What have we done?

[seemslikeadream]

Monday May 24, 2004
The Guardian


To have the American effort in Iraq summed up by these images must seem, to those who saw some justification in a war that did overthrow one of the monster tyrants of modern times, "unfair". A war, an occupation, is inevitably a huge tapestry of actions. What makes some actions representative and others not? The issue is not whether they are done by individuals (ie, not by "everybody"). All acts are done by individuals. The question is not whether the torture was the work of a few individuals but whether it was systematic. Authorised. Condoned. Covered up. It was - all of the above. The issue is not whether a majority or a minority of Americans performs such acts but whether the nature of the policies prosecuted by this administration and the hierarchies deployed to carry them out makes such acts likely.

Considered in this light, the photographs are us. That is, they are representative of distinctive policies and of the fundamental corruptions of colonial rule. The Belgians in the Congo, the French in Algeria, committed identical atrocities and practised torture and sexual humiliation on despised, recalcitrant natives. Add to this corruption, the mystifying, near-total unpreparedness of the American rulers of Iraq to deal with the complex realities of an Iraq after its "liberation" - that is, conquest. And add to that the overarching, distinctive doctrines of the Bush administration, namely that the United States has embarked on an endless war (against a protean enemy called "terrorism"), and that those detained in this war are "unlawful combatants" - a policy enunciated by Rumsfeld as early as January 2002 - and therefore "do not have any rights" under the Geneva convention, and you have a perfect recipe for the cruelties and crimes committed against the thousands incarcerated without charges and access to lawyers in American-run prisons that have been set up as part of the response to the attack of September 11 2001. Endless war produces the option of endless detention, which is subject to no judicial review.

So, then, the real issue is not the photographs but what the photographs reveal to have happened to "suspects" in American custody? No: the horror of what is shown in the photographs cannot be separated from the horror that the photographs were taken - with the perpetrators posing, gloating, over their helpless captives. German soldiers in the second world war took photographs of the atrocities they were committing in Poland and Russia, but snapshots in which the executioners placed themselves among their victims are exceedingly rare. (See a book just published, Photographing the Holocaust by Janina Struk.) If there is something comparable to what these pictures show it would be some of the photographs - collected in a book entitled Without Sanctuary - of black victims of lynching taken between the 1880s and 1930s, which show smalltown Americans, no doubt most of them church-going, respectable citizens, grinning, beneath the naked mutilated body of a black man or woman hanging behind them from a tree. The lynching photographs were souvenirs of a collective action whose participants felt perfectly justified in what they had done. So are the pictures from Abu Ghraib.

more
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1223344,00.html

[riverwalker]

1. Strange Fruit still grows

"of black victims of lynching taken between the 1880s and 1930s, which show smalltown Americans, no doubt most of them church-going, respectable citizens, grinning, beneath the naked mutilated body of a black man or woman hanging behind them from a tree."


Billy Holiday's "Strange Fruit"

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

[seemslikeadream]

3. This is a token of a great day we had in Dallas

Silhouetted corpse of African American Allen Brooks hanging from Elk's Arch, surrounded by spectators. March 3, 1910. Dallas, Texas.

Tinted lithographed postcard. 3 1/2 x 5 1/2 in.

Printed inscription on border, "LYNCHING SCENE, DALLAS, MARCH 3, 1910". Penciled inscription on border, "All OK and would like to get a post from you. Bill, This was some Raw Bunch."




This postcard, addressed to Dr. J.W.F. Williams, LaFayette, Christian County, Kentucky documents the sentiments of one lunchtime spectator.

"Well John - This is a token of a great day we had in Dallas, March 3, a negro was hung for an assault on a three year old girl. I saw this on my noon hour. I was very much in the bunch. You can see the negro hanging on a telephone pole. "


http://www.musarium.com/withoutsanctuary/main.html

[riverwalker]

5. had one up in Duluth too

in the 1930's. All those people just walking about. We act like the Fallujah incident was so alien to us, so "shocking".
It looks just like the postcard.

[opihimoimoi]

2. What we have done is to make the Worlds Citizens hate and detest us.

It was a revelation Americans are no different than other oppressive nations elsewhere. Only a few weeks ago the negative feeling was against only Bush.

Now that the photos have been made public and the Pub attitude is basically "So What?" World opinion has turned on us citizens. More so when they hear Rush and even US Senators poo poo the torture as hazing.

Bush and Rummy has succeeded in turning World opinion around to where we Americans can no longer hold our heads high but instead hang in Shame. Rummy has made us look fuckin BAD, REAL BAD.

If Bush is elected, it will mean we Americans condone the torture inflicted upon the Iraqis. That will be the message.

A sad day for America indeed.

[countmyvote4real]

6. Agree. * sucks and so do the rest of us by association.

It's time to clear the representation across the board. I'll vote Kerry if he accepts the nomination, but would rather have a more progressive candidate.

[burrowowl]

7. The U$ and Corporate America

have been doing shit like this for decades.
Fucking up Haitian, Cuban, Guatemalan, etc. revolutions by the people to give United Fruit, etc. a stronghold. Installing the Shah of Iran, the so-called South Vietnamese gov., etc.
Putting the screws on Mexico, Chili, Argentina .....

