We’ve all seen the photos by now and been disgusted by them. US and UK soldiers torturing prisoners? Surely that’s something
that couldn’t happen, shouldn’t have happened. Surely it is only an isolated occurrence, done by a few psychopaths and this should not reflect on the UK or US military as a whole. Even Bush himself said:
“I share a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated,” Bush said.
“Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people. That’s not the way we do
things in America.”
Isn’t it?
I genuinely would like to believe that, but I’m not sure I can. I don’t think these were isolated incidents. Ever since the September 11 attacks, the US leaders have fostered an atmosphere in which civil liberties and human rights are to be shoved aside in the name of security. Guantanamo Bay, the way in which Josef Padilla and others are held indefinately without charge, the prisoners taken during the Aghanistan campaign and in Iraq who are still held in the region, the alleged transfer of prisoners from US custody to countries who don’t have great moral objections against torture, the support for dictatorial regimes who make the appropriate anti-terrorist noises, all of them point to the inescapeable conclusion that this is how “we do things in America”.
If their leaders give such sterling examples, can you blame these soldiers for being extra zealous?
Consider also the wider content. First, you have this atmosphere of fear drummed into us by the Bush administration, where we are told drastic measures are needed to keep us safe, that we don’t have time for legal niceties and where civil and human rights are luxuries. Second, there is the inevitable wartime dehumanisation of the enemy, combined with the US military’s emphasis on keeping its troops safe, no matter the cost in enemy or bystanders’ lifes. If nobody bats an eye at US snipers killing ambulance drivers during the battle for Fallujah, why the outrage about what happens after the battle is over?
Third, this is made worse by the framing of the war against Iraq and the wider War Against Terror, as a struggle between good and evil, where “we” are Good and the enemy is Evil and so anything “we” do is automatically right, while anything the enemy does is automatically wrong. Finally, this Manchurian worldview has always had a strong attraction for a lot of Americans; in a culture where quite a lot of people consider prison rape not as much an unfortunate excess as an integral and welcome part of the prison system, is it strange that enemy prisoners are sexually abused?
This is not to say that all or even most US and UK soldiers would do these things, but these are not “isolated incidents” either.