The New York Times
February 20, 2006
America's Shame
Torture in the Name of Freedom
The new pictures from Abu Ghraib provide the most recent evidence:
America's moral bank account is empty -- and it has lost the image
wars. The entire Muslim world no longer trusts the world's most
powerful nation.
They are photos that make your blood run cold. They take your breath
away. They turn your stomach. They are photos that make you wonder
what kinds of human beings would do these things to other human
beings. They trigger anger, disgust and shame.
One photo shows a prisoner being sandwiched between two stretchers,
like some perverse ad for a burger. In another, a disoriented
detainee, his body smeared with an unidentified substance, stumbles
down a prison corridor. A third image depicts a hooded man waiting
helplessly on a stool, with electric cables attached to his body.
There are many more -- and they all show prisoners being deliberately
humiliated for their captors' amusement, men stripped naked and forced
into submission. But it's not just humiliation -- the photos also
depict physical pain. In one photo, an American soldier kneels on the
back of a naked Iraqi prisoner, a puddle of blood indicating rough
treatment. In another, a prisoner bows deeply, servant-like, in front
of an American military officer: Uncle Tom's Cabin in the Middle East.
Once again, images from Abu Ghraib will burn themselves into the
world's collective memory, the shocking legacy of a superpower gone
astray -- icons of America's shame. They will become the images future
generations most associate with the war in Iraq, just as the photo of
a pro-US Saigon police chief holding his pistol to a Vietcong
guerilla's temple, his finger about to pull the trigger, has become a
symbol of the Vietnam War.
It's hardly relevant that the previously unpublished Abu Ghraib photos
taken in 2003 -- about two dozen of them -- are merely variations on
familiar themes. It also doesn't matter that at least some of the
perpetrators -- absent higher-ranking officers -- have already been
hauled before US military courts. Just as their predecessors, these
new pictures have the power to generate a dynamic of their own --
making them the perfect propaganda tool for ideological adversaries.
Egging on the faithful
Muslims, particularly in Pakistan and Malaysia, are still incensed
about the publishing of the Prophet Muhammad caricatures in European
newspapers. Last Friday at least 10 people died in the Libyan city of
Benghazi when police tried to stop them from storming the Italian
consulate. Italian Reform Minister Roberto Calderoli had raised their
ire by appearing on television in a T-shirt showing a cartoon of the
Prophet Mohammed.
Governments in countries like Iran and Syria have egged on the
faithful even further. Meanwhile, Europeans and Americans justifiably
championed the freedom of the press as a value worth defending --
against agitators on both sides.
The impact of these new Abu Ghraib photos is only amplified by the
fact that they coincide with the unrest triggered by the Danish
Muhammad cartoons. In the Islamic world, the photos are seen as proof
that the US military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq are little more
than thinly veiled colonial expeditions conducted in the name of
democracy.
From the perspective of the Middle East, the freedom and human rights
the Americans profess to be bringing to an oppressed world are nothing
more than a front, Washington's false alibi in pushing its agenda of
globalization. And for many in the Arab world, they are merely the
sinister elements of a slick and even fraudulent marketing campaign
aimed at humiliating Muslims.
The crimes committed by US soldiers in the name of freedom and human
rights, documented in unalterable photographs, appear to confirm the
suspicion that America's true aim is something entirely different --
that the US is primarily interested in imposing its own world order
and preserving its dominance.
In short, for the United States, the most powerful and influential
global power ever, the images from Abu Ghraib -- and the ongoing
debate over the legality of its prison camp at Guantanamo -- have
produced a moral catastrophe that's likely to endure for a very long time.
Victorious images quickly overshadowed
If Washington had had its way, entirely different images would have
come to symbolize the US campaign against Iraq's dictator Saddam
Hussein. The image of the toppling of that giant statue of Saddam
Hussein in Baghdad, for example -- the ideal symbol of the dictator's
downfall. And then there was the triumphant US President George W.
