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Saturday, February 18, 2006

The lady doth explain too much, methinks

"The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Salon, the only major publication I can think of offhand that periodically leads with Editor's Notes, has another one today all about their decision to run part of a batch of new and--quel shock!--disturbing photos of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison. Salon's own activist editorial policy is probably the main reason they always seem to be publicly examining (and inevitably ratifying) this or that editorial decision. I'm suspicious when people spend a lot of time explaining why they are credible. Typically, Salon's examinations illuminate so much of the motivation behind what could easily be taken for sound news judgments that they reinforce my worst impressions of Salon. (Impressions that make this classic parody all the more hilarious.)

Really, if you want to print the new photos, just print them. It seems like the right thing to do and one that requires no explanation. It's not like there are thousands of other photos already in the public domain so that publishing this batch just represents piling on.

A few things that got my attention:
  • "[A]s Americans we are directly complicit in the violence that took place at a prison run by the American military."

    Sorry, I totally, categorically reject this argument. The level of my complicity is exactly zero. Correction: I guess someone living in Bolivia has zero complicity, and that's less than I have as a U.S. citizen. So let's say my complicity is .000000000001--I can live with that. The Abu Ghraib abuses should never have happened, but that doesn't mean random unconnected individuals are complicit in them.

  • "[T]he point is not merely that Americans tortured these prisoners in our custody; the point is that our military personnel went to such great lengths to capture the humiliation on camera."

    Isn't it actually reassuring that this happened? Doesn't it suggest either that (a) there was no grand high-level policy or conspiracy to abuse all these detainees and get away with it or (b) some of the photos were taken by observers of conscience with a view to revealing the abuse? I think (a) is more likely. It makes me think this was just a group of dumb criminals, poorly trained and negligently supervised.

  • "As Federal District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein wrote in a decision in favor of the ACLU and CCR suit, rejecting administration arguments that the images would inflame terrorists: 'Terrorists do not need pretexts for their barbarism.'"

    I note that the exact same argument can be made to absolve higher-ups of responsibility for what happened late at night in Abu Ghraib. Do we think Charles Graner needed any kind of pretext, or would have been restrained by better memos from Gen. Sanchez or a less flippant Secretary Rumsfeld?
There are many lessons to be learned from Abu Ghraib, none more basic than Huck Finn's observation that "human beings CAN be awful cruel to one another." From time to time we forget that the dear United States produces such human beings in plentiful numbers. The occasional sordid episode reminds us that American exceptionality is still a myth.

A real scoop for Salon would not be publishing more photographs of sordid episodes we already know happened. It would be reporting that demonstrated--beyond repeating mantras about a secretive administration, etc.--that any of the abuses at Abu Ghraib was an intended consequence of any government or military policy, instead of the work of criminals and, to use the Pope's term, filth in the ranks.


posted at 1:30 PM

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