"The photos are us" - Iraqi abuse - WaPo - Please Read!

Following is a very profound article about the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, and what it says about "us". The essay was in in the Washington Post on Wednesday. I didn't read it till today, when I was reading Letters to the Editor. Several were quite bitter about the article being published, so I dug out the article, read it, and posted it here, followed by some of the letters. 

***********
A Wretched New Picture Of America
Photos From Iraq Prison Show We Are Our Own Worst Enemy

By Philip Kennicott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page C01


Among the corrosive lies a nation at war tells itself is that the glory -- the lofty goals announced beforehand, the victories, the liberation of the oppressed -- belongs to the country as a whole; but the failure -- the accidents, the uncounted civilian dead, the crimes and atrocities -- is always exceptional. Noble goals flow naturally from a noble people; the occasional act of barbarity is always the work of individuals, unaccountable, confusing and indigestible to the national conscience.


This kind of thinking was widely in evidence among military and political leaders after the emergence of pictures documenting American abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison. These photographs do not capture the soul of America, they argued. They are aberrant.

This belief, that the photographs are distortions, despite their authenticity, is indistinguishable from propaganda. Tyrants censor; democracies self-censor. Tyrants concoct propaganda in ministries of information; democracies produce it through habits of thought so ingrained that a basic lie of war -- only the good is our doing -- becomes self-propagating.

-snip-




Look at these images closely and you realize that they can't just be the random accidents of war, or the strange, inexplicable perversity of a few bad seeds. First of all, they exist. Soldiers who allow themselves to be photographed humiliating prisoners clearly don't believe this behavior is unpalatable. Second, the soldiers didn't just reach into a grab bag of things they thought would humiliate young Iraqi men. They chose sexual humiliation, which may recall to outsiders the rape scandal at the Air Force Academy, Tailhook and past killings of gay sailors and soldiers.

-snip-



Not quite 50 years ago, Aime Cesaire, a poet and writer from Martinique, wrote in his "Discourse on Colonialism": "First we must study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism."

Are we decivilized yet? Are we brutes yet? Of course not, say our leaders.


 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2040-2004May4.html

*******
Below are excerpts from today's LTTE. Please open the link to read more...
 

Opinion > Letters to the Editor
Abuses at Abu Ghraib: Whose Guilt?

Saturday, May 8, 2004; Page A17


Like every American I know, I am repulsed by the horrible acts committed by some of our soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Nevertheless, I must protest Philip Kennicott's effort <"A Wretched New Picture of America," Style, May 5> to transfer their particular guilt to the whole of the American people.


Most thinking people resist assigning collective guilt to ethnic and national groups. It is clear that not all Muslims should be blamed for the terrorism of al Qaeda, and not all Iraqis should bear responsibility for Saddam Hussein's mass murders. To think otherwise is as morally abhorrent as it is logically inept. Why, then, is it valid to indulge in group guilt in this case?

-- James R. Noland

Oak Hill, Va.

•

I occasionally read al-Jazeera's Web site to see how it reports events in Iraq. Normally the distortions and exaggerations in those articles are almost laughable. I did not need to read al-Jazeera on Wednesday; I got my fill of distorted fare from Philip Kennicott's Style piece.

-snip-

Maybe Kennicott should see if there are any job openings at al-Jazeera.

-- Alexi Petersen

London

•

That was an outstanding, insightful article by Philip Kennicott on the fallout from pictures of American abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. Nothing President Bush or anyone else can say will erase those images from the mind of the world or, I would hope, from the minds of Americans.

This article belonged on your front page, where our nation's decision makers could digest it with their morning coffee. Why, then, was it buried in the Style section, among articles on TV, John Updike, the comics and KidsPost? Are atrocities by American troops just another cultural fad in the eyes of Post editors? Or did they hope it would be widely missed?

No amount of spin will now erase the picture of the wired Iraqi as a symbol of our failed policies in Iraq. It joins the picture of the naked Vietnamese child fleeing from a napalm attack as shorthand for our failed policies in two wars.


-- Anne Grady

Ellicott City, Md.

•

-snip-

In the end one is forced to ask: Why do you employ such a hateful, dispiriting and condescending writer?

-- Andy Roberts

Loveland, Colo.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9671-2004May7.html

JEEZ, who ARE some of these people? limbaugh-lovers, I guess...

I saw that piece yesterday. VERY profound, and very spot-on. Sadly, VERY true.

Maybe Condi would have seen it and summarized it for Chimpy.