Bush's televised appearance on the aircraft carrier "Abraham Lincoln,"
a banner emblazoned with the words "Mission Accomplished" proudly and
telegenically hovering in the background.
But even as the president was announcing an end to hostilities in
Iraq, a bitter and brutal Iraqi insurgency was just getting under way
-- a resistance that brought together former officers in Saddam's army
with foreign al-Qaida fighters. The victorious images were quickly
overshadowed. Even the former dictator's trial comes across as a farce
these days, despite all efforts to convey the impression of law and order.
The battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqis can likely already
be penciled into the loss column -- the inability to provide such
basic necessities as electricity and drinking water for everyone
represents a major strike against the US military. The daily suicide
bombings and kidnappings mostly hit ordinary Iraqis. For many of them,
life is now more difficult than it was under Saddam. The American
military, too, is suffering. Losses mount almost daily; the death toll
had reached 2,272 by last Friday.
And now the Americans have also lost the battle of images.
Part II: The Moral Decline of "God's Own Country"
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has distanced himself from Washington,
saying that the new Abu Ghraib photos are evidence of events "unworthy
of a civilized society." Indeed, the new photos from Abu Ghraib are so
horrific that the administration in Baghdad has opted not to reprint
them in government-affiliated media. Outrage over the images seems to
be developing in slow motion in Iraq and other Arab countries, almost
as though they merely prove what Muslims already expect from America.
The anger over the images reflected in the headlines of newspapers in
the Middle East was still less vehement by the weekend than the
still-raging furor over the Danish Muhammad cartoons.
Australia -- whose government is considered even more loyal to Bush
than British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his cabinet -- was the
source of the new images last Wednesday. Despite the fact that
Australian Prime Minister John Howard has sent 460 troops to Iraq, the
country has a number of press outlets often strongly critical of the
government. The television network SBS, which published the images, is
among them.
Reporter Olivia Rousset had researched a story about Abu Ghraib for
the network's investigative program called "Dateline." As part of her
reporting, she traveled to New York, where she met with two soldiers
who had worked at Abu Ghraib and their attorneys. A DVD, produced by
the US Army's Criminal Investigation Command and showing dozens of new
images of prisoner abuse, eventually found its way into the reporter's
hands.
Reprehensible level of brutality
Back in Sydney, Rousset discussed the DVD with her producer, Mike
Carey, with fellow journalists and with the network's lawyers. The
images clearly weren't fakes. The disk given to Rousset by her contact
contained files that linked the pictures to a computer owned by
Charles Graner, already in prison in the United States for his role in
the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.
Was showing these photos to the world the right thing to do? They
depict a new, even more reprehensible level of brutality, including
photos of dead prisoners and extreme abuse. In one image, a prisoner's
tongue appears to have been cut out (although the event is so far
unproven).
The network decided to broadcast all but the very worst of the images,
and the images quickly circled the globe.
They appeared to be a part of unpublished documents that had already
come to light during an investigation by the US military, but were
then filed away. American media reportedly also had access to the
material, but declined to publish it, either on the advice of the
Pentagon or for reasons of self-censorship. Immediately after the SBS
report, though, Salon.com, which received a similar DVD at virtually
the same time SBS did, decided to publish 18 of the new photos.
US government officials reacted to the newly published photos with
provocative indifference. According to a Pentagon spokesman, the
images were regrettable but old news. The White House, for its part,
expressed outrage over the decision to release the photos in what it
called the current "heated mood."
This official US indifference is most likely a pretense. Ever since
the Washington Post revealed that terrorism suspects have apparently
been interrogated in special CIA prisons in Eastern Europe, the US
Justice Department has been searching for whoever leaked the story and
threatening journalists with coercive detention. The journalists, says
Gary Wasserman, a professor at Washington's Georgetown University,
could even end up facing stiffer penalties than the uniformed
torturers. Nevertheless, CIA Director Porter Goss insists on
continuing the program, saying that "we are at risk of losing a key
battle -- the battle to protect our classified information."
