Globalizing Abu Ghraib:
Four Meditations on Rhetoric and Violence in An Age of Empire
On January 29, 2002
President Bush delivered
the
State of the Union Address
to 52 million furious Americans
and a roiling chamber of
flag-pinned
patriots
thundering wave after
wave of boisterous applause
in an imperial Capitol
where
mourning became vengeance
so quickly that just sixteen days
following the horrors of
9/11
a
CIA paramilitary team
landed in Afghanistan
where trunks of crisp $100
bills bought allies
who
before the capture of Kunduz on 25 November
allowed Bin Laden to slip over the
border
in the massive Pakistani
airlift
where
Musharraf saved his rotten regime
by rescuing hundreds—perhaps
thousands—
of Pakistani Army men and
Inter-Service
Intelligence operatives
supposedly our allies
who had been fighting
shoulder-to-shoulder
with the Taliban
the hunt for Bin Laden was
thus already lost
the
War on Terrorism already botched
when the president boldly proposed
a Brave New World
of
endless wars
of nameless foes
of
perpetual violence[1]
* * *
While Rummyıs ham-handed
war
enabled Bin Laden
to slither away from capture
the president warned that
night that
rogue
states and their terrorist allies
constitute an axis of evil
planting thousands of dangerous
killers
. . . throughout the world
like ticking time bombs
the president then pledged
to
eliminate the terrorist parasites
thus turning inanimate bomb-like
terrorists
into a teeming pool of
sub-human leeches
threatened
with yet another of the presidentıs
open-ended death sentences[2]
the nationıs most practiced
executioner
was
globalizing the death penalty
reminding the world American justice
has progressed little since
1839
when Sarah Grimké walked down
a steamy red clay back road
in
the slave South to stumble upon
a human head stuck up on a high pole. . .
a runaway slave . . . had been shot there
his
head severed from his body
and put upon the public highway
as a terror to deter slaves from running
away [3]
2. Abu Ghraib & The Imperial Gulag
Two-and-a-half years after
the U.S.
lost
Bin Laden and his henchmen
in the drug infested hills of
Afghanistan
David Brooks wailed in his
weekly sermon
as
the New York Timesı favorite conservative
that the civilized world was under
assault
by a cult of death that thrives on
the
sheer pleasure of killing and dying
Itıs about massacring people
Itıs about experiencing
the total freedom
of
barbarism. . . Itıs about the joy
of sadism and suicide [4]
while Brooks was responding
to
another terrorist strike
on the southern fringe of Russia
his words best describe
the
grinning thugs
of Abu Ghraib prison
we first saw the images
in
the spring of 2004
of dogs attacking prisoners
men raping women
men
raping men
parades
of naked bloodied bodies
hooded
prisoners jacking off in front of guards
beatings
of every form
post-beating
gloatings
—high
fives all around![5]
two months before the images
were
leaked to the press
Major General Antonio Taguba
reported that U.S. troops
intelligence
officers
and private contractors
had been reveling in sadistic
blatant
and wanton criminal abuses
one perpetrator described long nights
of
gratuitous and random
violence
marked by
twisted
joviality
So now Mr. Brooks
who revels in the joy of sadism?[6]
Salah Edine Sallat responded
by painting
a
heart-breaking mural on another
crumbling wall in Sadr City, Baghadad
on the right side of the
painting
we
see a torture victim
standing hooded on a box
waiting to be electrocuted
by
wires attached to
his hands and penis
the
pose is a standard torture
device
called the Vietnam
by intelligence
personnel [7]
the wires trace across the
wall
to
the left side of the painting
where our beloved Lady
Liberty is debased
in
the cowardly costume
of the Ku Klux Klan
a book of laws in one hand
she
reaches with the other
to throw the switch on a fuse box
suggesting the U.S. is a
Klansman
justice
is blind
torture our way of life[8]
* * *
are damaged working class
thugs
who learned the craft of
torture
in
our local lockups and pens
Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick
II—nicknamed Chip—
one
of the ring-leaders of the abuse
worked six years as a prison guard in
Virginia
Lane McCotter an independent
contractor
brought
to Abu Ghraib a trail of human rights abuses
tracing back to the Utah Department of
Corrections
Army Specialist Charles
Graner Jr.
