of COPS, you need to know that sometimes it becomes neccessary to get unhappy people to do things that they really, REALLY don't want to do. Surprisingly, this is never very pleasant, and sometimes the unhappiness that is in those unhappy people rubs off on normally rational, decent folks, especially when they are far from home in a war zone. Henchmen for a ruthless, totalitarian regime that used poison gas on its own people and started wars with its nieghbors can be especially "unhappy", and it might be difficult to get them to go along with the program of a military force that just locked them up in a prison where THEY used to hold other folks.
When the same people don't care much at all about offending Christian beliefs?
Art that is offensive to Christians (Piss Christ, Elephant Dung Mary, etc) is defended as freedom of speech. Art offensive to Muslims is criticized and censored to avoid hurting feelings and inflaming tensions.
Non-religious Americans think it's pretty silly to worship a Jewish carpenter whose rituals include symbolic cannibalism. Why is there so much reverence and respect shown to a religion that kneels on a rug 5 times a day and prays to a bigamist pedophile and a big rock in the middle of the desert?
Show the same respect to both, or the same lack of respect to both. The the exception of a few mentally ill loons, the worst thing a Christian will do is bore you to death.
Can't say I'm surprised by the increasingly bizzare analogies/rationalizations being offered by some here. While they can be easliy dismissed, they are occasionally amsuing. So, I guess they are of some use in that they provide a light diversion from the matter at hand.
Those pictures are disgusting. Disturbing. Abhorrent. Shocking. To say the least. What's more troubling than these pictures' signifier is their signified.
These pictures represent power corrupted. Along with the gung-ho soldiers shown doing their "job," one can easily connect the dots of their hierarchy all the way to the White House.
In the military, the chain of command is posted everywhere; soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen are constantly reminded of who's on top. Boot camp hours are spent reciting the chain of command until it's structure is engrained. Squadbays full of soon-to-be-brainwashed recruits repeat the mantra day in and day out: "The vice president of the United States is the honorable Mr. Cheney."
What they're not told is that shit only rolls down the chain, not up it. The chain of command is like a turnstile; your orders come in one way but they cannot go back up.
If Salon has a complete set of all the Pentagon Abu Ghraib documents, why not release all of them? The justification seems to be "well, if we release these photos, the US will look bad, and it won't actually undo any of the crimes." This makes about as much sense as hiding evidence of a murder because it would make the murderer look bad, without being able to bring the dead back to life. In fact, the murder analogy isn't an analogy at all. It is just a description of what is going on.
You might object that keeping the full file to yourselves is not like covering up a murder, because the files are already in the hands of the relevant law enforcement agency, the Pentagon itself. But it is obvious that the Pentagon cannot be counted on to police itself. You basically acknowledge this fact in your justification of the partial release of photographs.
At the very least, I hope the International Criminal Court has complete access to the file. Given the difficulty establishing jurisdiction, though, it would be best if whole world had complete access.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
