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Under the Sun Cynthia Oi |
We all share the blame
and the shame of abuseWE'RE supposed to be the good guys, the ones who reach out when others teeter on the edge of calamity and pull them to safety. We're supposed to be the great nation that strives to spread all that we prize -- freedom, prosperity and wholeness -- to people around the globe.
What happened? Where did we misplace our collective humanity, our mercy and benevolence, and find instead a baseness that allows us to call another enemy, an evil-doer who deserves contempt and abuse?
The pictures -- naked men piled atop each other, hoods over their heads, hands bound, forced to their knees in lurid sexual poses while American soldiers, male and female, grin and beam in amusement, pointing fingers mimicking weapons at their genitals -- deliver to the world a poison so potent there may be no antidote.
Such a venom may not harm as immediately as a virus encapsulated in weapons of mass destruction, but the toxin spreads as widely and far deeper than anthrax or botulism. It is an infection of hatred that devours the fugitive righteousness of a nation that professes to heed the call of an almighty to share the gift of democracy.
We are at war, instigated by leaders who galvanize fear and insecurity at every turn purposefully and unreflectively, who declare wantonly and without conscience that we will kill until all who oppose us are eliminated. If the repeated pronouncements do not give sanction to abuse of prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere, they also do not sanction a view that mistreatment won't be ignored.
The president and Donald Rumsfeld say they believe the inhumane conduct has been isolated and that most of the men and women in uniform are decent in character.
No one would hold that the majority of soldiers aren't good people trying to do their best under difficult conditions. But why the dozen or so at Abu Ghraib, the notorious facility where Saddam Hussein murdered and tortured, carried out the humiliation and injury cannot be explained.
It may be that the constant pressure of living with hostility, where one isn't sure where danger lies, disconnects sympathy and compassion. We all have the capacity for doing harm and not. Influences and circumstances dictate which we choose. None of us may be able to unravel their sensibilities unless we're put in their boots.
The soldiers being punished and those who will face discipline do not stand alone for blame.
There are the intelligence officers said to use such photographs and other means to intimidate other prisoners. They have created an environment that encourages such behavior.
There are the generals and Pentagon officials who cloaked and put aside a two-month old report detailing the abuse instead of acting immediately to stop it.
There is the president, who since 2002, when notice of abuses were disclosed, has rejected monitoring and accountability, turning away requests from human rights groups for information about how prisoners are treated. This is also the man whose loose language Friday defined "those who practice the Muslim faith" as "people whose skin color may not be the same as ours ... are a different color than white." The distinctions are not only incorrect -- if by "ours" he meant Americans -- but set further divisions of us and them internally and externally.
Then there are the rest of us, who do not demand that the government that represents us do the right things.
Bush, Rumsfeld and military officials say they hope Abu Ghraib was a solitary aberration, but it appears it wasn't. Twenty incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan are being investigated. And even if the abuse is limited to these 20, they should not have happened.
One is enough to foul what America was once able to boast of: a great respect for human dignity and human rights.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Cynthia Oi has been on the staff of the Star-Bulletin since 1976. She can be reached at: coi@starbulletin.com.