Please read this

[leafofgrass]

With certain exceptions, I have noticed that most of us have been quite silent on the current political situation, make that turmoil, in Iraq. I am specifically referring to the, dare I say it?, torture of Iraqi prisoners. After reading this article in the Times magazine, I am compelled to open up at least a smal public forum for the discussion of

Comments

[liquidentropy]

i have been keeping a journal for my writing class that deals with the visual image and the written word. i cannot share the page in it's entirety, but i can share what i wrote in it. and i can tell you that i do not write from the perspective that i am better than anyone else, nor that i am worse. my writing begins with a clipping from a local newspaper quoting rumsfeld

[madamebovary]

I'll read the articles when i'm less tired. After seeing the photos, and actually watching the beheading online (unedited mind you...it came closest to making me puke than any other image i've seen), I have practically relinquished all faith in humanity. It severely depressed me. Thinking about it depresses me still. Mostly when i think about how there doesn't seem to be any kind of end to violence, world violence, and autrocities around the globe no matter how hard anyone tries. Again, i'll be reading the article tomorrow when i wake up.

[29usc151]

Bryan:

Well, you're certainly right that we, as a society, should be sharing in some sort of collective guilt for these actions. When I looked yesterday at the articles in the Times, I purposefully decided not to read this one - I just don't usually take anything new away from what is becoming preaching to the converted. Our society is becoming increasingly polarized along political lines. If you're like us, you view American actions overseas as negative and find the country in a moral quandary. If you're on the other side of the fence/aisle/what-have-you, you might view the USA as still having the moral high-ground as we install democracy - hey, embarrassing, even torturing, these guys isn't as bad as them killing our troops. from the article:

Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, a Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, before which Secretary Rumsfeld testified, avowed that he was sure he was not the only member of the committee ''more outraged by the outrage'' over the photographs than by what the photographs

[livingfossil]

Not so sure I feel guilt so much as anger, sort of a righteous "not in my name sort." Because, it's not with my consent that these acts are done, though they certainly are/will be perceived as general american wretchedness. I cannot escape a small feeling of guilt... which I've turned to anger because I greeted it with an a feeling of unchangeable powerlessness to change the things that make such acts possible. Rather than display shame, I'd work to remedy the situation.

Of course, cynical as I am, I don't think such remedy to be possible. Still, the idea that people like Inhofe can make statements expressing 'outrage' over 'outrage' and not be fucking destroyed by the media irritates me. Greatly.

I hope, somewhere in the back of my mind, that the national reaction to the 'situation' in Iraq will shock 'the people' into desiring 'involvement' in 'public life' that is something more than discussing American Idol with colleagues. But, whatever. That's unlikely