Sunday, May 23, 2004
Sontag's Take on the Abuse
Today's New York Times Magazine brings us Susan Sontag's take on the Iraq abuse scandal. Her emphasis is on the pictures which she correctly states are responsible for the Administration's response. Without the pictures there would have been little outcry and the Red Cross and human rights groups would have continued crying in the wilderness. Her article makes two important points (not original but well made). (1) The most embarrassing thing for Americans is the obvious pleasure the American participants in the pictures had in their activities. They reveled in what was occurring and in their part in it. Obviously they thought what they were doing was not wrong. She also points out that the photographing was essentially pornography. It was the sexual aspect that interested the picture takers. In the collection of pictures that have been analyzed, there are a few of other forms of torture. Although such actions were probably much more common than sexual humiliation, such actions were not considered interesting enough to record. Incidentally, scattered among the pictures are pictures of Americans having sex with one another as well. She relates the behavior of the young Americans and their delight in taking the pictures to the diet of video games and pornography that has become a part of their life back in the states. (2) She points out that if one looks at all the pictures in the collection, and she has evidently seen much more than most of us, and if one looks at uncut versions of the pictures, he will note that there are many more people involved than in the publicized pictures. In the full version of the pyramid of naked prisoners, for example, there are many people standing around, walking by, some apparently not paying much attention. This suggests two facts to her. First, the actions were widespread and well-known (one report is even of the pyramid picture being used as a screen saver). There were many people higher up who knew what was going on.
Sontag's purpose appears to be not in this criticism itself. It is rather in showing that this was the inevitable result of the kind of war we were waging. This is certainly not so. American troops have been in many wars without this kind of humiliation of prisoners. Soldiers also hate Germans and Japanese in World War II, sometimes for unspeakable crimes. Yet the treatment of prisoners in camps did not break down to this extent. The British colonialists fought explicit colonial wars without this result. No, the mistakes of the war policy, the way it was fought, the poor training of the troops, the random killings of GIs by Iraqis, these all contributed to frustration and played a part. But Abu Ghraib and the other mistreatments in this war and in Afghanistan should be considered and condemned in their own right, not as part of a general condemnation of the war.
Today's New York Times Magazine brings us Susan Sontag's take on the Iraq abuse scandal. Her emphasis is on the pictures which she correctly states are responsible for the Administration's response. Without the pictures there would have been little outcry and the Red Cross and human rights groups would have continued crying in the wilderness. Her article makes two important points (not original but well made). (1) The most embarrassing thing for Americans is the obvious pleasure the American participants in the pictures had in their activities. They reveled in what was occurring and in their part in it. Obviously they thought what they were doing was not wrong. She also points out that the photographing was essentially pornography. It was the sexual aspect that interested the picture takers. In the collection of pictures that have been analyzed, there are a few of other forms of torture. Although such actions were probably much more common than sexual humiliation, such actions were not considered interesting enough to record. Incidentally, scattered among the pictures are pictures of Americans having sex with one another as well. She relates the behavior of the young Americans and their delight in taking the pictures to the diet of video games and pornography that has become a part of their life back in the states. (2) She points out that if one looks at all the pictures in the collection, and she has evidently seen much more than most of us, and if one looks at uncut versions of the pictures, he will note that there are many more people involved than in the publicized pictures. In the full version of the pyramid of naked prisoners, for example, there are many people standing around, walking by, some apparently not paying much attention. This suggests two facts to her. First, the actions were widespread and well-known (one report is even of the pyramid picture being used as a screen saver). There were many people higher up who knew what was going on.
Sontag's purpose appears to be not in this criticism itself. It is rather in showing that this was the inevitable result of the kind of war we were waging. This is certainly not so. American troops have been in many wars without this kind of humiliation of prisoners. Soldiers also hate Germans and Japanese in World War II, sometimes for unspeakable crimes. Yet the treatment of prisoners in camps did not break down to this extent. The British colonialists fought explicit colonial wars without this result. No, the mistakes of the war policy, the way it was fought, the poor training of the troops, the random killings of GIs by Iraqis, these all contributed to frustration and played a part. But Abu Ghraib and the other mistreatments in this war and in Afghanistan should be considered and condemned in their own right, not as part of a general condemnation of the war.
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