Good news has become a rarity
At CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, a special task force
nicknamed "Leak Chasers" has been assembled to scan the media for
leaked information. Last Wednesday, Republican politicians announced
that they were considering new legislation that would strengthen
prohibitions against publicly disclosing information deemed a threat
to national security.
But the reality is that the White House, the Pentagon and the
intelligence agencies are at a loss. Good news has become a rarity,
bad news is beginning to pile up and the Bush administration's
approval ratings have plunged to all-time lows. The cumulative effect
of the recent spate of bad news is devastating -- even for a
government so unwilling to admit shortcomings.
While many in the Muslim world rub their hands in glee, the West
watches the moral decline of "God's own country" with painful
astonishment. And it's a decline led by a president who, more than
most of his predecessors, invokes his born-again Christianity and his
desire to bring good into the world and to punish evil. Instead, the
Bush Administration has become the picture of incompetence. The bad
news continues to mount and America is growing impatient.
Take the embarrassing story of Vice President Richard Cheney
accidentally discharging a load of birdshot into a 78-year-old
attorney instead a flock of quails. While his victim was rushed to the
emergency room, Cheney apparently felt it unnecessary to notify the
authorities -- or the media. He only submitted to police questioning
10 hours after the accident providing a growing number of government
critics with yet more evidence of this government's arrogance.
Although Cheney's negligent hunting accident is unlikely to have legal
repercussions, another affair is more ominous and could even lead to
impeachment proceedings. A federal prosecutor has accused Cheney aide
Lewis "Scooter" Libby of committing perjury and obstruction of justice
over the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, whose husband accused the
Bush administration of using false information to bolster its
propaganda campaign leading up to the Iraq war. Libby, Cheney's former
chief of staff, has now told a special investigator, who was appointed
by the president, that he acted on behalf of his superiors.
And then there is the issue of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who has been
accused of attempting to bribe influential Republicans with ties to
the White House. Abramoff has already filed a guilty plea, although he
has declined to identify those who accepted his bribes. Bush has
claimed that he doesn't recall the man. Abramoff, however, says that
he knows the president, and that Bush has even asked about his
children. A photo showing the two men together has now surfaced
calling Bush's honesty into question.
Bush's standing abroad couldn't be worse
In yet another setback for the Bush administration, a congressional
investigation into government shortcomings during Hurricane Katrina
reached devastating conclusions about the administration and officials
at other levels of government. According to the report, Bush's
response to catastrophic flooding in New Orleans came far too late and
was indecisive, while his Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael
Chertoff, was a complete failure.
Finally, the White House has come under fire over allegations of
illegal wire-tapping without court approval, a practice that was
secretly authorized by the president following the terrorist attacks
of Sept. 11, 2001 and remains in place today. Big Brother has been
busy, at least according to the Washington Post, which reports that
the government has already investigated 325,000 people as possible
terrorism suspects in its secret program. The Democrats, seemingly
paralyzed for so long, view the violation of fundamental civil rights
stemming from the illegal wire-tapping program as so serious that they
are considering filing impeachment charges against Bush in an attempt
to drive him out of office.
That's unlikely to happen, and Bush will probably survive his second
term. But a majority of Americans no longer trust the country's leader
and commander-in-chief. In fact, 55 percent of Americans now believe
that sending troops to Iraq was a mistake.
While Bush's reputation suffers at home, his standing abroad couldn't
be worse. In some countries in the Muslim world, Bush is viewed as
even more dangerous than terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. Of course,
a self-righteous distortion of reality plays an important role here,
especially in the Arab world. In many of those countries where there
has been such a public outcry over American human rights violations,
human rights are systematically trampled upon.
Unlike Saddam Hussein's thugs and the current al-Qaida terrorists in
Iraq and Afghanistan, the Americans haven't committed thousands of
murders or cold-bloodedly beheaded innocent hostages. But the moral
masters of the universe, these self-proclaimed forces of good so
intent on bringing freedom and democracy to the world, have betrayed
their own ideals and lost their credibility. And their troops aren't
the only ones to blame.
