The horrors we don't see

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1208165,00.html

The abuse of Iraqi prisoners is indefensible, but let's not forget the far worse cruelty of other nations

David Aaronovitch
Sunday May 2, 2004
The Observer

When I was a child, we had a big book of black-and-white photographs at home. One has always haunted me, though it was only much later that I found out where and when it was taken. It's a night-time scene of two black men in rags, hanging from a tree. Below is a crowd, including a man with a moustache who is pointing up at the corpses, a younger man in white shirt and tie and two smart young women. It turned out to be a postcard of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana on August 7, 1930. And what is so dreadful about the picture is that these four citizens of Marion are all smiling.
There they were again, in the pictures from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, those smiles. In Abu Ghraib, for God's sake! The place where Saddam executed so many Iraqis. Smiles, as hooded, naked detainees, are sexually humiliated, being forced to climb over each other; smiles, as a woman prison officer points demeaningly at the genitals of the men. And all recorded for the camera, as some kind of souvenir.

The beleaguered mother of the woman involved - reservist Lynndie R. England - told a journalist that these abuses were just 'stupid, kid things - pranks'. And she added the rhetorical question: 'And what do to our men and women are just?' You can see that it's just as well that a US whistle-blower told the authorities about these abuses last January. It's a small hop from humiliating and dehumanising prisoners to torturing them, and from there to murder, and all covered by the reasoning that, after all, they do worse things to us.

No smiles in the Mirror pictures of British soldiers grotesquely abusing an Iraqi detainee. If the story that accompanies the pictures is true, what we're witnessing here is in some ways worse than the Abu Ghraib scenes. If this man was indeed a looter who they thought would not be punished by the Iraqi authorities, and who therefore could be pissed on, beaten, kicked and severely injured, then I'd say pretty much every human right the man had has been violated. And other cases are already under investigation.

Of course, the British and American authorities have pointed out that they loathe these crimes, and that such actions are not the norm among most servicemen in Iraq. And this is simultaneously true and inadequate. The rest of us have to ask questions that go way beyond the idea of 'rogue elements'. Such as, are these kinds of abuses inevitable, and therefore a standing argument against such military interventions?

Former Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd may not have had the terrible pictures in mind when he launched his attack yesterday on the 'basic mistake' of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, but I am sure that he would add it to the list of inescapable risks. You take soldiers, trained to kill, send them to a foreign land where they understand nothing and where they see their comrades killed or wounded, and then expect them to show restraint and constant decency. Is that realistic?
<more>

If this is indefensible, why defend it.

HERE'S THE PHOTO




Lynching 1930

A mob of 10,000 whites took sledgehammers to the county jailhouse doors to get at these two young blacks accused of raping a white girl; the girl’s uncle saved the life of a third by proclaiming the man’s innocence. Although this was Marion, Ind., most of the nearly 5,000 lynchings documented between Reconstruction and the late 1960s were perpetrated in the South. (Hangings, beatings and mutilations were called the sentence of “Judge Lynch.”) Some lynching photos were made into postcards designed to boost white supremacy, but the tortured bodies and grotesquely happy crowds ended up revolting as many as they scared. Today the images remind us that we have not come as far from barbarity as we’d like to think.

if not for much else.

but can somebody translate this sentence for me?

<snip>And she added the rhetorical question: 'And what do to our men and women are just?' <snip>

I've read it and read it and I'm just not getting what she's saying....

an HTML tag, so it doesn't show up

Translated into English:

'And what they do to our men and women is just?'

At least that's what I get from her introduction into the Geneva Convention of which she has an undertanding just as warped as her daughter's.

Here's the entire quote:

At most, the 372nd's alleged abuses of prisoners were "stupid, kid things - pranks," Terrie England said, her voice growing bitter. "And what the <Iraqis> do to our men and women are just? The rules of the Geneva Convention, does that apply to everybody or just us?"

Everyone had been proud of Lynndie England. A Wal-Mart in nearby LaVale displays her photo on its Wall of Honor. The Mineral County courthouse in Keyser, W.Va., posts her photograph and those of other local soldiers under a banner that says: "We're hometown proud."

Lynndie England had found purpose, and love, in the Army. She got engaged last year to a fellow member of the 372nd, Charles Graner, who appears with his arm around her in the newspaper photo.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bal-te.md.soldier30apr30,0,7339983.story?coll=bal-home-headlines

Well congratulations Terrie! I hear your daughter is pregnant. I hope the three of you have the good sense to give that baby to a better family.

:)

But the last half descended into "Arabs do worse than this to each other all the time" and "without the invasion, Saddam would have been doing worse at this very prison". It seems like the work of a war supporter, trying to work through some cognitive dissonance, and thus justifying the U.S. military's own torture chambers and rape rooms (and British outrages as well). One knew these apologists would take to the field in a few days. But, he won't persuade the Iraqis, with all the sophistry in the world.

He was a war supporter, IIRC.

Endemic in military and in country police actions in many places. It might be outlawed in the US, but bushco seems to be finding a way around that

This crap shouldn't be in LBN.

He was quite popular down there at one time.

I don't want my country to come anywhere close to being compared to countries led by folks like that. This problem is temporary and things *will* change if we can get the Repugs out of power.

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