Real Eyes Realize Real Lies

I wanted to say a little something about the recent conviction of Charles Graner for the prison abuse "scandal" at Abu Ghraib last spring. http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/01/16/graner.court.martial/index.html

It may seem to those of us that with this conviction, some justice has been done. Someone has paid the price, locked up for 10 years, held responsible for his actions. At first, thats what i felt.....Remembering back last spring when I saw the first images of the prison abuse. It was at that I became convinced of the raw terror and evil of this war, and the chaotic, irrational, inhumane nature of imperialism. It happened, politicians cried out, investigations were carried out, etc etc...

Now a few men have been tried before the "law"

Really, this is not enough. Really, this is far far far from enough. Graner is a fall man...a scapegoat...a perfectly convenient figure on which responsibility and liability can be pinned without indicting anone or anything higher than him. It was a messy situation, but some people must be pretty happy that it has recieved closure in such a convenient, low-key, quick and painless way. One man goes to prison, and no one continues to raise questions about what is really behind the kinds of things that went on in that prison (and in prisons and occupied lands all across history and the globe)

What I am saying is, we have been fooled into thinking there has been any kind of meaningful accountabilty for the crimes committed. Are we to believe that this was an isolated incident? Are we to believe that it is the pathology of only a few individuals that lead to atrocities in times of war?

Society at large gave moral sanction to the lynching of blacks in the south, the erradication of Indigenous peoples from their lands, the murder of women and children in the Phillippines, Vietnam, Hiroshima, and indirectly in El Salvador, Guatemala and Argentina.....
if by nothing else than apathy, turning a blind eye and failing to call into question the underlying assumtions about power, difference, violence, sexism, racism.
It is no different in Iraq. Many did expres moral outrage at the events of Abu Ghraib. Now, with the conviction of Graner, we are meant to believe that justice has been done and things have been made right

I say No

I say that as long as the United States military is an instrument of global capitalist expansion/domination, reactionary political suppression, and the exertion of masculinized, racialized American power over people and nations of different colors and different languages---abuses such a Abu Ghraib will be a normal part of American actions overseas
Are we to believe that the prison abuses took place in a vacuum? What is the sexual and racial pathology that gave birth to those soldier's ability/desire to do those things?

Look at prisons here in the United States. Rape is a prominent means of exerting power and control both among prisoners and guards. A high percentage of female prisoners report having been sexually abused by male prison guards. Look at the streets of the inner cities. Police brutality is another way the STATE maintains control and sends the same message as the prison guards, the military, the POWERS THAT BE: "If you are black/red/brown/yellow you are SHIT and we will end you if you dont shut your mouth and go along with our game"
It is all about power. But power is sexual. Power is racial. Power is economic. Power is not just some abstract word, it is action-- carried out by individual people in specific places in specific cultural and historical contexts. Power is a billboard ad for Hennesy, showing a half-naked slender woman folded up inside a wine glass- "Female sexuality is an item to be consumed, only useful for the fulfillment of pleasure euphoric feelings. And only White, slender female sexuality is the standard"
Power is the 210 freeway bieng built between the high-end shopping disctrict of Old Town Pasadena and the working class immigrant neighborhood to the north "We dont really want those people to be around to tarnish the image of our middle-class consumerist utopia. Too ethnic, too poor, too criminal"

it goes on and on

when i first heard about the abuses at Abu Gharib, I was horrified, but not surprised. In a sense, I was wondering when something like that would come out, not if. This is war. WAR, plain and simple. Not an 'operation' not an 'experiment in democracy' not 'homeland security' not an 'involvement' It is a war. It is the exertion of power by the use of violence. The ability of the military powers to justify the bombing of civilian areas and 'shoot anything that moves' is the same thing to me as the soldiers' ability to force Iraqi prisoners to perform sexual acts in front of a camera. How can we be surprised by Abu Ghraib's DEHUMANIZATION when everything else that is going on in Iraq, indeed in every war, is dehumanization? The Iraqi people are not HUMAN to us. They are less than uman. This is what allows people to kill without thinking. To justify genocide and atrocity. If we really saw them as equal, worthy partners-- men and women just like you and me-- capable of making their own decisions and worthy of our attention, humility and generosity-- would we be fighting this war right now, or would we be doing something else-something better?

To me, the conviction of a few soldiers does not mean justice. They are scapegoats, effigies that can be held up by people more powerful while we shoot at them, all the while the hands that hold them up remain unscathed. Lets not fall for it. Of course those men are guilty, and probably deserve judgement. But let us not ignore the larger guilt, the wider responsibilty of our generation.....maybe even a guilt that we would be implicated in