the
grinning gloved strongman
in the infamous naked pyramid scene
was an abusive guard
in
a county jail and state prison
in
the rolling hills of Pennsylvania
John Armstrong another Abu
Ghraib contractor
led
the Connecticut Department of Corrections
when it was hit in 2003 with a lawsuit
about wrongful deaths
Terry Stewart and Chuck Ryan
prison
consultants in Iraq
were implicated in abuse scandals
while running Arizona
prisons
where
their disciplinary practices
were described as absolute
brutality [10]
rather than renegade rotten
soldiers
in the name of great
decency
and unselfish courage[11]
these
prison-industrial-complex castaways
these happy champions of torture
are the product of colonial
outsourcing
globalization
in the worst
most violent sense of the word
for this hidden global
internment network
stretches
from Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay
to military bases in Afghanistan
to dungeons in Morocco
to jails in Syria
to
prisons in Egypt
to
detention centers in Azerbaijan
to
holding pens in Thailand
to
interrogation rooms in Qatar
to
unmarked cells in Saudi Arabia
to
unnamed Soviet-era compounds
dispersed
across several
Eastern
European democracies
the tortures at Abu Ghraib
thus point toward
an
imperial archipelago of prison camps
where the innocent are tortured
in
the name of democracy[12]
3.
The Brave New World of Managed Information Dissemination
In 1945
Theodor Adorno was yet again disappointed
his
émigré neighbors in L.A. were succumbing
to the decadent
pleasures of West Coast life
juiced with
cocktails weed designer drugs
grapefruits
the size of basketballs
drenched in the
indiscriminate California
sun setting
now in mesmerizing glory
as
schools of dolphins skim the waves
pelicans glide
like dinosaurs
with
unlucky fish writhing all the way
down
their bucket-like gullets
water trailing
from their immense wings
spraying
the surfers waiting for rides
while
trading war stories
God Damn itıs
good to be home
while
California glided toward
the
New World sublime
Adornoıs beloved
Europe sank
into
starvation-fueled food riots
post-Nazi
bloodletting
and the early
necessary stages of amnesia
where taste
would be smashed by capital
high
art overrun by banality
truth chewed up
by the culture industry
and so he
wrote that
things
have come to pass
where lying
sounds like truth
truth
like lying. . . .
The
confounding of truth and lies
making it almost
impossible
to
maintain a distinction . . .
[marks]
the conversion of all questions
of truth into questions
of power [13]
Sixty years
later Adorno was surely rolling in his grave
when
the Defense Science Board released its
Task Force Report
on Strategic Communication
a stunning
rebuke to the Bush administration
portraying
the War on Terrorism
as a deadly
fiasco
the DSB
nonetheless proposed
to
right the sinking ship of state
via the better
manipulation of
strategic
communication employed
to
shape context and build relationships
that enhance the
achievement
of
political economic and military objectives
thus
mobiliz[ing] publics in support
of major policy
initiatives
this Brave
New World of imperial propaganda
will
be run by a whiz-bang
Office of
Strategic Influence
producing tactical
influence efforts and
broader
influence efforts like Public Diplomacy
and managed
information dissemination [14]
and so as Teddy knew it
would
the
production of lying
that sounds like truth
has become government policy
wrapped
now
in the democracy-destroying
flag
of anti-terrorism
4. The Topography of Empire
released one year following 9/11
the
National Security Strategy of the United States
also known as the Bush Doctrine
claims the twentieth century
closed
with
a decisive victory for the forces of freedom
—and a single model of national
success:
freedom, democracy, and
free enterprise. . . .
these
values of freedom are right and true
for every person, in every society
the Bush Doctrine thus
proposes
to
Americanize the world
bringing our crazy chaos
to every corner of the
world
for
U.S. norms are right and true
for all people everywhere [15]
thatıs all people
everywhere
every
person
in
every society
in
every corner of the world
thatıs more than 5 billion
beings
inhabiting
almost 200 countries
speaking innumerable languages[16]
praying to infinite Gods
all
apparently waiting to be saved
by my bumbling murderous president
and so my beloved America
gallops
toward empire
building a world of Abu Ghraibs
where torture is cheered
where
fantasies replace facts
where obliterating innocents is good
sport
where the best hopes of free
men and women
are
dragged through the dirt
in the name of peace of justice
--Stephan Hartman
[1]. 52 million and first
quotation from Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 2004), 92 and 6, and see 85-92 on the internal White House debates
preceding the ³axis of evil² speech; for a counter-history of the invasion of
Afghanistan, see Seymour Hersh, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu
Ghraib (New
York: HarperCollins, 2004), 121-161, quotation from 130; on the relationship
between the Northern Alliance and drugs, see Peter Dale Scott, Drugs, Oil,
and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina (New York: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2003); Christian Parenti, ³Who Rules Afghanistan?² The Nation (15 November 2004): 13-18;
and Carlotta Gall, ³Afghan Poppy Growing Reaches Record Level, U.N. Says,² New
York Times
(19 November 2004): A3.