Americans don't see themselves as fighting to capture strategic bases
or gain control over new oil wells, but rather as missionaries out to
make the world a better place, one endowed with freedom and human
rights. Gradually, though, it's not just the Muslim world which no
longer believes such claims.
Two names are especially emblematic for America's disgrace: Guantanamo
and Abu Ghraib.
Part III: "The Repertoire of Classic Torture States"
Only very few people are familiar with the full scope of American
prisoner transports in connection with the so-called war on terror.
Vice President Cheney has seen to it that even many within the US
government remain uninformed, and that only the heads and deputy heads
of the Senate and House intelligence committees are kept in the loop.
In September 2002, then CIA counterterrorism director Cofer Black told
a group of members of Congress that the reason for this extraordinary
level of secrecy was that everything was "strictly confidential." "All
you have to know," he said, "is that there is a pre-9/11 and a
post-9/11 era. The gloves came off after 9/11." The camp at
Guantanamo, a US military base on the Cuban coast, became the
government's preferred detention center for what it calls "enemy
combatants."
It remains unknown as to whether CIA interrogators at Guantanamo are
still permitted to employ six notorious methods to extract information
from prisoners. The "attention slap" involves hitting the prisoner in
the face with the edge of the hand. "Long time standing" means forcing
a prisoner to stand uninterrupted for up to 40 hours, a practice that
prompted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to remark that his job also
requires that he spend hours on his feet. In another technique,
"waterboarding," the prisoner is repeatedly doused with water until he
believes he is drowning.
"These are all methods in the repertoire of the classic torture
states," says Austrian United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture,
Manfred Nowak. In a letter published last Wednesday, Nowak and four of
his counterparts sharply denounced the US for continuing to maintain
the prison at Guantanamo.
"Serious, objective, independent fact-finders"
With his bushy moustache and the air of a benevolent uncle, Nowak, a
law professor at the University of Vienna, would normally be
considered a good-natured man. But nowadays he has trouble containing
his rage. The Bush administration dismissed his report as "useless,"
accusing him of partisanship because he turned down an invitation to
visit Guantanamo. Nowak, though, countered that the invitation was
useless because he was denied permission to interview prisoners --
though US Defense Secretary made it clear that Nowak and his team were
welcome to come inspect empty cells.
"We are serious, objective, independent fact-finders," Nowak said in
response. "We would undermine the UN's fact-finding capacities if we
were to accept an invitation that we are not accepting from any other
state in the world."
Nowak has been in office since December 2004, in a position that
requires him to scrutinize the world's torture chambers. But he has
rarely received such treatment, even in the People's Republic of
China, where he conducted an investigation last November. His
conclusion on the matter of Guantanamo is that the American government
has gradually begun chipping away at the prohibition on torture.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan hasn't been the only one to call for
the closing of Guantanamo. The German chancellor, the European
Parliament and even the British government, America's loyal ally and
frequently derided as a "poodle" to its masters in Washington, have
all called for shutting down the detention camp. Washington, they say,
should either release the 490 prisoners currently being held at
Guantanamo or it should allow them to stand trial before regular
courts. Many of them are not accused of hostilities against the United
States or its allies. "Most, when captured, were innocent of any
terrorist activity, were Taliban foot soldiers at worst, and were
often far less than that. And some, perhaps many, are guilty only of
being foreigners in Afghanistan or Pakistan at the wrong time," writes
the weekly politics magazine National Journal.
The Washington Post is of the opinion that Rumsfeld established the
foundation for the crimes in Abu Ghraib at Guantanamo, when it "swept
aside the Geneva Convention." It's a claim that is difficult to
refute, especially in light of the fact that, from August to early
September 2003, a team from Guantanamo trained the guards at Abu Ghraib.
