If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend Jeanne D’Arc’s stunning deconstruction of the ethical questions raised by the prison torture scandal. It’s a long read, but well worth it.
13 thoughts on “The Ethics of the Abu Ghraib Scandal”
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indeed, it was worth it, and very moving. the part about the old man, the donkey and his grandson put a lump in my throat the size of a golfball.
From (surprisingly) the Daily Star:
The Idrissis, and many families like them, feel that people in Iraq have too quickly relegated the horrors of the old regime to the annals of history. “But it is not the past to us,” says Idrissi. “The mother of the person who was killed, his brothers and sisters, they are alive. We are still living the nightmare every day.”
On most days, Ibrahim Idrissi can be seen chasing after members of Iraq’s Governing Council, begging for a little attention for Saddam’s victims. So far, he has had little luck. “No self-respecting Iraqi government can afford to ignore this issue,” he says. “These people have paid with their blood so that the people on the Governing Council could be in charge.”
The brothers hope to get compensation for the families, who have often lost all their belongings in addition to their loved ones. One day, they hope, the executioners will be put on trial. But most of all, they want recognition for what they, and thousands of others like them, have been through. And that people would stop saying “things were better under Saddam.”
“Only criminals could say such a thing. The victims deserve better than this,” Idrissi concludes.
Stan LS, how does that passage address the moral questions raised by our own regime of torture and terror?
Gromit,
Sorry, for some reason I thought that a commentary from an Iraqi would somehow be relevant. You’re right. Who cares? Its not like he’s elegible to vote in the presidential elections.
our own regime of torture and terror
Careful!
Gromit,
Please allow me to redeem myself for that irrelevant passage. How about this:
Now I am really ashamed to carry an American passport. Not even the foulest atrocities of Adolf Hitler ever shocked me so badly as these photographs did.
– Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
Somewhere between Gromit, who missed Stan’s point that what Hussein did at that prison was much worse and that fact shouldn’t be lost in the fiasco that took place at Abu Ghraib under US control, and Stan, who missed Gromit’s point that we’re still gonna have to own what happened there and no amount of comparison makes it any less indefensible, lies the point of the post.
As Jeanne noted, what took place there was “literally dehumanizing”: Our response must be “re-humanizing”: for both the Iraqis and the US.
Edward,
I didn’t miss that point (look up my previous posts on this very blog). However, I wanted to point this out:
On most days, Ibrahim Idrissi can be seen chasing after members of Iraq’s Governing Council, begging for a little attention for Saddam’s victims.
Begging? Also, if you check out iraqi blogs (healingiraq.com, etc, those guys are not that enraged. Let’s keep this in perspective, all the pictures I’ve seen are of the same several soldiers, and Many of the worst abuses that have come to light from the Abu Ghraib prison happened on a single November day.
Duly noted Stan, but those details will most likely fall on deaf ears so long as it’s assumed there are higher ups getting off with a (private) scolding while enlisted soldiers are going to jail. The DoD’s just gonna have to sweat this one out until the details of a full investigation are revealed. And few people can balance both their disgust at those images and the “they’re not as bad as they could be” arguments.
Can’t say I blame them.
And neither did I miss Stan’s point. While it merits its own discussion, it simply is not relevant to the article, from what I can tell. We have no business using Saddam Hussein’s depravity as a moral yardstick. If accused of drowning a man you don’t justify your actions by quibbling over how far you held his head beneath the surface.
I’m done trying to referee this one. Gromit your points are perfectly valid.
Have at each other.
it simply is not relevant to the article
Sure it is. Is an Iraqi commenting on Abu Ghraib. I simply passed along his view.
We have no business using Saddam Hussein’s depravity as a moral yardstick.
The point is that this was done by a few, who’ll be punished. Most of it took place on one day.
If you want to equate that with a sanctioned and well known policy go ahead, knock yourself out.
Then Idrissi says: “What we have seen about the recent abuse at Abu Ghraib is a joke to us.”
Do the attacks of September 11 make Hamas blowing up an Israeli bus “a joke”? Does the Rwandan genocide make the Alabama church bombing of 1963 “a joke”? Does the knowledge of each more horrific act make the less severe crimes somehow more palatable than they were originally? What sort of moral game are we playing when we have to ration our outrage in this way? A man being chained to a wall and beaten to death is no joke. Men being smeared with muck, forced to fellate each other, raped with flashlights, none of these acts is a joke, the opinions of the Idrissis (and the grinning MP’s) notwithstanding.
I hope Saddam gets the most severe punishment allowable under international law for what he did to his people. He deserves far worse. But the only way his crimes enter into the equation here is to highlight that we should have known better.
The point is that this was done by a few, who’ll be punished. Most of it took place on one day.
Done by a few? Well, I suppose that depends on your definition of “a few”. On one day? Not according to the Taguba report, and the sheer volume of photographs recording the torture would seem to indicate otherwise.
If you want to equate that with a sanctioned and well known policy go ahead, knock yourself out.
Torturing prisoners does indeed seem to have been a sanctioned policy. How “well known” it was will, hopefully, come out eventually, resist it though Bush and Rumsfeld may.