[2]. President Bush, ³State of the Union Address² (29 January 2002)—this and all other presidential sources are available from the White House at www.whitehouse.gov; for further analysis of President Bushıs imperials speeches, see Stephen John Hartnett and Laura Ann Stengrim, Globalization and Empire: The U.S. Invasion of Iraq, Free Markets, and The Twilight of Democracy (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006), esp. chapters 1 and 2; for comments on the political work of the term ³evil,² see Robert Hariman, ³Speaking of Evil,² and James McDaniel, ³Figures of Evil: A Triad of Rhetorical Strategies for Theo Politics,² both in Rhetoric & Public Affairs 6:3 (Fall 2003): 511-517 and 539-550
[3].
See Grimkéıs comments in American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of A
Thousand Witnesses, ed.
Theodore D. Weld (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839), 23; in an
especially gross version of this post-execution production of terror, the body
of the dead slave named Mark was hung in iron chains in the commons of
Charlestown, Massachusetts, for three years, from 1775-1778 (see Thomas McDade,
The Annals of Murder: A Bibliography of Books and Pamphlets on American
Murders from Colonial Times to 1900
[Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961], xxxiii); on the uses of gibbeting
to fight pirates, the eighteenth centuryıs version of terrorists, see Peter
Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves,
Commoners, and The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000).
[4]. David Brooks, ³The Cult of Death,² New
York Times (7 September 2004): A27; Brooksıs stunning inability to distinguish
between the national liberationist violence of the Chechen rebels and the
international jihadist violence of Bin Laden is but one mark of the rightıs
convenient collapsing of all forms of violence into supposedly U.S.-threatening
terrorism (for a critique of this maneuver see Michael Mann, Incoherent
Empire [London: Verso, 2003], 159-193).
[5].
The images described here have been distributed widely on the web; some
were first printed in The New Yorker (10 May 2004), 42-43,
others in the New York Times (7 May 2004), A11; many more are available
online via the Washington Post;
and read the graphic textual descriptions in Seymour Hersh, ³Chain
of Command,² The New Yorker (17 May 2004): 37-43; also see James
Risen and David Johnston, ³Photos of Dead Show the Horrors of Abuse,² New
York Times (7 May 2004), A11; for an introduction to the scandal see
Mark Danner, ³Torture and Truth,² New York Review of Books (10 June
2004): 46-50.
[6].
Major General Antonio Taguba, Article 15-6: Investigation of the 800th
Military Police Brigade (the Taguba Report, as printed in Mark Danner,
Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror [New
York: New York Review Books, 2004], 279-328 in full, quotation from 326,
Tagubaıs list of abuses on 292-293); for analysis of the Taguba report see
Seymour Hersh, ³Torture at Abu Ghraib,² The New Yorker (10
May 2004), 42-47, and ³Excerpts from Prison Inquiry,² Los Angeles Times
(3 May 2004), A8; for additional documentation of these abuses, see George
R. Fay, AR 15-6: Investigation of the Abu Ghraib Detention Facility and
205th Military Intelligence Brigade (August 2004, downloaded from www.findlaw.com), 68-95; ³twisted joviality²
from Kate Zernike, ³Accused Soldier Paints Scene of Eager Mayhem,² New
York Times (14 May 2004): A1, 10.
[7]. ³The
Vietnam² from John Barry, Michael Hirsh, and Michael Isikoff, ³The Roots
of Torture,² Newsweek, accessed at www.msnbc.com
on 19 May 2004; and see Josh White and Scott Higham, ³Sergeant Says Intelligence
Directed Abuse,² Washington Post (20 May 2004): A1; on the larger
implications of the ³Vietnam,² see Susan Sontag, ³Regarding the Torture
of Others,² New York Times Magazine (23 May 2004): 24-29, 42; Bonnie
Kerness, ³This is the America We Know,² The Vision (the publication
of the American Friends Service Committeeıs Criminal Justice Program) (Summer
2004): 2; and the cover of the The New Yorker (18 October
2004), where the image is inscribed lightly over a U.S. flag, hence showing
how Abu Ghraib casts a shadow over the U.S.
