The following is the opening statement I prepared for my thesis defense (which, thank God, I passed). Instead of delivering it verbatim I handled it fairly liberally. In any case, I thought it might be worth posting, and so here it is:
Any
decent history of the Iraq War will have to discuss Abu Ghraib. The question
then is how Abu Ghraib is to be understood – as a grotesque side-show to a
larger conflict or something that illuminates the heart of the war itself in
brutal, sharp relief. Undoubtedly some historians will claim, and not without
reason that similar atrocities occur in all wars. The subtle and perhaps
unrealized insinuation is that too much attention distracts from the so-called
big picture: the complex geopolitics, the battles immortalized as “turning
points”, and of course the much-debated motives of the Bush administration.
The problem with this way of thinking,
however, is its failure to understand that if atrocity is the common
denominator of war then we simply cannot understand war without attempting to
understand atrocity. To adopt a dismissive attitude to this “part” of war, if
atrocity can simply be called “part” of war, is to misunderstand war from the
start. And if this is true of all war than it is most certainly true for America’s
war in Iraq.
When the notorious photographs from
Abu Ghraib prison were released in Spring 2004 they ignited a media firestorm
as well as vigorous public debate about the use of torture. In many ways,
however, the scandal was as an apt metaphor of the willful ignorance and
fantasies indulged by Americans concerning the country’s much touted purity of
arms and supposedly beneficent role in the world. Instead of disabusing Americans
of the absolute terror taking place in Iraq the photos became America’s picture perfect view of torture – one that did not implicate other parts of
the military, government, or ourselves as a society. The problem was a set of
“bad apples” we were assured, whose corrosive influence was soon to be excised.
With this thoroughly self-serving explanation we were encouraged to reassume an ignorant stupor.
The pictures’ frames quite literally
confined the damage, providing us with a representation of torture catered to
our tastes and sensibilities. Utterly
divorced of context, the photos really did not offer the public anything
besides the fact that something had gone terribly awry during America’s latest “crusade.”
Besides acting as fodder for tabloids, the pictures functioned as grist for
academic speculation, each expert interjecting with their own theories about
what took place. The cacophony of noise and color belied the fact that besides
the photos there was very little to help us understand what was going on. And
in the absence of context the scandal for the most part served to animate each
participant’s prejudices rather than get up closer to the truth.
It is only by attempting to understand
what is beyond the frame that we can begin to understand U.S. abuse in Iraq, and,
in truth, the Iraq War itself. The conviction that a bottom-up approach, one
that focused on the experiences of the soldiers themselves, is necessary is
ultimately what drove this project.
By probing beyond the frame we learn
that abuse was not only pervasive but formal policy. And while it is easy to
bestialize those who found themselves trapped inside the frame, what is
ultimately shocking is perhaps not so much the evil of their actions but the
unimaginative normality of the abusers. If anything makes the terror of their
crimes unnerving it is the fact that the people caught in the frame are not
“bad apples” but people not so different from you and me.
The wide toothy grins of Lynndie
England, Charlies Graner, or Sabrina Harman are discomfiting not because they
are the smiles of abnormally cruel people, but because they are the
uncomfortable, perhaps reflexive poses of normal people in impossibly muddled,
if not simply impossible circumstances.
As one Iraq-War veteran Chris Arendt
said, “Under certain circumstances, there are almost no opportunities for you
to be the hero. At best, you can crawl your way up to be an acceptable enemy.”
Furthermore, their placement in the
pictures is bizarre not simply because of their suggestive poses but because
they were at the prison at all. None of these personnel were trained for military
prison work and their unit was supposed to have returned home months earlier.
The ill-preparation of soldiers was a
constant theme, and may only be described as criminal recklessness on the part
of those at the top. One prison worker reminisced that:
“It was like putting you into an
operating room and saying ‘Okay, go ahead and do open heart surgery…And by the
way, I’m not going to train you for it…we’ll give you one piece of paper, one
general rule – use a knife, maybe some antiseptic. Good luck.”
The military’s investigation of the Abu Ghraib
scandal was equally appalling, betraying a gross misunderstanding of torture
and justice itself. While anyone with brass was predictably overlooked, the
actual reasoning presented by the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) in regards to its investigation is
noteworthy.
Special Agent Brent Pack who was in
charge of scouring the photographs said in reference to the notorious
hooded-man photo that:
“The individual with the wires tied to
their hands and standing on a box, I see that as somebody that’s being put into
a stress position. I’m looking at it and thinking, they don’t look like they’re
real electrical wires. Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) – that’s all it is.” He
goes on to assure us that forcing prisoners to live without clothes, putting
female panties over their heads and hanging them from ceilings are all SOP too.
Lastly, looking at the plastic smiles
or thumbs-up signal of the Abu Ghraib military police cannot convey the crushing pressure
on soldiers to keep their mouths shut.
By the military’s own admission 1000s
of whistleblowers reported being threatened with death, rape, demotion and
other forms of reprisal, often by their own commanding officers. In the case of
Selena Coppa, her superior threatened to send her to an insane asylum – a
threat that reveals much about what the military considers “sane.” She was
lucky, as she escaped this threat, a success that was not achieved by many
other whistleblowers.
It is also important to note that the
time it took to complete a CO application was prohibitive. Most soldiers who
sought CO status did not complete it until after their tours were finished, in
the meantime living as pariahs amongst their peers. To frame it another way,
compared to the prison sentences for most of those implicated in the AG
scandal, the amount of time it took for soldiers to achieve CO status was
several times longer. And if we are to use a different measure, it is also
worth noting that the sentences of those implicated in this same scandal were
often shorter than the amount of time it often took to release an Iraqi
prisoner who was known to be innocent.
I would like to close by examining how the government
handled the first soldier to publicly protest the war, Sgt. Camilo Mejia.
Mejia, a citizen of Nicaragua, had
completed 8 years of service and was about to leave the military right before
the U.S. chose to invade Iraq. Breaking its own law, the government sent him
overseas in violation of his expired contract and on what later was found to be
a computer glitch. After witnessing abusive behavior at Camp Bucca and
elsewhere, Mejia decided to pursue CO status while criticizing American crimes
overseas. Instead of letting him out, however, the army decided to prosecute
him for desertion. Despite a Congressional Investigation and undeniable evidence
in his favor he was sentenced to a year in prison. This measure was undoubtedly
political, stifling his voice right as the Abu Ghraib scandal began to unfold.
The American experience in Iraq will
probably not occupy much space in the history books. People do not like to
remember the wars that they did not “win” – to use the popular phrase. However,
to not come to terms with the terror of this war as epitomized in American
atrocities is to engage in the most malicious form of denial. Above all, this
amnesic attitude allows our culpability as a society to go unexamined and to
prolong our infatuation with the mystique of power, especially power realized in the form of torture.
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