Reflections on Prison Abuse
by Tibor R. Machan
When you hear that a picture is worth a thousand words you aren't being told the whole truth. Some pictures tell us very little, if anything at all. Some may actually lie, even if they haven't been tampered with.
Too many of the disturbing pictures from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq are simply too ambiguous to understand clearly, to learn what exactly went on there and, therefore, to correctly judge those who were involved. It looks as though people were ordered to take up various dubious physical postures and positions that were degrading and demeaning. Did these all hurt or harm those who were ordered to take them? In some cases that seems reasonable to assume, but in others it may not even be something that deserves to be condemned, given the circumstances.
Is it possible to tell from looking at the pictures that no one should ever be put in those positions in which we see them depicted? Is it as clear, as some outraged commentators make it appear, that no one who is a captive in an Iraqi prison and is suspected of having engaged in attacks on coalition forces occupying Iraq, may ever be treated as those persons have been who are depicted in the pictures that have come to light over the last several weeks?
Not until the story is told in sufficient detail - about why the prisoners were made to behave as they appear to be behaving and why there were many, many pictures being taken of this - is it going to be possible to evaluate the actions of those who took part in bringing about all of what is being depicted in the pictures.
Assume, for a moment, most inmates in the Abu Ghraib prison were suspected of knowing about future suicide bombings, decapitations, and other violence about to be unleashed on coalition soldiers and civilian workers often engaged in rebuilding Iraq. Suppose, also, that there is a policy against out-and-out torture of these prisoners. And also suppose that humiliating them may gain you the information you need to prevent the violence being planned against American and coalition soldiers and civilians working there.
Would it still be so outrageous to have the prisoners humiliated as these pictured did? What seems clear is that the glee on the faces of some of those carrying out the process of humiliation is quite uncalled for, even unprofessional. That these were novices, preparing the prisoners for further drilling does not change that fact - someone ought to have made it clear to them as soon as they were slated to take part in these proceedings that they weren't about to carry off some kind of prank. (Yet even here it is at least possible that part of the humiliation of the prisoners deemed necessary for them to be prepped for effective debriefing, so they will yield all the intelligence they can, was to have those who humiliated them appear gleeful.)
Yes, I am here bending over backwards to give this matter the benefit of the doubt. Why? Because once again it seems to me those who are jumping all over the Pentagon and the Bush team are more interested in "gotcha" than in actually remedying matters. They would, I believe, follow a policy of "wait and see" more readily than they have so far if they spoke from moral concern or were bona fide reformers, rather than having their eyes mainly on handy political opportunities.
Then when, just the other day, a captive American was decapitated as vengeance for the humiliation, I heard very little outrage at the disproportion of the deed, at its indiscriminate targeting of someone who evidently had absolutely nothing to do with the humiliation policy. This attitude, one that appears to be prominent on the part of the insurgents, so called, in Iraq - that everyone is part of a tribe and any part of the tribe is fair game for retaliation - should tell us a thing or two about the cultural differences between America and parts of the world over there.
Collectivist thinking seems to be rife among many Muslims, whereas among Americans, however imperfectly, there seems to be a serious effort to deal with individuals as individuals. Even the prisoners appeared to have been subjected to their humiliation primarily as prisoners who may have been in possession of vital information. They were not being mistreated simply for being Iraqis or Muslims.
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