"Words Alter, Words Add, Words Subtract"

From "Regarding the Torture of Others," an essay that Susan Sontag wrote in response to Abu Ghraib:

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 the torture was done by individuals (i.e., ''not by everybody'') -- but whether it was systematic. Authorized. Condoned. All acts are done by individuals. 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.

[. . .]

So, then, is the real issue not the photographs themselves 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, as may be seen in 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 of black victims of lynching taken between the 1880's and 1930's, which show Americans 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.

Andrew Sullivan mocked her for her thesis, but Sontag was correct. Her aesthetic analysis especially cutting given the news that Navy Seals photographed and subsequently published photographs depicting their abuse—torture—of Iraqi detainees:

The story said the pictures appeared to show Sea Air Land force men sitting on hooded and bound detainees, holding a gun to a detainee's bloodied head, and placing a boot on a prone man's chest.

Others showed grinning personnel sitting on hooded prisoners in a pick-up.

The lawsuit, in which the plaintiffs are anonymous, says the photos were of regular special operations techniques.

It alleges that the pictures were shown on al-Jazeera, television and on anti-US billboards outside Guantanamo Bay, endangering the lives of the troops and their families.

It claims the photographs were taken from a navy wife's "personal digital photo album without notice or permission", a site she thought was password-protected.

AP said the pictures were discovered on a commercial picture-sharing site, Smugmug.com, and were not protected until after the reporter bought copies online and began making inquiries.

Astonishingly, the Seals who photographed and then published pictures of their torturing Iraqis have sued the AP for broadcasting pictures available on the Internet. Without detectable irony they claim that the AP has endangered the lives of U.S. soldiers by showing the world what U.S. soldiers have done. The purpose of the Seals' lawsuit is to censure the AP for not censoring the images—while it is they who should be imprisoned. Their weak, mitigating failure to accept responsibility for their transgressions is reflected entirely by the public debate after the revelation of the Abu Ghraib incident:

The administration's initial response was to say that the president was shocked and disgusted by the photographs -- as if the fault or horror lay in the images, not in what they depict. There was also the avoidance of the word ''torture.'' The prisoners had possibly been the objects of ''abuse,'' eventually of ''humiliation'' -- that was the most to be admitted. ''My impression is that what has been charged thus far is abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture,'' Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said at a press conference. ''And therefore I'm not going to address the 'torture' word.''

"Words add, words alter, words subtract," Sontag advises, and she was proved right. How tragic that America has proved to be such a stifling place for a thinker who swears allegiance to truth over allegiance to country.

Lindsay Beyerstein also writes about Sontag's political criticism and the cowardice of American jingoism.

Posted by Kriston at December 30, 2004 5:40 PM