WHY ARE YOU SUPRISED?

Not to mention the screwing of the American People .... read A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn and a conservative's Wealth and Democracy by Kevin Phillips.

And why do we have the Electorial College and not a purality for 'electing' the president (3 guesses and the first 2 don't count; hint Slavery and the South)?

[Pachamama]

10. Both Great Books! Should be the 1st thing every student in Grade School

...reads when learning US History and "the real America"...They wouldn't view "Columbus Day" with such "honor" anymore after reading Chapter 1....

[nofurylike]

13. decades?

FIVE CENTURIES.
512 years.

15 MILLION First Nations persons



and so on and on and on and...
without cease


meet our heritage and
weep

[crossroads]

4. These photos cloak America in an aura of shame.

:cry:

[Snazzy]

8. Hell of an article

Saved a copy to go over when I'm actually awake.

The photographer for (some?) of the torture pix was the guy who got a year, reduction in rank, and shipped out--also turning some testimony in a deal which we don't know the extent of yet, so I'm holding some judgment. But so far I'm thinking he got off pretty damn light.

He's not some photojournalist who happened upon the torture and documented it. The camera was an active participant. It was part of the humiliation and threat to have the photos taken. It was also to be used as a threat against other prisoners. Plus they were staged.

The photographer had a role in that. Maybe a big role, if you think about it a bit.

Somehow people seem to like to write him off (including statements by him and his lawyer) as saying he just took the pictures, so he wasn't actually torturing people.

(edit typo)

[Pachamama]

11. Conscientous Objectors are getting the same sentence as these....

....sadistic Perps...its unreal....

I forget his name (Camejo?) who just yesterday was give 1 year and dishonorable discharge - this for not wanting to go back to Iraq because of what he saw going on, but these sick F**k's who "took" photos of torture and "claim" they weren't participants, get the same?

Something is really really wrong with this picture....

[burrowowl]

12. Last name Mejia

From either Nicaguara or Costa Rica.
He apparently cited on pages 23 or so 'prisoner abuse' as one of the reasons he was applying for conscientious objector status.

No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.

[Judi Lynn]

14. You were close to his first name: Camilo Mejia

You won't believe this. I just found this information well down the page in an article from the Sun-Sentinel, a Florida paper:

Mejia's father, Carlos Mejia Godoy, condemned Friday's verdict, saying his son was being retaliated against for having mentioned the abuse.

Mejia Godoy is Nicaragua's most prominent leftist singer and songwriter.

He wrote the line "Let's fight the Yankee, enemy of humanity'' into the anthem for the Sandinista National Liberation Front, which ruled Nicaragua from 1979 to 1989.

The line had always proved controversial, and the Sandinista Party later dropped it from the anthem.
(snip/)

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-soldier523,0,3854387.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

I am ASTONISHED! DAMN! Holy Moly. More power to him. I hope he's going to come out of jail alive, I'll tell you that.




In a photo released by the U.S. Army, Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, center, leaves court after the verdict was read in his court-martial on Friday with his attorney Louis Font, right, and University of Illinois Law Professor Francis Boyle, left, in Fort Stewart, Ga. A military jury on Friday, convicted Mejia of the Florida National Guard of desertion for leaving his combat unit in Iraq in protest of an "oil-driven'' war.
(AP Photo/ U.S. Army, Pfc Benjamin Brody)


Copyright © 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

[Matilda]

16. Do you think the son is being punished for the father as well?

The Right doesn't like Nicaraguan lefties, do they?

[realcountrymusic]

9. Proper Attribution (Sontag and Meeropol)

I think it's important to note that the essay posted at the top of this thread is written by Susan Sontag, and appeared in full in the Sunday NY Times magazine. She is credited at the bottom of the Guardian version, but not in this thread. She is one of the finest essayists of our times and deserves credit for putting our horror so eloquently.

And while I'm on the subject of proper attribution, "Strange Fruit," though recorded by Billie Holiday (and about a thousand other artists since), was written by Abe Meeropol, a leftist Jewish schoolteacher in New York who also happened to adopt the children of the Rosenbergs after they were executed for "treason" when no one else would take their children in.

Not to take away from the aptness of the song or the appropriateness of the essay, just setting the record straight.

Realcountrymusic

[ze_dscherman]

15. Thanks for the info

Didn't listen to Billie Holiday for years, but the lyric brought back the complete song, with that voice the gives me goosebumps even now. An incredible voice, and now I know a bit about who created these very good lyrics.

[newyawker99]

21. Hi realcountrymusic!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[The Zanti Regent]

17. What is even sicker is that millions of Americans see nothing wrong

with ANY of this; they are brainwashed into thinking that they're doing the will of Jesus!

[seemslikeadream]

18. Shining a light into dark world of torture

Shining a light into dark world of torture

"Some people may recover their humanity if something extraordinary happens," Crelinsten explains. "It's much harder to leave than to enter the routine of torture. Special privileges, for instance, alcohol and rewards, reinforce what they are doing."