No compunctions about torture
No one has claimed that the military leadership at the prison, or even
the Pentagon, approved or even ordered the grisly excesses. But the
atmosphere was clearly such that lower-ranking soldiers felt no
compunctions about implementing "torture-like interrogation methods."
They committed torture with a good conscience, torturing for freedom,
for the superiority of the West -- at least as they saw it.
The idea that a few bad apples were responsible for the Abu Ghraib
torture scandal has been reflected in the US's legal treatment of the
affair, one in which not a single politician has been called to
account. Six suspects were named in the torture investigation headed
by Major General Antonio Taguba. None of them had climbed higher than
the rank of sergeant on the military career ladder. Sergeant Charles
Graner began serving a 10-year prison sentence for a series of
criminal acts against Iraqi prisoners on January 15, 2005.
On October 20, 2004, Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick filed a plea of
guilty on all charges. Frederick, who has since been given a
dishonorable discharge from the military, was sentenced to eight years
in prison. After confessing before a military court on May 19, 2004,
Jeremy Sivits was demoted to the rank of private and sentenced to one
year in prison. Armin Cruz, also demoted, was sentenced to eight
months in prison.
The two female soldiers convicted to date came away with even lighter
sentences. Sabrina Harman, declared guilty on six counts on May 17,
2005, received a six-month prison term. Megan Ambuhl was fined half a
month's pay and demoted to the rank of private. On September 27, 2005,
Lynndie England, whose name was not mentioned in Taguba's report but
gained notoriety as a result of photos depicting her holding a leash
attached to an Iraqi prisoner, was handed down a three-year prison
sentence, much lighter than the 10-year sentence she had been expected
to receive.
$6,000 fine for murder
When Iraqi Major General Abd al-Hamid Mauhush, viewed as a close
associate of Saddam Hussein, was apprehended in November 2003, the
Americans were keenly interested in getting him to talk. He was
considered one of the leaders of the Iraqi insurgency against the US
military. His interrogator, Corporal Lewis Welshofer, resorted to a
number of excesses in an attempt to extract information from Mauhush.
According to a military prosecutor, the captured Iraqi was treated
"worse than a dog." Welshofer finally stuffed the prisoner into a
sleeping bag and Mauhush died. In January, the US soldier was
sentenced to a $6,000 fine and was restricted to his home, office and
church for a period of two months.
Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, head of Abu Ghraib Prison at the
time of the prisoner abuses, was demoted. Karpinski, now a colonel,
sees herself as a "scapegoat" for her superiors, including then US
military commander in Iraq Ricardo Sanchez, who is expected to retire
from the military this summer and receive a generous government pension.
Those with political responsibility for the affair have fared even
better. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld claims that he offered
his resignation twice -- in vain. Instead of being dismissed, he was
appointed to Bush's second-term cabinet.
Far from being held accountable, those who helped pave the legal way
for a policy that essentially deprived prisoners in the war on terror
of all rights and gave the president carte blanche to issue orders
that in some cases violated international law have even experienced
career advances. Former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales was
promoted to Attorney General. Michael Chertoff, previously the CIA's
chief counsel, is now Secretary of Homeland Security. And Jay Bybee, a
lawyer and author of the notorious memo that declares legal any
interrogation method that does not end in death or lasting physical
damage, was even rewarded with a federal judgeship by President Bush.
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have since been incorporated into the
vernacular as cautionary examples of what happens when the end
justifies the means. Books have been written about the issue, and the
ever-escalating battle of cultures has even found its way into films.
The clash of cultures on the big screen
The cinema has turned into a new forum for revenge, for the
uninhibited expression of opposition to the images from Abu Ghraib.
The Turkish film "Valley of the Wolves," for example, is a pure
cinematic slap in the face against Hollywood and Bush administration
propaganda, an angry indictment of America and the west that's as
na�ve as it is perfidious.
