New Abu Gharaib documentary on the horizon
The documentary is premiered in Berlin. I was in Baghdad during the Abu Gharaib scandal, and I sent some of our prisoners there. What happened there was criminal, but compared to so many other events going on in the world at that time, it didn't warrant a full year dominating the world's headlines.
In any case, JammieWearingFool sums up my feelings perfectly:
You don't see any celebrity documentaries about the mass killings of Saddam Hussein. You hear diddly squat about the hundreds of annual public executions in Iran.I don't know how good/bad this documentary is, but if it performs anything like other recent anti-war films, it will tank at the box office.
The murder and imprisonment of political prisoners in Cuba?
Pfft.
But a few soldiers get out of hand, pose with prisoners and put panties on their heads? Why it's nonstop coverage for five years, now culminating in a documentary, which is sure to sweep up awards and accolades worldwide, just because it makes us looks bad.
4 comments:
Mentioning all other atrocities committed in the world as an attempt relativize what happend is pretty low style. You're right in that those other crimes deserve to be mentioned but everybody knows that Iran and Cuba are authoratative rulded states/dictatorships and expects such crimes to happen or isn't that overly surprised by it. In your righteous anger try to remember that George W. Bush attempted to liberate Iraq and bring democracy, win the hearts and minds etc., basically be the good guys that get rid of evil. The attempt to cover everything up when it came out by exactly the same power that condems exactly such behaviour in "evil" states made you look like hypocrites. If I remember correctly, those soldiers that were part of what happend were basically white uneducated trash. It is also questionable why people without proper training and education were allowed in a position or power over other people like that in the first place - at that's what I think. Why is it so hard to admit that you allowed a grave mistake to happen due to whatever reasons?
Or, if you insist on keeping your standpoint, does that mean that the US military or its individual members regards treatment of prisoners in such a way as harmless or even justified? Is it no big deal to humiliate and terrorize prisoners that have no defense? Personally, I think that most soldiers probably have a very good feeling of what is right and wrong and would never treat people quite in that way, apart from the fact that it is actually against the rules.
To Ruthie: Does everybody know that Iran and Cuba are unfree/authortative states? Why is it that when the US President travels, he is greeted everywhere by protestors, while the Iranian president is greeted with cheers? The Cuban president is too old to travel anymore, but lots of your fellow Germans have no problem with vacationing in Cuba and helping to prop up the regime financially.
In any case, make no mistake: What happened at Abu Gharaib was totally wrong and not justified in any way whatsoever. But there was also an investigation, the soldiers involved were put on trial, and several were sent to jail. Moreover, while I was hearing all this on the news my own unit would come across a dead bodies in the street, often people tortured to death with drill holes in them. It was really, really frustrating that the media obesessed with the few soldiers at the prison and ignored so much real torture in the world.
All I ask for is a little proportionality - everyone has heard of Abu Gharaib because of this incident, but nobody heard of it for all the years that Saddam was murdering and torturing in the prison. Few Western people have even heard of the notorious Evin prison in Iran, where women are flogged and stoned to death.
Hello John,
I personally pay respect to all politicians and head of states even if they are ridiculous figures like the Iranian President. It has nothing to do with personal feelings, he is a head of state and that's just that. Well. Average levels of education and knowledge are horribly low in most cases - as it happens even CNN sometimes mixes up the map of Europe, switching the Czeck Republic and Switzerland occasionally. Traveling to Cuba - haven't personally thought about it but I prefer Europe anyway.
What is more interesting with the case of Abu Ghraib is how memory or public memory of what happend is institutionalized for policial gains by some people or organizations. Memory construction is a field of historic research and this case is particularly interesting. I haven't really read anything about it, but it would be telling to analyze what memories are transported into the public debate and which aren't and why.
Proportionality is a slippery slope while dealing with crimes of any scale really, but especially in the grand scale. I am not saying that the Prison scandal belongs in that category, but the crimes comitted by Saddam surely do. But how do you want to compare them? Just to illustrate what I mean, was Stalin worse than Hitler because he killed more of his own people than died in the 2nd world war - over 50 million? Are those soldiers that mock executed a prisoner in Abu Ghraib (at least thats what one of the pictures looks like) any better than one of Saddams henchman even if what they did was basically "harmless"? Their victim surly didn't care for those fine differences while he was standing on that chair. It is impossible to compare them and then rate their level of criminality - Hitler and Stalin can't be compared by looking who caused more death and Abu Ghraib can't be compared to crimes that happend under Saddam. They each have to be analyzed individually in their different contexts.
I can understand why it must have been frustrating for you to see horrible crimes comitted daily that nobody wanted to hear about while the world obsessed with something where nobody sustained lasting injuries and lived. But I think you have to seperate personal feelings from the debate wether it is justified to talk about Abu Ghraib or not.
Your argument can't be that because there is no debate or public awareness of A you also should't talk about B or only about B if you also talk about A at the same time.
John,
I agree with ruthie. The main reason why this got so much coverage is that people expect better from the USA, but not, say, Saddam.
I doubt that there are many adult Western Europeans who don't know that Iran and Cuba are dictatorships. I can't really speak for the rest of the world, but I would guess the same is true of the US - after all, don't both countries get a lot of media coverage in America?
If people vacation in Cuba, I guess it's because they disagree with the feeling that one shouldn't visit undemocratic countries. (Whether one agrees or disagrees with this is another matter)
I guess another reason for the amount of coverage is that people are fascinated with the topic of "people getting out of hand". The two most famous psychological experiments are the Milgram obedience experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment - despite their not being regarded highly by the academic community at the time. (The results of the SPE were published in a very small journal; Milgram had trouble publishing his results at all)
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