Complicity
I haven’t posted much this week, sorry. It’s been such a shit week I could hardly bear it, what with the ‘glorification of terrorism‘ vote in the Commons, the UN report on Gitmo, the Cheney shooting and whitewash, Greenland’s ice melting at an exponential rate, and worst of all, the Abu Ghraib photos – all if which I knew damn well would be poo-poohed and ignored by the corporate media.
And I was right – as predicted, there are those who would prefer those photos not be seen. From the Gruaniad’s Newsblog:
“An article in today’s Washington Post describes the photographs as “yet more scenes of blood and savagery”, adding that it was one of a number of news organisations that had taken the decision not to publish “a substantial number of photographs they are holding”. There is a choice whether to publish, the Washington Post ran through some of the questions to ask:
Do they add anything new, or only open old wounds? Do they undo the work of investigation, trial and punishment that put men like Charles Graner, one of the original perpetrators, behind bars? Or do they underscore the inadequacy of that process, both the limited scope of who has been punished, and the apparently limited deterrent effect of the scandal?
Another is whether the publication of further details of a crime is newsworthy or simply gratuitous, when those responsible were already convicted and jailed. Walter Shapiro, Salon’s Washington bureau chief, argues that the title is right to publish its photographs precisely because it was not clear that everyone who was responsible had been prosecuted:
Beyond the collapse of military discipline and adherence to the basic rules of civilized behavior, Abu Ghraib also symbolised the failure of a democratic society to investigate well-documented abuses by its soldiers. After an initial flurry of outrage, the Republican-controlled Congress lost interest in investigating whether senior military officers – and even Pentagon officials – created a climate in which torture (yes, torture) flourished. In similar fashion, the Army still seems intent on ending this shameful story by jailing the likes of Lynndie England and Charles Graner. At least after the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam war, Lt Calley was convicted.
The Dateline producer, Mike Carey, told Agence France Presse he was justified in broadcasting the photographs not because – as Shapiro argued – the Abu Ghraib abuses should not be forgotten, but because his material represented a “quantum leap” from what had been seen previously. “There needs to be further investigation to find out how those corpses came to be in Abu Ghraib and find out whether they were killed while they were in Abu Ghraib under US care,” he told the news agency.
Every single one of those questions is irrelevant, even that of increasing violence against our troops. Tough shit to them. They brutalised and tortured civilians contrary to the Geneva Convention, they take the consequences. Collective responsibility, it’s called. Yes, I think they’re there for a lie, yes, I think the troops have been treated horrendously by their own commanders and politicians, and yes, they’re in a hard place – but that excuses NOTHING.
Speaking of collective responsibility, it’s not just for the troops. We are all responsible. Personally I’d like to see these photos run 24/7 on all US and UK TV and newspapers. Show the public, dammit, make them see, rub their faces in the savagery that’s being inflicted in our names.
We have to be made to see what we’ve done. And don’t say “It’s not ‘we’ it’s ‘them'”- that’s utter rubbish and we all know it. These are our governments, our armies, our sons and daughters, our neighbours and friends torturing innocent people – they are us. We cannot evade responsibility for this, this isn’t some inhuman cadre of people who are kept in a closet and pop out just for this.
They live among us, they shop, eat burgers and park their cars next to us. They belong to the PTA, they play softball, they go on vacation, just like us. They are us, how many times does it have to be said?
That we as nations have not risen up and thrown these people out and put them on trial for war crimes means that we tacitly approve of the torture they are committing, and that makes us just as guilty. But can we admit our complicity to ourselves? Until we do we can never put it right, if it will ever be possible to.
I made myself look at those pictures, though my instinct was to pretend they weren’t there. When I did I saw my sons – or young men who look like my sons, now brutalised, tortured, bleeding and in agony, screaming for help that will not come.
Every one of those men and boys, displayed as real-life SM porn for the delectation of leaders of America and the UK ( What? You think they don’t play those videos at hunting weekends in Texas or coke parties in Primrose Hill? Please. It’s better than viagra for the jaded executive who’s tired of ordinary porn) every single one is someone’s brother, husband or son and we are responsible for their public degradation. Look in the mirror and tell yourself how proud you are of that.
I can hardly sleep for thinking of what we’re doing to the world.
