From: Joe Dees (hidden@lucifer.com)
Date: Wed May 19 2004 - 17:02:30 MDT
Pictures that push logic out of frame
Michael Duffy
The Daily Telegraph
http://www.dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story.jsp?sectionid=145769&storyid=1336733
THE photographs of torture in Abu Ghraib prison are horrific, as is the behaviour they have revealed. Those involved must be punished severely.
But the effect they are having on attitudes to the war is entirely unwarranted. It reveals an enormous naivety on the part of many of us.
Anyone who wants to know is aware that beatings, degradation and rape are daily occurrences in Australian prisons and always have been. We have the evidence of many ex-prisoners, psychologists, police, prison visitors and guards on this.
What's different in the case of Abu Ghraib is that photos were taken and sent out. The West's superior technology and freedom are being used against it by enemies who possess neither of these things.
Hadi Kazwini is an Iraqi engineer who moved to Australia in 1997 and lives in Sydney with his wife and three children. He is amazed at the gullibility of those Australians who have taken the Arab response to the photos at face value.
This sort of brutality goes on all the time, it is happening now in jails right through the Middle East, he says. But of course there are no photos. This is selective outrage.
Kazwini believes that the behaviour revealed by the photos is awful and the US soldiers involved should be punished. But he says some of the Iraqi prisoners shown were Saddam's killers and torturers. They have been responsible for far worse violations of human rights than the Americans.
Where is the outrage about this, he asks. I haven't seen it referred to in one newspaper.
Kazwini has a different perspective to most of us here in Australia. Seven people he knew disappeared during Saddam's time, never to be seen again. Some were members of his family. No one knows what happened to them. No bodies were ever found.
Kazwini himself was once arrested for a poem he wrote. He was interned for six days and beaten and humiliated. Men were stripped and forced to crawl before their guards.
These days Kazwini uses e-mail and the internet to communicate daily with people in Iraq. He is amazed at the persistent claims in the media here that most Iraqis have responded to the photos by turning on the American occupation.
The main concern of the people he talks to is that the photos, and the beaten-up outrage from the rest of the Arab world, might encourage America to leave.
That would be a disaster for Iraq. People don't understand, he says, that however bad things are now, they were worse under Saddam and they'd be much worse if the allies pulled out now.
And yet, our emotional response to the photographs is hard to deny. Our heads might tell us not to over-react, but our emotions easily over-ride our reason. Remember the Vietnam War. The North finally won because America withdrew its support, particularly its financial help after 1973.
Public support for Vietnam faded partly because of photographs. American, and some Australian, troops often behaved appallingly in Vietnam, using rape, torture and the murder of civilians and prisoners in an almost casual manner. But few others knew of this. What changed the public mood were photos, and two in particular: those of the little girl and the napalm, and the police chief with his pistol shooting a Vietcong suspect in the head.
The indirect effect of these pictures was more powerful than bullets, than money, than diplomacy. This shows how in democracies the heart often rules the head. Images can simplify an issue, brutally, ruthlessly, and unfairly.
A great Australian example of this is the well-known painting of Governor William Bligh being pulled from under a bed during the Rum Rebellion of 1806. The image branded Bligh a coward, thereby attracting considerable support for the rebels.
In fact, Bligh hid in an effort to escape his pursuers so he could rally support to put down the rebellion. But it is the version implied by the picture that has persisted in popular memory.
Hadi Kazwini's anger is understandable. But the effect of the Abu Ghraib photos on attitudes to the war is probably unstoppable.
---- This message was posted by Joe Dees to the Virus 2004 board on Church of Virus BBS. <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=61;action=display;threadid=30300> --- To unsubscribe from the Virus list go to <http://www.lucifer.com/cgi-bin/virus-l>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed May 19 2004 - 17:03:11 MDT