However, he said, some do repent. "A man who tortured prisoners in a Latin American country said that one day he noticed a victim who had a club foot. So did his best friend. Suddenly he felt that it could be him, and he couldn't go on."

But once inside the closed world of torture — whether in a formal training school or a military base — resistance is difficult, and for some, impossible.

In the case of Iraq, the U.S. had already taken steps to make sure its troops were exempt from international war crimes prosecutions, and to remove international protection from those captured in its "war on terror." Officials at every level have also denied any involvement in the Abu Ghraib scandal.

"No responsible official of the Department of Defence approved any program that could conceivably have been intended to result in such abuses," said defence spokesman Larry DiRita.

However, says Allodi, who has treated torture victims since the American-backed assault on Latin America's left-wing rebels and governments in the 1970s, Washington has developed a thorough knowledge of the theory and practice of torture for decades, and has instructed both Americans and foreigners: "torture is as American as apple pie."

more
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout...


What's in a Word? Torture

•"Water-boarding." This, as we now know, does not involve water skis, but holding prisoners under water for long enough that they think they are drowning. Again, interrogators favor it because after the prisoner has coughed the water out of his lungs, it leaves no identifiable marks. Reports by human rights groups on countries including Brazil, Ethiopia and El Salvador have noted the prevalence of "simulated drowning" or "near drowning."

•"Stress positions." What is a stress position? Mike Xego, a former political prisoner in South Africa, once demonstrated one for me. He bent down and clasped his hands in front of him as if they were handcuffed, and then, using a rolled-up newspaper, showed me how apartheid-era police officers would pin his elbows behind his knees with a stick, forcing him into a permanent crouch. "You'd be passed from one hand to another. Kicked. Tipped over," he explained. "The blood stops moving. You scream and scream and scream until there is no voice."

This begs an obvious question: when the Abu Ghraib detainees were in "stress positions," were they then kicked, tipped over, rolled around like soccer balls? We do not yet know, but chances are that if the guards were told to create "favorable conditions" for interrogation, the prisoners were not lectured politely about the benefits of human rights and the rule of law that the United States is supposedly bringing to Iraq.

Granted, the torture of prisoners under Saddam Hussein was incomparably more widespread and often ended in death. The same is true in dozens of other regimes around the world. But torture is torture. It permanently scars the victim even when there are no visible marks on the body, and it leaves other scars on the lives of those who perform it and on the life of the nation that allowed and encouraged it. Those scars will be with us for a long time.

more
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/opinion/23HOCH.html?ex=1085889600&en...

US Justice Department Recommended Torture


Lawyers from the US Department of Justice reportedly recommended to President George Bush that the US did not have to obey international law during its war against terrorism; nor did it have to follow the laws concerning due process of captives.



Justice Department lawyers John Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty wrote a memo on January 9, 2002, that allegedly says that it is not necessary to fulfill Geneva Convention when dealing with the Taliban and Al Qaeda militants that were transported to Guantanamo. The Geneva Convention outlines the rules of conduct that must be followed when dealing with prisoners of war.

more
http://www.zaman.com/?bl=international&alt=&trh=20040523&hn=8847

WITHOUT SANCTUARY


Lynchers often paraded their victim down the main street, through black neighborhoods, and in front of "colored schools" that were in session.

Jesse Washington, seventeen years old, was the chief suspect in the May 8, 1916, murder of Lucy Fryer of Robinson, Texas, on whose farm he worked as a laborer. After the lynching, Washington's corpse was placed in a burlap bag and dragged around City Hall Plaza, through the main streets of Waco, and seven miles to Robinson, where a large black population resided.

His charred corpse was hung for public display in front of a blacksmith shop. The sender of this card, Joe Meyers, an oiler at the Bellmead car department and a Waco resident, marked his photo with a cross (now an ink smudge to left of victim).


This card bears the advertising stamp, "katy electric studio temple texas. h. lippe prop." inscribed in brown ink: "This is the Barbecue we had last night my picture is to the left with a cross over it your son Joe."

Repeated references to eating are found in lynching-related correspondence, such as "coon cooking," "barbecue," and "main fare."
http://www.musarium.com/withoutsanctuary/main.html

[BeFree]

19. Republican Representation

This is what we get when the pukes are allowed to represent us around the world.

First step toward changing course? Get rid of the Republicans who are to blame for the poor image America has. Impeach the sorry bastards, and replace them with Democrats.

Until that first step is accomplished, the US will stay the course for the Titantic iceberg. We can't allow * to run us down any longer. Do everything you can to change course. Let's impeach the sorry bastards!

[seemslikeadream]

20. Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

WATCH THIS VIDEO


EVERY DEATH CREATES NEW ENEMIES
MORE TERRORISTS
MORE DANGER
MORE DEATH
AND REMEMBER...
HE IS JUST GETTING STARTED...
BUSH'S PLAN FOR PEACE
IS THE PEACE OF THE COMMON GRAVE

LET AMERICA BE AMERICA AGAIN

http://www.bushflash.com/pax.html



Let America be America Again...by Langston Hughes


Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!