[8]. Salah Edine Sallatıs mural is reproduced in
Mark Danner, ³The Logic of Torture,² New York Review of Books (24
June 2004): 70-74, image on 70, and in Lisa Hajjar, ³Our Heart of Darkness,²
Amnesty Now (the publication of Amnesty International, Summer 2004):
4-7, 15, image on 7.
[9].
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Report on the Treatment
by the Coalition Forces of Prisoners of War and Other Protected Persons
by the Geneva Conventions in Iraq during Arrest, Internment and Interrogation
(Geneva: ICRC, November 2004), page 8 of the printout downloaded from the
Guardian; James R. Schlesinger, Chair, Final Report of the Independent
Panel to Review DOD Detention Operations (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense, August
2004), 61, 29; for analyses of the Schlesinger Report, see Eric Schmitt,
³Rules on Inmates Need Overhaul, Abuse Panel Says,² New York Times
(25 August 2004): A1, 10, and Mark Danner, ³Abu Ghraib: The Hidden Story,²
New York Review of Books (7 October 2004): 44-50; for further evidence
of the innocence of many of the Iraqi prisoners, consider the fact that
U.S. forces have begun emptying Abu Ghraib, releasing 624 wrongfully arrested
Iraqis on 28 May 2004 alone (see Christine Hauser, ³To Frenzied Scenes,
Abu Ghraib Frees 624 Prisoners,² New York Times [29 May 2004]: A8);
for a grueling account of how the disappearance squads whisked innocents
into months of torture, see Luke Harding, ³After Abu Ghraib,² Guardian (22 September 2004), where he recounts the story of Huda Alazawi,
one of the first Iraqi women to discuss her treatment in Abu Ghraib.
[10]. Information on Frederick from Hersh, ³Torture
at Abu Ghraib,² and Edward Wong, ³Sergeant is Sentenced to 8 Years in Abuse
Case,² New York Times (22 October 2004): A8; McCotter information
from Dan Frosch, ³Exporting Americaıs Prison Problems,² The Nation (12 May 2004); on Granerıs prison experience see David Finkel
and Christian Davenport, ³Records Paint Dark Picture of Guard,² Washington
Post (5 June 2004): A1,
and Naomi Klein, ³Children of Bushıs America,² Guardian (18 May 2004):
21; on Armstrong, Stewart, and Ryan see Dan Frosch, ³Uncle Sam Wants You
Anyway,² posted to Alternet on 24 May 2004 (the attributed quotation
is from a report by the American Friends Service Committee, cited herein).
For damning
reports on abuses in U.S. prisons see American Civil Liberties Union, Human
Rights Violations in the United States
(Washington, D.C.: ACLU, 1993); The Coalition Against Indiana Control Units, Human
Rights Violations and Torture on the Rise at The Maximum Control Complex at
Westville (Chicago: CAICU,
1994); Bruce Porter, ³Is Solitary Confinement Driving Charlie Chase Crazy?² New
York Times Magazine (8
November 1998): 55-56: Page Bierma, ³Torture Behind Bars,² The Progressive (July 1994), 21-27; Rick Bragg, ³Prison
Chief Encouraged Brutality, Witnesses Report,² New York Times (1 July 1997), A12; Bob Herbert, ³Brutality
Behind Bars,² New York Times
(7 July 1997), A17; Pamela Podger, ³Lawmakers Demand End to Abuse of Inmates at
Prisons,² San Francisco Chronicle
(22 October 1998), A20; Mark Arax and Mark Gladstone, ³State Thwarted Brutality
Probe at Corcoran, Investigation Says,² Los Angeles Times (5 July 1998); and Corey Weinstein,
³Brutality at Corcoran,² California Prison Focus (Winter 1997): 4—these reports are
central to the arguments in Stephen Hartnett, Incarceration Nation:
Investigative Prison Poems of Hope and Terror (Walnut Creek: AltaMira, 2003).
On the
prison-industrial-complex more generally, see Nils Christie, Crime Control
as Industry: Towards Gulags, Western Style, Second Edition (London: Routledge, 1994), 112; Joel Dyer, The
Perpetual Prisoner Machine: How America Profits From Crime (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2000); and Invisible
Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment, eds. Marc Mauer and Meda Chesney-Lind (New
York: New Press, 2002).
