The Rest of the Story
The Rest of the Story - After Andrew Olmsted linked to “Late Night Thoughts of a Defeatist,” Andrea Harris accused me, in his comments section, of inflating “one incident” - the probable drowning of Iraqi blogger Zeyad’s cousin by American troops - into some kind of generalized pattern of abuse and mistreatment. This was surprising, since you would think Harris, whose grasp of prose style is as sure as her handle on geopolitics is shaky, had heard of synecdoche before.
The number of US brutality stories that appear far exceed the number that I link to. Sometimes I consider them poorly sourced. But some dead horses are just too painful to beat. I dislike running “Look! Our boys crossed the line again” items, to the point where one of my regular correspondents and fellow bloggers has accused me of being “soft on the military.”
Everyone who reads the news knows there is a lot more than “one incident” out there. The latest is the Meet the new boss, same as the old boss report from Abu Ghraib prison. Here Saddam used to torture prisoners and here we’ve been doing it too. If it’s not lunch time, you can see some of the pictures. (Link via Tacitus.)
This too is surely just “one incident” and “still under investigation,” just like the rest of them. Mind you:
Gary Myers, the lawyer for one of the enlisted men charged, said in an interview that the military had treated the six soldiers as scapegoats and had failed to address adequately the responsibilities of senior commanders and intelligence personnel involved in the interrogations.
according to James Risen in the New York Times.
Of the pictures, Gary Farber writes
Horrific. Simply horrific. Enough to lead to Godwin’s Law violation. Unbelievable. I SERIOUSLY warn you not to look at them unless you are prepared to have a reaction that is likely to include vomiting, bursting out in tears, and pounding your fist against the wall while cursing and screaming. I am not kidding. It’s no different than looking at concentration camp pictures, except it’s “us.”
I would add something to that. Most of the Abu Ghraib photos don’t have the look of “exposé pictures” - that is, furtively-snapped got to smuggle this out so people see what’s going on shots. Many of these photos show American troops posing for the camera. Hamming it up. The soldiers shown aren’t just indifferent to the abuse and indignity around them - they’re grooving on it. To them, someone photographing the scene isn’t “uh oh! evidence!” It’s lessez les bontemps roulez!
Here’s my own Godwin’s Law violation: In Junior High, we had to watch films the Nazis shot of the concentration camps. One of the most disgusting viewing experiences you could ever endure, and should endure. But the thought I could never escape was: These people thought it was okay to film this. They weren’t ashamed to have a record of themselves doing this.
Are we “as bad as Hitler?” No. Are we “as bad as Saddam Hussein?” No. Not So Far. That’s not good enough!
The “right wing” critique of the sort of interventionism that has led to the current state of the Iraq war was always simply that it is incompatible with republican virtue. That case has been well and truly proved by events. We ship people to foreign countries to be tortured based on evidence extracted by torture in the first place. We torture foreigners in their own land, then carefully circumscribe the attribution of responsibility. We lock American citizens detained in the US away without counsel and maintain they should have no right to appeal or review. We excuse ourselves by saying we’re not as bad as some departed despot.
We used to have more pride than that, and it was justified. I want it back.
(See Farber and Tacitus for more thoughts and links.)
