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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
The majority of Salon readers are Americans.
We did not draw the Danish cartoons. We did not publish them. We did not riot over them. They have nothing to do with us. We don't actually need to see them to get the idea "these cartoons offended Muslims so much they set things on fire."
Don't get me wrong. I think the Muslim behavior toward those cartoons is reprehensible. But, you know, it was reprehensible when Ayatollah Khomeini put out a fatwa on Salman Rushdie's life, and I didn't actually need to read "The Satanic Verses" to know that it was reprehensible (I tried. Couldn't get through it.) Nor did I have any moral obligation to do so since it wasn't like my tax dollars put Khomeini in power (unless you count our gross stupidity in propping up the Shah as long as we did, but we were not directly responsible for Khomeini and his fatwa.)
This is different. My tax money paid for people from my country to do this to innocent people and people who'd committed no more serious crime than car theft. If they'd been terrorists this still wouldn't have been right, but the horrifying thing is that the vast majority of prisoners at Abu Ghraib are INNOCENT. I grew up being told we were better than the Communists because the Soviets did these kinds of things, "disappearing" innocent people to be tortured or killed. Later I found out that we sponsored states who did the same thing, but at least, at *least* we were not doing it directly, we were not the hands on the guns. Now we are. And we have a moral obligation to look at the horrors we have allowed to be wrought in our name.
It is not necessary to show pictures of al-Zarqawi beheading Nick Berg, because we didn't behead the guy -- we're trying to kill al-Zarqawi (incompetently, but at least now we're trying, unlike before the war.) And saying "well, why don't you show people being beheaded" conflates two unrelated things. al-Zarqawi isn't even Iraqi and he certainly isn't in Abu Ghraib. This is kind of like trying to do a history lesson on ancient Rome where you talk about the first Christians being crucified or thrown to the lions and somebody goes "Well, now you have to teach about the Inquisition!" Yeah, okay, Christians committed the Inquisition, but other than that the two are not related. The murder of Christians in ancient Rome had nothing to do with the murder of innocent people by Christians in Spain 1400 years later, and the murder of Nick Berg and other innocent foreigners in Iraq by Muslim terrorists from countries other than Iraq has nothing to do with American torture of innocent Muslims in Iraq except that Muslims and Americans are involved in both cases, and physically both crimes took place in Iraq. That's trying to create "balance" where there isn't any, except in the minds of racist right-wingers who think "Muslim = terrorist" and so Jordanian terrorist al-Zarqawi is exactly the same as an innocent Afghani taxi driver that we tortured to death or an Iraqi car thief who got swept up into Abu Ghraib and was tortured by us because he kind of looked like he might be a terrorist, since, you know, he looked Iraqi.
We need to see these pictures. We need to see them, and we need to demand accountability from our leaders, and those that have already proven they will never support accountability, we need to pursue every legal means at our disposal to get them the hell out of power, whether that be voting the bastards out, demanding their prosecution or resignation, or getting them impeached.
I am not anti-American. I love my country. But I love my son, too, and if I found him tormenting a smaller child just for fun, I would want to know and I would punish him to teach him never to do that again. If the American government won't learn not to torture people without a spanking from the American people, then we who love our country need to deliver that spanking at the ballot box this November and in letters to our Congresspeople and to newspapers and in any other legal way we can.
Of course, this only applies to images that make America look bad. You certainly would not want to publish cartoons so that we can understand certain "other people's" reaction.
Charge forward, you warriors of complete reporting!
First of all, I commend Salon for publishing these photographs. Why? Because they depict a very basic, deplorable change in the way American military personnel have historically treated prisoners of war, as they have been allowed, even encouraged, to do so. Secondly, I am responding to a letter in which the writer spoke of the "American left being basically anti-American." That writer and many others of that ilk have swallowed, hook, line, and sinker, the propaganda that has been spewed by the current administration. I love America! I have great compassion for dignified men and women who serve in the military in this war based on lies. I love the ideals for which this country stood...until the Bush administration came along and wasted no time in exploiting the tragedy of 9/11 to promote an extreme Republican agenda. I don't even recognize this country any more. Why aren't people "in the streets," demanding accountability from this administration? We need answers to many, many issues, and only one of them is what happened at Abu Ghraib. I am profoundly embarrassed by our current leaders. Yes, I love America. I want to see the ideals upon which it was founded restored, if that is possible. This country is now a laughingstock, and justifiably so. I would like to feel hopeful, but what I fear is that America has already seen it's finest days, and is a civilization on its downward spiral.
Like others, I was listening to NPR on the way to work this morning when I heard the news of your posting more of Abu Ghraib pictures. Of the entire set of pictires, the only one I found to exhibit true evidense of apparent torture was the one of the beaten and bloody face. The others, which obviously document questionable treatment of prisoners, do not qualify as torture. Nudity? Handcuffs? Panties over the head? Heck, as a comedian remarked way back when Abu Ghraib first broke, that type of treatment would cost you a lot of money in Vegas.
So they might find it degrading. So they might find it humiliating. So maybe they experience some mental disturbance and are made uncomfortable. Sounds like a personal problem to me. Do they think this is a country club minimum security prision? This stuff is nothing and they need to get over it.
Physical abuses such as beatings and electric shock are true torture and are abhorent to me. But explotation of a prisoners mores and mental weaknesses, such as represented by these pictures, hardly qualifies as torture. Attaching the label torture to these pictures only serves to denigrate the true meaning of torture.
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
