Monday, June 28, 2004

Rant: Abu Grav

A friend is going to grad school at UC Berkeley, very close to where he grew up and where one of his brothers teaches. He's well-acquainted with some of the faculty, and recently informed us that one of the political science professors there had served as John Ashcroft's advisor on the military prisons in Afghanistan. Seems that he wrote some memos that informed the administration how to get around the Geneva Code, in case the public (meaning any non-military or non-government personell) found out about the "goings on" at the military prisons. These Geneva Code cheats were used as an outline for later prisons in Iraq, including Abu Ghraive (sp?). Students have started to circulate a petition calling for the professor's resignation.

My question is, is it the fact that the torture occurred at all, or that we now know that it was consciously planned that we all find so abhorrent? I'd like to think that we're bothered by anyone being tortured, but since the American prison system is, as of yet, unreformed, and the death penalty still exists, I'm inclined to believe that it's more that we as Americans are bothered that we got caught. Because if we justify the invasion of Iraq on the idea that Sadaam Hussain & his government tortured thousands of Iraqui citizens, the fact that we're also torturing Iraquis should bother us. Yet many people still aren't bothered by it, because they've so "othered" the Iraqui soldiers and civilians.

As the comic strip character Pogo said, "I have met the enemy, and it is us."

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"I confess that I have no philosophy, nor piety, nor patience, no art of reflection, no theory of compensation to meet things so hideous, so cruel, and so mad, they are jud unspeakably horrible and irremediable to me and I stare at them with angry and almost blighted eyes." (Henry James)