AMERICAN ABU GHRAIB ATROCITIES IN CONTEXT

From the New York Times courtesy of Eschaton:

Mistreatment of Prisoners Is Called Routine in U.S.

Physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, similar to what has been uncovered in Iraq, takes place in American prisons with little public knowledge or concern, according to corrections officials, inmates and human rights advocates.

In Pennsylvania and some other states, inmates are routinely stripped in front of other inmates before being moved to a new prison or a new unit within their prison. In Arizona, male inmates at the Maricopa County jail in Phoenix are made to wear women's pink underwear as a form of humiliation.

At Virginia's Wallens Ridge maximum security prison, new inmates have reported being forced to wear black hoods, in theory to keep them from spitting on guards, and said they were often beaten and cursed at by guards and made to crawl.

The corrections experts say that some of the worst abuses have occurred in Texas, whose prisons were under a federal consent decree during much of the time President Bush was governor because of crowding and violence by guards against inmates. Judge William Wayne Justice of Federal District Court imposed the decree after finding that guards were allowing inmate gang leaders to buy and sell other inmates as slaves for sex.

The experts also point out that the man who directed the reopening of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last year and trained the guards there resigned under pressure as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an inmate died while shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suffered from schizophrenia, was kept naked the whole time.

Click here for the rest.

Our prisons are so terrible that I am deeply troubled by the prospect of serving on a jury for a criminal case: I essentially refuse to do it; I will not take any personal responsibility for sending even the guilty into such hellholes. When one considers how awfully we treat our own citizens in American prisons, how can anybody be surprised by the abuses at Abu Ghraib?

From the Houston Chronicle’s political writer, Cragg Hines:

Ghastly evil, but not all that unexpected

Professionals in anthropology, psychology and sociology have spent the last few days thinking about confirmation of patterns of known behavior, not wondering at the unfolding of increasingly grisly developments. Some have been amazed at the denial manifest in U.S. public reaction.

"What's wonderful is the naiveté," said Philip G. Zimbardo, a Stanford University psychologist. "But there's a point at which you have to lift the veil."

In 1971, Zimbardo ran a classic experiment designed to simulate prison life. Student volunteers were divided into "prisoners" and "guards." So quickly did the "guards" become sadistic and the "prisoners" dangerously depressed that the two-week project was ended after only six days.

Lorna Rhodes, an anthropologist at the University of Washington, said Zimbardo's work showed how quickly an incarceration situation can deteriorate, how easily guards, without proper training or supervision or, worse, with instigation from superiors, can become "a dog on a chain."

Click here for the rest.

There is nothing about Americans, our culture, our national character, that makes us immune to basic psychology: master/slave relationships are fraught with danger, and our authoritarian schools and “get tough on crime” attitudes simply make us more accepting of the unacceptable. One might even go so far as to say that American culture makes such atrocities more likely, not less.

One of my favorite science fiction writers, David Gerrold, drives this point home in a recent prophetic essay from early April, well before the Abu Ghraib scandal broke:

Godwin’s Law

What has happened is the elevation of Hitler and the Nazis. We have inadvertently appointed them as examples of extreme evil, so monstrous and so inhumane that they are forever alienated from the experience of the rest of the species. And by doing that, we deny ourselves the much more useful opportunity to recognize the much more horrific truth -- that there is a little Nazi in each and every one of us; it's that reptilian core of being that exists with dispassionate selfishness inside every creature that has climbed up the evolutionary ladder.

By denying that the Nazis were human, by setting them outside the definition of humanity, we deny ourselves the opportunity to recognize that the natural human tendency to define others as enemies, as vermin, as untermenschen, as kikes and niggers and ragheads and homos -- that's the root of evil, the alienization, the distinguishing of others as outsiders. Once we make the distinction that they are not us, it is okay for us to do things to them. As Solomon Short once said, "Those who divide us into us and them, automatically become them." When we classify the Nazis as demonic, we become Nazis ourselves. Why? Because when we deny the humanity of those who became Nazis, we blind ourselves to our own potential ability to commit evil acts, and thereby make such acts inevitable.

But of course, you say, the Nazi comparison is inappropriate, because after all, after all is said and done, we know we're not evil. We're the good guys. Why are we the good guys? Because we say we're the good guys. Because God is on our side. Because we're Christians. Because Christ died for us, so we're redeemed. Blah blah blah. We pile the bullshit higher and higher. And that's how we justify the acts we commit that we would call evil if the bad guys did them.

Click here for the rest (and scroll down about a third of the way to find the essay).

Dare I invoke the corollary to Godwin’s Law (described by Gerrold as "He who mentions Hitler first loses the argument.")? Sure, what the hell: the more info that comes out about Abu Ghraib, the more I’m reminded of pre “final solution” treatment of Jews by the Nazis—Jews were beaten, humiliated, and murdered in the streets by brownshirt thugs. Is the behavior of American soldiers any better than this? The obvious answer is no.

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