The technically complex action film simply reverses the perspective,
turning American heroes into thugs, while Muslim patriots heroically
defend their homeland, their culture and their honor. The "Axis of
Evil" no longer lies in the Orient, but in the West. A mirror is held
up to the United States that projects a cleverly distorted image: good
versus evil, the noble versus the lowly, the honorable versus the
underhanded, Islam versus Christianity and Judaism.
The latest round in the battle over images and cultures begins with a
bloodbath. The location is a village somewhere in northern Iraq where
a wedding is being celebrated, a peaceful gathering of Turks, Kurds
and Arabs. The men dance and the women look on, while children play in
their midst. But then some of the men, in a burst of enthusiasm not
uncommon in the region, raise their weapons and shoot into the sky.
Part IV: Anti-Americanism on the Silver Screen
This is the signal US soldiers who have been hiding nearby have been
waiting for. "Okay, now they're terrorists," says an officer,
commenting on the celebratory gunfire. Then his group of Rambo-like
warriors storms the village, threatening the guests and assaulting the
women. When a young boy shyly touches an American soldier's gun, the
soldier shoots the boy, triggering a massacre in which dozens of
wedding guests are killed. The groom is executed with a gunshot to his
head.
The film, which cost �10 million to produce, making it the most
expensive Turkish production of all time, has already brought record
numbers of viewers into cinemas since it was first released in early
February: more than 2 million in Turkey, but also hundreds of
thousands in England, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria and
Switzerland. In Germany, where "Valley of the Wolves" is being shown
in Turkish with German subtitles, 236,000 people, mainly Turks, saw
the film in the first week following its Feb. 9 premiere. Whenever
American villains and sadists die in the film, enthusiastic audiences
applaud.
The protagonist in "Valley of the Wolves," already made popular in
Turkey by the eponymous television series, is intelligence agent Polat
Alemdar, played by popular Turkish actor Necati Sasmaz. The actor
plays a sort of Turkish James Bond, but unlike the dapper Briton, who
often shows complete disregard for rules, procedures and his
superiors, Alemdar is a loyal nationalist whose only obligation is to
his fatherland.
Turkish honor
Alemdar's mission is to restore Turkish honor, a sentiment triggered
by a real-life incident. In July 2003, American troops in northern
Iraq detained four Turkish officers and, like terrorists, took them
away with bags placed over their heads. The "bag affair" dealt a
sensitive blow to the Turk's chronically low self-esteem and to this
day is viewed as a national disgrace.
In the film, one of the humiliated officers commits suicide, shouting
"Long live the fatherland!" before taking a pistol to his head.
Intelligence agent Alemdar goes into battle to avenge the officer's
death. "I am a Turk, and I will kill anyone who places a bag over the
head of a Turk," the agent announces on the screen, to the cheers of
many viewers. In the end, Alemdar plunges a dagger into the heart of
the despised American.
Director Serdar Akar cleverly intermingles reality and fiction in the
film. One scene is a re-enactment of the torture and abuse at Abu
Ghraib prison, including a female guard beating a prisoner and
threatening him with a vicious German Shepherd. The Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung called it "a hateful cinematic sermon," while the
influential weekly Die Zeit described the film as a "battle of
cultures in cinemascope."
Anil Sahin, managing director of Maxximum Film und Kunst GmbH, which
distributes the film in German theaters, sees these reviews as
excessive. "Finally we have a film that shows the ugly face of war in
Iraq and of America," says Sahin, whose company touts itself as
forming "an effective cultural bridge between Europe and Turkey."
In fact, "Valley of the Wolves" uses the same approach with which the
American cinema reacted to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the
1980s and intensification of the Cold War. In films like "The Red
Tide" (1983), the Red Army marches through the United States like some
marauding force, challenging the country and its inhabitants to defend
themselves unconditionally. And in other revenge-oriented Hollywood
action films, the villain is often an ugly Arab.
