I've been trying to push through the conceptual mud of the Abu Ghraib scandal to get at something solid. I posted
an earlier diary that netted some good comments and ideas, and after reading the WaPo article from the front page story and
another diary this morning, I wrote
a post for my blog detailing some of these thoughts.
Here's something else.
Ever since 9-11, a quiet meme on torture has percolated through our culture. People have been thinking, and occasionally saying, that under particular circumstances torture might be acceptable. What if this terrorist knew where the bomb was planted, would it be OK to torture him to find out? What if the bomb wasn't planted yet, but he knew where a group of other terrorists were who had the bomb? What if they didn't have a bomb yet, but had plans? What if they just talked about a bomb? What if the subject wasn't a terrorist, but a terrorist's sister? What if she was only 12?
My point here is that once you go one step over the line, each successive line is only one step further. In endorsing the view that "everything has changed" because of 9-11, meaning that it's acceptable to rebalance the moral calculus, we become implicit in the crimes of our government, our leaders, and the agents of those leaders like the soldier torturers of Abu Ghraib.
What I want to tell you is that attempting to escape from such responsibility is not as productive as accepting it as your own. You can march and wave signs, you can throw blood on the Pentagon, you can refuse to pay your taxes, you can fund a campaign to impeach Bush, but you still won't escape responsibility. Even if your views are right and you shout them until your lungs burst.
What I suggest we do is use the opportunity to take responsibility for what has happened in our name, setting aside the question of whether it was with or without our consent. It's only a delusion that we're not, or could never be, inflicters of suffering on the innocent, and that delusion allows us to feel that such events are not our fault, not our responsibility, not ours to atone for and not ours to prevent. In order to sweep human cruelty from the world, we must accept responsibility for it wherever it occurs; this is the urgency of compassion.
Abu Ghraib was my fault. I am sorry.