Don't ask....
So here is my first gripe in a very long time. This issue with the Abu Ghraib prison pictures and the Nick Berg beheading video (both of which I have viewed to my displeasure and disgust) carries such heavy socio-political messages and problems.
The government is so keen on keeping the videos and pictures of the abuse at Abu Ghraib out of public view, which is SO pointless given the technological age we live in and how easy it is to get our hands on virtually anything. However, they seem to have NO problem whatsoever allowing the video of the Berg beheading to float around in cyberspace. It seems that the majority of sites that contain much of the Abu Ghraib material are shut down rather quickly. The stuff that does exist is "released" by the government to the media. I can only imagine, from viewing what IS out there, how horrifying the other pictures are. The acts are completely dehumanizing; especially so in this case because they do operate as torture for a community of religious people who view any kind of homosexual acts as damning. The poses and acts that these men are forced to take part in under threat of death is abonimable. Add to that, the raping of several female prisoners definitely signals that this is not some mere problem. I can't believe for one second that with ALL the soldiers in the picture and considering the high-profile rank of this prison, that higher-ups were not aware of this.
So why one and not the other? It's much easier to fight a war when you're able to hedge one issue by focusing on another. Who needs backlash against our own people right? Let's just paint the other side as being barbaric and without human rationality or compassion. Don;t get me wrong, I don't condone the beheading of an innocent man, although how interesting that he was a in US custody at the time, but I don't condone the US acts either. Circumstances like this lead to small-minded, ignorant people forming one-dimensional opinions of the world outside of their own. Case in point, a student in my class tells me how "we should just nuke that entire area because they harbor terrorists." It took everything I had not to read him the riot act, but explained to him that if that were the solution than we had better nuke our own country for all the terrorists we have harbored, not to mention trained. Terrorism is not based on a culture or skin color, and to assume so is to give in and practice a highly dangerous form of ethnocentrism that reminds me of lynching. This let's-kick-their-asses and flexing of pride muscles is simply sandbox behavior and solces nothing. Then again, let's remember WHY we are in this mess and WHO got us here. November should prove to be VERY interesting.
This entry was posted
on Monday, May 17, 2004 at 9:05 AM.
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