Show & Tell in Abu Ghraib -- by Katha Pollitt

[IrateCitizen]

This is perhaps the best Katha Pollitt column I've ever read in The Nation. I'll just print the first paragraph here, and you can judge for yourself how powerful it is.

Show & Tell in Abu Ghraib
(from the May 24, 2004 issue)

What are the thousand words, I wonder, that are worth the pictures of grinning US soldiers sexually humiliating Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison? An essay by Michael Ignatieff about human rights as the justification for war? An article by Samuel Huntington on the superiority of Western values? A rousing column by Tom Friedman calling on America to make Iraq a modern democratic state? Maybe Bernard Lewis could write up a talk about Islamic paranoia, or perhaps Alan Dershowitz could reprise in an op-ed his argument that torture can be morally permissible--a view that found a ready, even gleeful, hearing, I seem to remember, in journalistic circles after 9/11.

Read the rest of it by clicking HERE. And please share your thoughts on it as well.

[NMDemDist2]

1. summation makes the case

<snip> The Commander in Chief who avoided active service and has made such a mess of Iraq is honored as manly and decisive; the man who volunteered to serve and then protested a war few would defend today gets labeled a prevaricating shirker, unqualified to lead.

The big winners, as with so many steps taken by this Administration for our supposed protection--Guantánamo, the confinement of José Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi, the harassment and deportation of law-abiding Muslims--are Islamists and Al Qaeda. To their ideological bag of tricks, already bulging with religion, nationalism, misogyny, ethnic pride and antimodernism, they can now add the defense of civil liberties, human rights and the Geneva Conventions. Clash of civilizations, anyone?

she sums it up nicely, the list gets longer and longer

[IrateCitizen]

2. I guess I should have given a misleading headline...

... in which I mentioned Ralph Nader or insulted someone -- perhaps it could then generate more response?

:kick:

[LittleApple81]

11. You know, you are right. Even in DU we prefer the sensationalist soundbite

I was trying to figure out what kind of title could have attracted people to your post. Perhaps WOMEN REALLY, REALLY RAPED, SENT NOTES!!would have done it.

[redqueen]

3. Fantastic, must read stuff

Should send Kerry's team a copy!

Really chilling information here -- stuff I didn't know before just now:

The Administration will do everything it can to portray Abu Ghraib as, in Rumsfeld's words, "an exceptional, isolated" case. That seems unlikely: Human rights groups report many more instances of unlawful detention, torture and abuse, and there are at least ten pending investigations of prisoner deaths that we know of. Perhaps Western observers should have been less skeptical of reports that women inmates were raped and had pleaded to be saved, in smuggled leaflets. It is hard to believe human rights was one of the Coalition Provisional Authority's primary concerns, considering that it has permitted private companies to hire for security work Serbian mercenaries and confessed members of South African pro-apartheid death squads.

Skeptical of reports that women were pleading to be saved?!

Hiring Serbian mercs and South African pro-apartheid death squads - for 'security' work?!!!!

:wow:

Thanks so much for posting this, IC.

[CWebster]

4. Thanks IC

I thought this one was pretty good too:

http://www.iht.com/articles/519400.html

[IrateCitizen]

6. Yeah, but it's just touching the very tip of the iceberg

I think that Charlie Rangel actually hit this issue pretty well in a series of recent interviews, one of which I caught on the Charlie Rose show.

Essentially, Rangel said that the administration has been saying over and over that these people are to blame for 9/11, that Iraq was responsible, etc. Tie that in with the typical "dehumanization" of the "enemy" that goes on constantly in military culture (I would know), and you have a powder keg just waiting to explode.

I had a sergeant come up to me once when I was a platoon leader and tell me that I'd feel better about going to the Middle East after I "killed a couple of those Ragheads". Normally, when I've given ass-chewings, I've done it in private with the soldier in question. I didn't in this case -- I dressed him down quite publicly.

But just think -- if this guy, who knows that I probably wouldn't take kindly to such a statement, knowing me for several years, would have said this -- how many others out there are secretly feeling similar sentiments? And the military culture contributes to this, because when you're training people to be able to close on and kill the "enemy" up close, you have to get them to see that "enemy" in something other than human terms.

It's all a big pile of horseshit, IMHO -- part of my disdain for military culture in general having experienced it firsthand.

[LittleApple81]

5. Excellent article. But I wish we had HONEST media that would

discuss this article in other outlets (even C-Span... they read so much from the NY Post and Wash Times and so little from the Nation).

I loved it.

And you are right. Not too many people like the indepth discussion of issues. But for those who do, people like you who post this type of information are vital.
THANKS.

[IrateCitizen]

7. Speaking of in depth discussion of issues...

Perhaps you could offer your thoughts on this piece I wrote today for my blog and posted on DU?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1592258#1592511

[LittleApple81]

10. Thank you again. My thoughts go along the lines of your

piece. Your Franklin quote bears repeating:

s Benjamin Franklin emerged from the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, it is said that a woman approached him and asked what kind of government they had decided upon. Franklin's response was, "A Republic... if you can keep it." I think that if Franklin, Madison and Jefferson were alive today, they would have been appalled at the "Nuzak" that substitutes for real journalism today. I also think they would not be surprised, after seeing that "newscast", at the disintegration of the ideals they set in motion some 217 years ago.
______

All the attacks on American academic traditions, from the K-12 to University level, the un-funding of research, the de-encouragement for foreign scientist to come work here, the regulation of what can be covered in ME studies courses... it has been so stealth that if you are not associated directly with education you don't even notice it... the circus and the "nuzak" are too loud.
By the way, the un-funding of basic research is going to bite us in the rear end. Most of the new drugs that the drug companies then exploit were started by basic research at universities supported by our tax dollars. Now that we are not doing that anymore the robber barons in the drug industry, who don't want to do basic research, are going to find this source drying up.

[immoderate]

8. Kick

:kick:

[immoderate]

9. Kick

:kick:

[mediaman007]

12. On 911 I spoke with a fellow teaching colleague

we pretty much hit the nail on the head. We talked about all the pitfalls of taking rash action. In a very interdependent world, unilateral action is risky. Patience, even if its slow, creates more opportunities to make gains. Our leaders chose the first and squandered the support of the World. It was a political decision to incite their base, the Neanderthals and others who believed that there really was a Rambo and John McCain. Bush* appealed to their fantasies.

Obviously, Iraq was another appeal to the base, who were disappointed in the lack of finality in Afghanistan.

One thing that was missing from our response...self-evaluation. We never had the discussion about our actions in the World and how we contributed to the conditions that spawned 911.

Unfortunately, we are now beginning that process. Defend the torture all they want, it was bound to happen. Our own society features that kind of violence (just ask the police about domestic calls). How can we bring that kind of value to the rest of the World and expect them to respect it.

Don't throw stones if you live in a glass house!