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May 2, 2004
The contradictions abound. And I struggle with them.
The image below is of an Iraqi person being tortured by the US in the Abu Ghraib Prison in western Baghdad, Iraq. The Americans are discovered to be torturing the Iraqi people in the same place that Saddam tortured them.
It's an image that links back to mediaeval times and it has traces of the images of the Spanish Inquistion.
The image is a screen capture taken from the 60 Minutes II broadcast. There were others.
What do these images mean?
This is not the practice of a few out-of-control army privates who've lost their way and wandered over to the dark side. It is a practise of the military-intelligence arm of an imperial nation-state, which says it embodies the enlightenment, that now justifies its invasion of Iraq by saying the country was under a dictatorship, and that it is out to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi Arab public.
Juan Cole reports that the Arab mediais interpreting the photos in a religious way. He says "Al-Wafd's (Cairo) headline referred to the American prison guards at Abu Ghurayb as Zabaniyat al-Ihtilal, the Punishing Angels of Occupation. The zabaniyah in Islamic lore are the angels who "thrust the damned into Hell" and then torture them. Actually I suppose we might call them dark angels or even demons in the West. "
There are other ways to interpet the images. One suggestion is along the lines of democracy plus torture within an apocalyptic framework. This apocalyptic framework traditionally reads like a morality play that calls on heavenly powers ( the US) to judge the (Iraqi) people, reveal the future (of Iraq) and offer the ultimate salvation (of liberal democratic and market freedom). This traditional moral formula (the US as messiah) is inverted as the only reward for piety and sacrifice is pestilence, torture and death.
The images do bring life to the thoughts many think but would never dare to say. If the Enlightenment is embodied in the Geneva Conventions, then the US is breaking them. No question. John Quiggin says demolish the Abu Ghraib Prison.
And the unspoken thought? The images look more like the counter enlightenment than the enlightenment.
Riverbend's reaction. The background on the systematic prison practices are here.
How can we make sense of the contradictions? There are deeper layers than Margo Kingston's bringing the troops home.
My suggestion is that we have the marriage of religion and politics. I cannot but help be reminded of Dostoevsky's "The Grand Inquisitor" scene that exposed the corruptive powers of the church as well as the twisted, irony of human nature.
That scene is one where the flames were crackling round the heretics being burned by the Inquisition in Seville, Spain. The Catholic Church had asserted its divine rule over the people, and it maintained this power by burning its opposition, the Protestants, at the stake.
Instead of the Church we have the violent Republican US asserting its rule in the Middle East, and maintaining its power by torturing its opposition.
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I reacted angrily to these same stories on my blog, but the image you included does a much better job of making the argument than anything I wrote.