Note: I am in no way pointing fingers at anyone in this community in particular with this diary. When I speak of "US" I mean the unconcious public.
Since 2004, the world has known the dirty little (not so little) secret of the Bush regime's torture programs. We were shown horrible and humiliating pictures. Naked men stacked like cords of lumber, cowering before froth-mouthed K-9's, and the infamous hooded man, seemingly wired to an electrical circuit. These pictures shocked the world.
Since that day - when the United States lost it's moral standing following the release of the original Abu-Ghraib photos - we have lost more military men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan than civilians lost on 9/11. Most of those lost since the torture revelations died at the hands of militants and suicide bombers who sat on the fences till they saw those pictures.
Since that day, we watched the Bush administration slowly spiral into the gutter of world opinion, and drag America down with them. 4 years later, we have witnessed the most dramatic political shift in recent American history.
We know the crime was committed. We know that Bush, Cheney, and their neo-con pals orchestrated this horrific policy. And we now know, that America has started down the long path of redemption with the election of Barack Obama, and his release of the Bush OLC documentation "justifying" these atrocities.
So why the fuck do we need to see more? Why do we need to relive the suffering of those poor souls unfortunate enough to be swept up into that hellish program? Are we that fucking sick, that we crave the gratuitous? What about the victims? Do you really think that Iraqi's want there neighbors to see their humiliation? In a culture that puts the female victims of rape do death in honor killings, hunts down and murders homosexuals, where one's honor is everything... Do we really think that publishing pictures of him simulating sex with another male detainee on the cover of the NYT is a good thing?
I'll tell you what will happen. He will seek to regain his honor in the only way left to him, martyrdom.
How fucking sick are we? The cat is out of the bag, we know the crimes, and the players, and the costs. Yet we want more? This is nothing but the same violent, voyeuristic bullshit that made Bush and Cheney think that America would understand, and I will have no part of it.
Fact: The torture policy of the Bush administration made America less safe.
Fact: The actions of President Obama since his inauguration to end the practice, and come clean about that dark time have begun to make us safer.
Opinion: Releasing more pictures now, after all that has transpired since 2004, is the worst possible course of action Obama could take. It will do nothing but add to the ranks of our enemies, to the funerals of Americans, and everyone's sorrows.
I accept Obama's consideration of release as enough to satisfy me. I accept Obama's actual release of Bush administration documentation of the torture program as proof enough of his intent.
I would support offering legal remedies to those in the picture, I would support releasing it to them, if they so chose, to defend themselves from forced confessions in court. I would support the viewing of these pics by sequestered grand juries, special prosecutors, or respectable congressional commissions to convict individual contractors and military brass/personnel who were clearly taking personal gratification in torture "outside of the four corners" of the OLC documents as described by President Obama. And of course frog-marches and bling for all Bush Co implementers. But that is as far as I would go, and anything more, in my mind, is self gratification take way to far.
If any pictures are released, such photos should be cropped for public consumption; shaming the perpetrators while protecting the victims. They should only viewed in full context by investigators, a sequestered jury, the presiding judicial body... and the assholes who committed these atrocities (if only because the law provides discovery for the accused).
You may now be fuming, and coming up with clever ways to light me aflame... and I don't blame you, but let me tell you why I feel this way.
The unconscious American thinks that those pictured being tortured were giving up actionable intel that saved millions of American lives. Of course we are finally beginning to see documented proof that this was bull shit.
At some point, you have to give the victims back there dignity, and publishing photos of their humiliation, when plenty of evidence already exists in the public domain, is nothing less that what the photos were originally intended for.
Remember, the reasonings for the pics were just as much part of the humiliation as the torture itself. It was part of the "Shock Doctrine". Releasing more is wrong, if only because doing so completes the sick modus-operandi of the program itself.
They feared that their family and friends would see these pics, and now common consensus is to follow thru with what amounts to fulfilling the threats leveled by those sycophants that mistreated them in the first place?
Do "we" know anything about honor in Islamic society? It's bad enough that these people were tortured; having their pictures taken during their humiliation was a "force multiplier". The act of being tortured was humiliation of self, the pictures threatened to humiliate their entire clan.
Put it this way. 100 pictures of a crime will convict just as well as 10,000. This is not a single tape of Rodney King getting beat down; this is the publication of the humiliation of thousands of individual people. Not dead people, in most cases, but people who still have to find a way to live with the stigma that will befall them when their nightmares are shared with the world.
Talk about ignorance?
In the same period, reporter Seymour Hersh, who helped uncover the scandal, said in a speech before an ACLU convention: "Some of the worse that happened that you don't know about, ok? Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read they were passing letters, communications out to their men ... . The women were passing messages saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened.'
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/...
This is why it's no longer about the pictures, it's about the documents that were used to justify these heinous acts, and the lack of actionable intel that was gained, and the security that was lost, and the true reasons behind the use of torture.
Was Cheney trying to force false confessions about an Iraq/AQ connection? Or about an Iraqi nuclear program? Were they going to use such taped confessions in a coordinated Bush administration/FAUX News domestic propaganda campaign? If unchecked, by us, would the torture campaign have been used domestically against peace activists, bloggers, or any other perceived threat to the power of the "permanent republican majority"?
These are the next questions we need answered if you really want to change public opinion. Because if we give those who fell for that PR campaign more pictures without the documents that facilitated the crimes depicted, they will see only terrorists that "deserve it" and nothing will change.
The proof is widely available. I disagree, in part, with the prevailing assessment. We have forced transparency onto this issue. The view becomes clearer every day. What we are missing is Justice. I do agree with that. Where is the justice in releasing more disgusting pictures? We understand what happened. There's more than enough out there to feed the justice we want.
It's like a security video of a murder. We see the culprit, we see the victim, we see the weapon. Outside of the courtroom, if justice is served, what purpose does seeing the bloody details serve other than the curiosity of the observer?
How would you feel if you were one of thousands raped, sodomized, and humiliated on tape, and a case was building against the perps. Would you want everybody to see your humiliation, if the perps could be convicted on the small percentage of pics in evidence already shown to the entire world?
What's the point?
Unless, these pictures show something more than torture, like, proof that the program was specifically designed and executed to force false confessions for use in domestic propaganda, or one of those pics has Cheney in a leather cowboy git up, riding Bush dressed as the gimp, rustling naked Iraqi's, then releasing these photos will be viewed as America's voyeuristic blood-lust that would ultimately prove our enemy's point for us: That we are a sick and twisted society, and we "get off" on scenes of torture and humiliation.
Many of my critics will either accuse me of defending Obama, or covering for Bush, but many will show the deep red filter of their own views. And I have to accept that.
Moral certitude is no excuse when one doesn't care to work to find better means to an equitable end. I seek a better means, but many seem to not give a shit about the means, as long as they get their end: Burning down the house to kill the rat in the bread box.
"Only Socrates knew, after a lifetime of unceasing labor, that he was ignorant. Now every high-school student knows that. How did it become so easy?"
Allan Bloom
It's "Damn the world, as long as we look just".
Where are the Muslims that see my point? Or the Christians? Or the Pacifists? Or, the Democrats?!!!!!
Don't you think, that if we could buck recent American history (check), and embrace our unique advantage, the balance between privacy and justice (practiced occasionally in this country), we could achieve both, the repudiation of the entire class of Nixon/Ford's administration, and win the hearts and minds of the Muslim world?
This will continue to be my wish.
P.S. Thank you all for listening, and again, don't take my tone personally. I write this for a wider audience than just this community.
(edit: small gram error)