Opinion

The recent developments regarding images of torture of detainees from our eight-year-old war on terror exposes an essential flaw in our approach to fighting Islamic fundamentalism.

By allowing our soldiers and intelligence agencies to use extraordinary techniques to coerce information from prisoners of war, we have tarnished America’s legacy of fairness and justice around the world.

President Obama’s reversal on plans to release thousands of images of detainees being tortured—described in the New York Times as “being worse than Abu Gharib”, is a signal that the brutality reported not only happened but was a pattern of torture, directed from the highest levels of the Bush Administration.

Fears that these latest photos would endanger troops in the field may be valid, only because they are reportedly so gruesome that many of those who have seen them fear the reaction of the moderate Arab world—who, like most normal people, would be shocked and angered by the images.

When asked about the pending release of more photos of detainee abuse, Brig. Gen. David Quantock was quoted by CNN as angrily replying to a reporter’s question about the release of the 2004 Abu Ghraib torture photos.

"It does make me angry," Quantock said. "Because I think we lost a lot of American lives because of those photos."

Whoa…Hold the phone. This is the kind of lame thinking that got us into this moral quagmire. It’s like that old saying that gun rights advocates use all the time: “Guns don’t Kill People. People kill People.”

And I am here to say that photos don’t kill people, people kill people. We supposedly are fighting two wars to bring the rule of law—not sharia law, either—to Iraq and Afghanistan, but are being guided by a double standard on human rights: one standard for Americans and another standard for everyone else.

It seems strange to me that we are still shipping 85 year-old Nazi prison guards to stand trial in the Hague, while Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and the designers of the American torture regime are walking around free.

How many people “expired” while being interrogated with these illegal techniques iremains unknown, but it has been reported that a few detainees died while being held in American custody in Iraq.

Instead of rrying to wash our hands clean of the inescapable stench of these crimes, we are acting more like the imperialist thugs (i.e. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush) who thwarted international law, destroyed the credibility of the U.S., neutered the United Nations and thumbed its nose at the International Criminal Court and the Geneva Convention.

The American Civil Liberties Union is trying to force the release of the remaining hundreds of images through a Freedom of Information Act request, but is now being blocked by President Obama, supposedly to protect American troops in the field of battle.

CNN reported that the Pentagon had initially agreed to release a "substantial" number of photographs by May 28, but is now strong-arming the President into fighting release of the images.

According to CNN, “Pentagon officials said the photographs are from more than 60 criminal investigations from 2001 to 2006 and show military personnel allegedly abusing detainees.”

This reminds me of another story. I was sitting in a bar in the East Village sometime in 2004 having a beer and a discussion with a photo editor from the New York Times. She told of having to sort through hundreds of the photos from Abu Ghraib prison prior to their publication, and how the whole situation just sickened her.

If people don’t remember, the New York Times was the first paper to publish the now infamous torture Polaroids of American soldiers behaving like savages. This nice young woman had to sort through all of them and choose the ones that were not too graphic to be published. She said it was an agonizing and painful process and that many of the most gruesome and heartless images were never published.

As I listened quietly, she described in detail how she cried after seeing them and how she had fought hard with her editors to publish more of the now infamous images. She knew it was important that the world see what Americans were doing in prosecuting the Iraq War—a supposed war of liberation, democracy and the end of the tyranny of another torturer, Saddam Hussein. The photos had a profound affect on her psyche, and not in a good way.

Everyone was shocked by the soldiers’ disregard for the essential humanness of the prisoners of war. Leading people around like animals, treating them like trophies, disrespecting their religious and cultural beliefs and even torturing some to death. This isn’t how Americans are supposed to act.

President Obama and the Pentagon fear reprisals from Islamic groups around the world who will use these photos as a recruiting tool, as proof that Americans and Western culture are degenerate and misguided or, worse, essentially evil.

"The publication of these photos would not add any additional benefit to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals," Obama was quoted as saying. "In fact, the most direct consequence of releasing them would be to further inflame anti-American opinion, and to put our troops in greater danger."

Huh? I understand the concern, but President Obama also said the photos "are not particularly sensational, especially when compared with the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib.” Something isn’t right. If they aren’t so bad, what’s the problem with releasing them?

This is why I say our approach—invading sovereign countries and bombing them into the Stone Age, won’t work. There is another battlefield which President Obama is referring. It’s the public relations war on Islamic fundamentalism in which American style secular democracy wins the hearts and souls of those who might otherwise join Al Qaeda.

These photos are the physical representation of the gap between our stated good intentions and the realities of war.

It’s our culture of freedom and justice that brings people to our shores, to escape brutal regimes—like Egypt or Saudi Arabia(our allies)-- who regularly torture, imprison and execute anyone who dares to challenge their system of justice.

It is not the photos that are outrageous. It is the actions that are so disturbing. Just because we don’t see the photos, their censorship won’t change the fact that Americans were breaking multiple international treaties and laws by using extraordinary rendition, waterboarding, sexual humiliation and other techniques that Pentagon officials, the C.I.A. and the Justice Department knew were illegal under international law.

How did we become a society of people who chooses to ignore the evidence of our collective brutality and dehumanization? More than 60 American soldiers have committed suicide this year, and the country hardly blinks. Pentagon officials are wondering why soldier suicdes are happening at record rates among the brave men and women who are being asked to serve multiple tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Why? Maybe it’s because they are being asked to do things that they know are morally reprehensible. Maybe its because war and torture victimize all who find themselves involved in it: the brutalized and the brutalizers.