The "Road to Guantanamo"
Of course, "Valley of the Wolves" is a malicious caricature. But, like
any caricature, its core is very real. This reality is also denounced
in a far more serious film titled "The Road to Guantanamo," which
proved to be an audience favorite when it premiered at last week's
Berlin Film Festival. In a mixture of interviews, documentary footage
and recreated scenes, British director Michael Winterbottom ("In This
World") tells the story of a handful of British Muslims who were taken
to the US detainee camp in Cuba two years ago and were not released
until March 2004. "The Road to Guantanamo" is a furious indictment of
the United States from the perspective of its victims.
In September 2001, a few days after the attacks on New York and
Washington, four friends -- Ruhel Ahmed, then 19, Asif Iqbal, also 19,
Shafiq Rasul, 23 and Monir Ali, 22, all "completely ordinary English
youth" (to quote Winterbottom), travel from their homes in the town of
Tipton near Birmingham to the land of their ancestors, Pakistan. Asif
is traveling there to meet the bride his mother has selected for him.
The others follow him to attend the wedding. Only later in his film
does Winterbottom reveal that two of the men have prior records for
minor offences, and all survive on part-time jobs.
But nothing comes of the wedding. At the suggestion of an imam, the
four young men, accompanied by Shafiq's local cousin, travel to
Afghanistan to provide humanitarian assistance, but they're also
seeking adventure. Director Winterbottom sees the journey to
Afghanistan as a "voyage of self-discovery" although, he adds, "we
weren't interested in attempting, from a nonpartisan standpoints, to
examine or prove everything they told us."
Following a week-long odyssey, during which US forces bomb the Taliban
regime, Ruhel, Asif and Shafiq fall into the hands of Northern
Alliance troops on the road to Kandahar, and are eventually turned
over to the Americans. In early 2002, after countless interrogations,
the three Britons are loaded onto a plane and flown to Guantanamo.
Winterbottom and Assistant Director Mat Whitecross re-enacted all the
torture scenes with actors, filmed with handheld cameras and
interspersed interviews with the real prisoners. As a result, "Road to
Guantanamo" comes across as incredibly authentic. Winterbottom's
images will likely shape our image of Guantanamo more than the few
original photographs from the camp. The viewer himself is practically
held hostage.
Winterbottom's film is completely devoid of any suggestion that the
Taliban were bloody tyrants. The fact that the director shot numerous
scenes in Iran, which meant that the film had to be approved by the
Iranian government -- a regime with an established, quasi-official
policy of torture and murder -- raises some doubts as to its
educational intentions.
Blow meets blow in this cinematic battle of images, which portrays and
dangerously emotionalizes the clash of two cultures -- despite the
fact that it is apparently described simply and objectively. In his
film "Hamburger Lektionen" ("Hamburg Lectures"), which just premiered
at the Berlin Film Festival, director Romuald Karmakar reconstructs
two meetings between Mohammed al-Fasasi, the former imam at Hamburg's
Al-Kuds mosque, and the faithful in January 2000, meetings that were
filmed by an unknown person. Three of the suicide pilots of Sep. 11,
2001 apparently attended this mosque regularly and may have been in
contact with Fasasi.
Karmakar had the meetings in which Fasasi answered the attending
Muslims' questions translated verbatim into German and recited by
actor Manfred Zapatka. The outcome is a nightmarish document of
political indoctrination and systematic recruitment for jihad.
Haunting America for decades to come
Both lessons begin quite harmlessly with questions of general conduct
and religious discipline. But then Fasasi begins appealing to his
listeners' feelings of inferiority. Where does Islam's dignity go, he
asks, when Muslims are forced to sweep the streets in western
countries? The West, he later adds, has robbed Islam of everything,
and it's about time to strike back.
Fasasi claims that the West's wealth is based on exploitation of
Islam. Anyone who insults Islam, he says, is an enemy and must be
killed. Non-Muslim women and children lose their inviolability the
minute they hold a weapon in their hands, and the populations of
Western countries must be viewed as enemies, as are their governments,
and therefore destroyed. In essence, Fasasi is calling for total war
without regard for culpability, one in which the media and educators
should play a key role.
