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Friday, May 07, 2004

My Turn...

4:34 AM

As surely you have noticed over the past few days, my mind, heart and soul has been strangely gripped by the abuse under the Color of Authority perpetrated by American soldiers at the infamous prison named Abu Ghraib. The question is why? But then just me asking that question is strange, and arrogant. Millions of people around the world have been gripped in the worst ways by the Abu Ghraib atrocities. Why are mine any different?

Mostly I think it is because it�s my business, it is my territory, if you will. No, not Iraq; prisons, prisoners, jailers, crime and punishment, man�s inhumanity to man is my business. I should say �was,� because a couple of years ago I quit that business. I had lost a large part of my time and my life by spending too much time getting into the heads of murderers and violent criminals for almost two decades. It cost me a family; it cost me friends; it cost me financially when my findings were too true for too many who wish not to know truth other than that which they already believe.

It�s a young man�s business anyway, and I had a very good run for a very long time. I am not bitter or unhappy about going back to the things I loved most when I first started writing: fiction, political commentary and teaching.

Yet I again feel that passion of old tugging at me hard over the ugly, perverse revelations of our turn at running the most infamous prison of contemporary times. And the perverse part is what is gnawing at me. That is the conundrum here. That is the thing that everyone is not talking about. Even though the words and pictures the commentators and journalists are using are of course sexually perverse, everyone is missing the point and it is as big as the elephant in the living room. Perhaps that is why. The perversity cannot be seen through the pervasive perversity of the pictures.

Folks, torture and abuse under the Color of Authority I know well. When the state prisons in California were murder pits only a couple of years ago�you remember Corcoran State Prison�I was there, I was involved. I was also at California state prisons that did not make the news because they were stuck so far out in the desert most of my colleagues in the media didn�t even know how to find them, and the sport killings and arranged death-fights flourished under the scorching sun but not the light of exposure, although I tried. Mostly though I was trying to keep an inmate or two that I was close to alive, so that other crimes could be solved and injustices exposed.

I know and understand unwarranted violence in all of its manifestations; I hate it, I do not excuse or condone it, but I understand where it comes from. I have spent a lifetime studying it; and there were times in my life when violence was an occasional reality in my life because of the bigotry and baseness that lurks deep in the belly of most humans. And there lies the terrible quandary of Abu Ghraib. Since the seeds of unwarranted violence upon living flesh lies in the center of us all, waiting to come out under all of the wrong conditions, I no longer puzzle over its sudden appearance in otherwise mundane lives. And I certainly do not puzzle over it when it comes out of the state of institutionalized violence such as war, or even civilian riots.

What I am utterly amazed over, what I have never seen, what I have never even heard of, is the systemic use of deviant sexual behavior as a device of prisoner control or manipulation. Yes, prisons in America are rampant with sexual abuse�inmate rape upon inmate is a routine part of prison life. Occasionally sex will occur between correctional officers and individual prisoners.

And, yes, dehumanization is systemic in American prisons. It starts from the very beginning, and it does usually start with nakedness and body searches and communal showers under the glare of guards who soon direct you to a laundry stack and a prison �uniform� becomes your attire for years. All of this is done with the purpose of breaking your will to resist. You are meant to feel powerless, vulnerable, under dominion.

But where did this insanity at Abu Ghraib come from? The whole thing was about sexual perversion. It was calculated. American soldiers, from a country and an Army that is still embroiled in its acceptance of homosexuality, force detainees to commit or simulate homosexual behavior for the purpose of being filmed? Where did the idea even come from?

When I say it is unprecedented, folks, I mean it. Yes, there were certainly instances of sexual depravity, even at times on a relatively large scale, in the Nazi death camps. But it was for sexual gratification of sadists and sexual predators. It was not part of the �Final Solution.� Extermination was.

From everything we have seen, homosexual contact, or the appearance of it, was THE plan at Abu Ghraib. Emotional extortion apparently was part of the plan also. Knowing there were photographs of them in poses of naked humiliation was obviously thought to be a mechanism of both intimidation and control over the detainees. Intimidation to make them talk in the off-chance they knew something about the insurgency; and control over what they would say when they were eventually freed, as almost all of these detainees would be, since they were not hardened insurgents or they would have been handled entirely differently.

There can be no doubt then that these soldiers were instructed to do what they did by intelligence operatives who knew the stigma attached to such behavior in the Muslim world. Okay, so now we understand that there was a �military plan� behind the nightmare.

But that nightmare is beyond our ability to endure as a leader of civilized nations. With all of this not just an aberration by a few �sick� reservists, it must be pinned to where it belongs: Upon us as a nation. A hard cure with bitter medicine? Absolutely. But the sooner we accept it, take the medicine, clean up the vomit of our sickness, the sooner we can go about making the enormous amends we owe to the world.

No, you nor I nor your neighbors had anything to do with it. But men and women we sent over to Iraq in our name did. And we also sent over in our name the men and women who gave the instructions. And we also empowered the leaders of our nation who set a tone of cultural bigotry that ensured such ugliness would be used against the �enemies� of a �Christian� nation.

Most of the talk has been about what heightened retribution will be taken upon our troops in the months ahead because of what happened at Abu Ghraib. And I am sure there is reason for this concern. American soldiers may very well die in greater numbers because of Abu Ghraib. This pains me greatly.

I am, however, much more troubled by what this will mean to the death of the American ideal�for those who still look to us for moral leadership in this terribly unsettled world, but just as much for what the death of the American ideal will mean to you and me and those who will follow us.

4:34 AM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

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