Many conservatives share your view that too much is being made of the abuse at Abu Ghraib. I gather you don’t claim that the photographs should have been suppressed, but only that they should be less remarked on, because the abuse was less serious than killings.
On the contrary, too little is being made of it so far. The reason is practical, and I’d like to persuade you of it. It doesn’t even matter greatly how much furor it evokes in the US.
If America cares for its own, Rumsfield and the whole informed but passive chain of responsibility from Myers down should be forced to resign. This is why. Their failure to act expeditiously on this prison torture problem has produced a considerable archive of photos now making the rounds of the Arab world. Al Sadr last night called for his followers to capture American soldiers, especially women, and offered payment.
The implication is that the Arab fanatics, even local insurgents or patriots, will now be tempted to mirror what they have seen in the example set by those photos, i..e. piss on, force to masturbate, sodomize, set dogs on, and torture any captives they take from the coalition of occupying forces, film the events and spread them around both to satisfy a nomadic code of an eye for an eye – and pour encourager les autres.
The willed suspension of the Genevan protocols by senior officials in the American command has now placed every soldier and civilian working with the occupation at terrible risk of being used and abused in a game of vengeance.
And if this happens, there will be outraged Western responses, based on our institutional values. We have provided the ‘enemy’ with a psychological weapon of extreme cruelty, and have incinerated the credibility of those values which ostensibly justified the intervention in the first place.
Unless a major act of political punishment is enacted, those values can no longer be appealed to as proof of the West’s moral superiority, if and when the barbarity of Abu Ghraib is mimicked by the ‘enemy’.
Be warned. Rumsfeld and subordinates’ jobs are not too much to sacrifice to save our soldiers and civilian workers from much worse than firing. Our job is to support the troops, not higher-ups safe from Arab reprisals. |