Our media-based society, no longer a monopoly of the West, is hungry
for images and produces them nonstop. To ensure that images do not
fade all too quickly, and in fact give off their own energy, they must
document something significant -- and then they'll endure.
The images from Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib will endure, and they will
haunt America for decades to come. A global power can make mistakes
and give in to folly, but when its moral foundation begins to crumble,
it is constantly forced to deal with the images of its own humiliation
and disgrace.
Anything goes once islands have been created outside the rule of law.
If Guantanamo is elevated to the status of acceptability -- if those
in detention are granted neither the presumption of innocence nor the
protections of the Vienna Convention -- isn't Abu Ghraib simply the
logical and foreseeable end of this long chain? Does it not become the
innate product of a new system the government has inaugurated in its
war against terror?
Abu Ghraib represents a substantial moral burden, but the Pentagon is
hesitant to turn over the prison on the outskirts of Baghdad to the
Iraqi government, as Minister of Human Rights Suher al-Chulabo has
demanded. Guantanamo is a scandal, but this government is unlikely to
shutter the camp, because it could very well be interpreted as a sign
of weakness. The camp's elimination will be up to the next US president.
What remains is cynicism. One of Egypt's leading newspapers summarized
it nicely last Friday with the headline to its lead story: "Freedom!
Democracy! Torture!" Two of the new prisoner abuse images are on page
nine of the paper. Sensational presentation and whipping the public
into a frenzy are no longer needed. After all, why break down open doors?
Even Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based network, simply broadcast the images
as little more than news. They speak for themselves and, in their
unparalleled drastic nature, cement in place an idea that has become
the core of the Arab world view: The West lies.
It touts human rights, and yet it rolls our sons in blood and dirt. It
complains about the excesses of Saddam Hussein, but it also forces
Iraqi men to masturbate on camera. It expresses outrage over our
primitiveness, and yet it films a man banging his head against a
prison door until blood finally gushes from his forehead.
Aura gone
Nowhere is the fallout from the images more dramatic, the resignation
greater, than among those in the Islamic world who had disdained the
extremists and had truly believed that the Islamic world stands a
chance of being reformed.
There are those in the Arab world who have welcomed the Iraq war and
America's project of democratizing the Middle East. "The fall of
Saddam established a fundamental moral concept in our political
culture," says Egyptian telephone magnate Naguib Sawiris:
"responsibility." Despite its many shortcomings, says Shibli Mallat, a
Beirut attorney and democratic challenger of Lebanese President Emile
Lahoud, the war in Iraq did put an end to appeasement in dealing with
the despots.
But who wants to listen to it anymore?
"The second group of Abu Ghraib images spells the preliminary end to
liberalism in the Arab world, " says Mohammed al-Sayyid Said of the
Ahram Center for Strategic Studies in Cairo. The secular, leftist and
moderate wings of all political groups, Said believes, launched a
faint-hearted attempt to take advantage of the new freedom last fall.
But, he adds, "it's over."
There is some reason to believe that this justification for the
withdrawal is little more than an excuse. President Hosni Mubarak is
an autocratic ruler who brutally suppresses any opposition. The
"Movement for Change," or Kifaya, has disappeared into oblivion, and
the Islamists have benefited.
America has forfeited its aura as a global power. It will be a long
time before the United States will be able once again to claim moral
superiority. America has inadvertently, but consistently, inflamed the
clash of cultures.
The great Winston Churchill once said that America had the habit of
committing every possible mistake to ultimately arrive at the right
decision. The first part of the Churchill quote is proving to be
reality, while the redemptive second part has yet to materialize.
By Erich Follath, Siegesmund von Ilsemann, Marion Kraske, Romain
Leick, Georg Mascolo, Mathieu von Rohr, Gerhard Sp�rl, Martin Wolf and
Bernard Zand. Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
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