On the US and Torture
May. 5th, 2004 12:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
richardf8Two years ago, George W. Bush bowed out of the treaty forming the World Court. Moreover, he signed into law the American Servicemembers Protection Act and with these two actions disavowed any accountability to the international community for acts undertaken by the US military. At the time, the evasion of accountability for war crimes thus expressed struck me as an announcement of intention by the administration to commit such acts as might be deemed prosecutable by the World Court.
And now, as the events at Abu Ghraib slip though the fingers of the administration and into the public consciousness, I find myself less shocked and appalled than most, largely because I could see that the intent was there back in 2002. Bush can speak all he wishes about how disgusting it all is, but given the efforts that he, Delay, and Helms have put into paving the way for this very eventuality, his crocodile tears simply do not ring true.
Indeed we can see what this administration regards as the real crime of Abu Ghraib in these words of Dr. Condoleezza Rice:
Those pictures were awful because America -- American men and women in uniform, active and reserve, are serving in Iraq at great sacrifice. People are losing their lives. We came there to help to liberate the people of Iraq. We came there to build schools, and to build clinics, and we want very much that the images of Americans should be the images of helping the Iraqi people. *Interview of the National Security Advisor by Al Arabiya, May 3, 2004, quoted on Whitehouse web site.
Her first concern here is not the actions, not the torture, but the pictures. Her concern is the kind of images we should be showing. Regardless of the seamy underside, America should be showing its best face, and keeping its skeletons in the closet. To paraphrase an old Sprite commercial, this administrations motto may be summed up by the phrase "Image is Everything, Truth is Nothing."
And now, as the events at Abu Ghraib slip though the fingers of the administration and into the public consciousness, I find myself less shocked and appalled than most, largely because I could see that the intent was there back in 2002. Bush can speak all he wishes about how disgusting it all is, but given the efforts that he, Delay, and Helms have put into paving the way for this very eventuality, his crocodile tears simply do not ring true.
Indeed we can see what this administration regards as the real crime of Abu Ghraib in these words of Dr. Condoleezza Rice:
Those pictures were awful because America -- American men and women in uniform, active and reserve, are serving in Iraq at great sacrifice. People are losing their lives. We came there to help to liberate the people of Iraq. We came there to build schools, and to build clinics, and we want very much that the images of Americans should be the images of helping the Iraqi people. *Interview of the National Security Advisor by Al Arabiya, May 3, 2004, quoted on Whitehouse web site.
Her first concern here is not the actions, not the torture, but the pictures. Her concern is the kind of images we should be showing. Regardless of the seamy underside, America should be showing its best face, and keeping its skeletons in the closet. To paraphrase an old Sprite commercial, this administrations motto may be summed up by the phrase "Image is Everything, Truth is Nothing."
