May 03, 2004
Orientalism: a definition
The British responses to the Iraqi prison scandal have been a tad self-righteous. No British were involved in the abuse. It was the US military. The British are the good guys.
The Daily Mirror reports that British soldiers have been abusing Iraqi prisoners.
The caption says that a ' British soldier urinates on an Iraqi prisoner in a vile display of abuse. The captive was beaten and hurled from a moving truck. Army chiefs are investigating.
If the photographs are genuine, not carefully staged fakes, then they embody a graphic working definition of Orientalism. In her article in the Sydney Morning Herald Margo Kingston says, "Recently, a British officer said the US troops saw the Iraqis as "untermenschen", a term Hitler used to describe Jews, gypsies and other "racially inferior" groups...."
The above photo indicates that the mentality of orientalism is alive and well in the British military.
Update
News reports today say that these photos published in the Daily Mirror are fakes. Fabrications.
The Daily Mirror is saying that the government had not produced incontrovertible evidence the pictures were faked, and that the pictures accurately illustrated the reality about the appalling conduct of some British troops as highlighted in the reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross and Amnesty International.
This is a convincing illustration of how photos are not just pictures of reality and the way the war is fought through the media. There is a war happening on the ground in Iraq. There is also a struggle over war that is being fought in the UK through the media.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at May 3, 2004 10:28 AM | TrackBack