Dana
>Wretched New Picture Of America
>
>Photos From Iraq Prison Show We Are Our Own Worst Enemy
>
>By Philip Kennicott
>
>Washington Post Staff Writer
>
>Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page C01
>
>Among the corrosive lies a nation at war tells itself is that the glory
>-- the lofty goals announced beforehand, the victories, the liberation
>
>of the oppressed -- belongs to the country as a whole; but the failure
>-- the accidents, the uncounted civilian dead, the crimes and atrocities
>
>
>-- is always exceptional. Noble goals flow naturally from a noble
>people; the occasional act of barbarity is always the work of
>individuals, unaccountable, confusing and indigestible to the national
>conscience.
>
>This kind of thinking was widely in evidence among military and
>political leaders after the emergence of pictures documenting American
>abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison. These photographs do not
>capture the soul of America, they argued. They are aberrant.
>
>This belief, that the photographs are distortions, despite their
>authenticity, is indistinguishable from propaganda. Tyrants censor;
>democracies self-censor. Tyrants concoct propaganda in ministries of
>information; democracies produce it through habits of thought so
>ingrained that a basic lie of war -- only the good is our doing --
>becomes self-propagating.
>
>But now we have photos that have gone to the ends of the Earth, and
>painted brilliantly and indelibly, an image of America that could remain
>with us for years, perhaps decades. An Army investigative report reveals
>that we have stripped young men (whom we purported to liberate) of their
>clothing and their dignity; we have forced them to make pyramids of
>flesh, as if they were children; we have made them masturbate in front
>of their captors and cameras; forced them to simulate sexual acts;
>threatened prisoners with rape and sodomized at least one; beaten them;
>and turned dogs upon them.
>
>There are now images of men in the Muslim world looking at these images.
>On the streets of Cairo, men pore over a newspaper. An icon appears on
>the front page: a hooded man, in a rug-like poncho, standing with his
>arms out like Christ, wires attached to the hands. He is faceless. This
>is now the image of the war. In this country, perhaps it will have some
>competition from the statue of Saddam Hussein being toppled. Everywhere
>else, everywhere America is hated (and that's a very large part of this
>globe), the hooded, wired, faceless man of Abu Ghraib is this war's new
>mascot.
>
>The American leaders' response is a mixture of public disgust, and a
>good deal of resentment that they have, through these images, lost
>control of the ultimate image of the war. All the right people have
>pronounced themselves, sickened, outraged, speechless. But listen more
>closely. "And it's really a shame that just a handful can besmirch maybe
>the reputations of hundreds of thousands of our soldiers and sailors,
>airmen and Marines. . . . " said Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the
>Joint Chiefs of Staff on Sunday.
>
>Reputation, image, perception. The problem, it seems, isn't so much the
>abuse of the prisoners, because we will get to the bottom of that and,
>of course, we're not really like that. The problem is our reputation.
>Our soldiers' reputations. Our national self-image. These photos, we
>insist, are not us ...
>
>HYPERLINK
>"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2040-2004May4.html?nav=m
>ost_emailed"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2040-2004May4
>.html?nav=most_emailed
>
>---------------
>
>-Gel
>
>
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