[11]. ³Rotten soldiers² was the excuse given by Zhi Hamby, director of administration for the National Military Intelligence Association, as quoted in Ann Scott Tyson, ³Lessons from Abu Ghraib,² Christian Science Monitor (5 May 2004); ³decency² quotation from President Bush, ³Remarks by the President to the American Conservative Union 40th Anniversary Gala² (13 May 2004); for other attempts to shift responsibility from the White House to ³rotten soldiers,² see Maura Reynolds, ³Some Republicans Vent Outrage at the Outrageı,² Los Angeles Times (12 May 2004), A8; William Safire, ³Hold Fast, Idealists,² New York Times (12 May 2004): A23; and Donald Rumsfeldıs testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, printed as ³My Deepest Apologyı from Rumsfeld,² New York Times (8 May 2004): A6; for attempts to counter such myth-making by tracking Bush administration responsibility for the torture, see Danner, Torture and Truth, 1-49, and Hartnett and Stengrim, Globalization and Empire, Introduction.
[12].
Quotations from Dana Priest, ³CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons,²
Washington Post (2
November 2005), A1, and Priest and Josh White, ³Policies on Terrorism Suspects
Come Under Fire,² Washington Post (3 November 2005), A2; other locations
cited in Stephen Grey, ³Americaıs Gulag,² New Statesman (17 May 2004),
accessed at www.newstatesman.com;
Jason Burke, ³Secret World of U.S. Jails,² Observer (13 June 2004);
Tom Engelhardt, ³Welcome to Guantánamo World,² Alternet (5 April
2004); on the intrigue surrounding these practices, see Dana Priest, ³Memo
Lets CIA Take Detainees Out of Iraq,² Washington Post (24 October
2004): A1.
[13].
Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, trans.
E. F. N. Jephcott (London: Verso, 1984), 108-109—this passage comes
from Part Two, written in 1945; for studies of how truth and lying were
conflated in the days leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, see Stephen
Hartnett and Laura Stengrim, ³The Whole Operation of Deceptionı: A Reconstruction
and Critique of President Bushıs Weapons of Mass Destruction Rhetoric,²
Cultural Studies & Critical Methodologies 4:2 (May 2004): 152-197;
on the mediaıs role in this unfortunate situation, see Michael Massing,
³Now They Tell Us,² New York Review of Books (26 February 2004):
43-49 and ³Unfit to Print?² New York Review of Books (24 June 2004):
6-10.
[14]. Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (William Schneider, Jr., DSB Chairman), Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication (Washington, D.C., 2004), 11, 78, 99; for a list of DSB Task Forces, the DSB charter, and accessible versions of the January 2005 DSB Newsletter, go to the DSB website: www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/; for coverage of other proposed propaganda programs, see Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt, ³Pentagon Weighs Use of Deception in a Broad Area,² New York Times (13 December 2004), A12; for a rhetorical history of the DSB, see Stephen Hartnett, ³The Demise of Democratic Deliberation: The Defense Science Board, The Military-Industrial Complex, & the Production of Imperial Propaganda,² forthcoming in Rhetoric and Democratic Citizenship, eds. David M. Timmerman and Todd F. McDorman (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2006).
[15].
The National Security Strategy of the United States (Washington
D.C.: The White House, September 2002), iii, iv, 2; for a colorful account of
the reasons Europeans have cringed for the past two hundred years at such
American arrogance, see Simon Schama, ³The Unloved American,² New Yorker (posted
online, 3 March 2003); on the NSSUSıs imperial logic, see Stephen John Hartnett
and Laura Ann Stengrim, ³War Rhetorics: The National Security Strategy of
the United States and President Bushıs Rhetoric of
Globalization-Through-Benevolent-Empire,² and Wendell Berry, ³A Citizenıs
Response to The National Security Strategy of the United States,² both in AmBushed:
The Costs of Machtpolitik (a special issue of The South Atlantic
Quarterly 105:1 [January 2006]), 175-206 and 129-136.
[16]. For staggering insights
into the complexity of these figures, see The United Nations Development
Programme, Human Development Report 2002 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002);
and see the demographic data available at their website: www.un.org;
for further clarification of the absurdity of thinking that U.S. values may
work in the developing worldıs forgotten slums, see Mike Davis, ³Planet of
Slums,² New Left Review 26 (March/April 2004), 5-34.