Novelist and Historian Adel S. Bishtawi
And every time you look at it, it looks back at you with anger and screams in your mind a thousand different words.
Iraqis are among the toughest in the Arab world. You don't pick a fight with a Yemeni, an Algerian or an Iraqi. They are all hot tempered but of the three the Iraqis are probably the most extreme. An Iraqi does not just sit back and say, "I am tired". He'll throw himself in the seat and say, "I am totally obliterated". They are also the ones who have produced some of the most romantic poetry in Arabic. Almost a quarter of all books published in the Arab world used to be shipped to Iraq.
Of all past histories in the Middle East Iraq's, probably, is the bloodiest. It has always been rich and magnificent and many invaders wanted to cart away its treasures or control its natural resources. It is also the eastern gate to the Middle East. Crushing Iraq opened the way to the Sham area which comprises Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. But the price paid by invaders lusting for Iraq has been always high. Once inside the Sham area they suddenly realise the gate behind them has been shut and many a great army was buried in the Middle East in its entirety. Like the immortals of the Greek myth, Iraqis rise up quickly. The speed with which they managed to organise armed resistance against US occupation is the outstanding achievement in this wretched war not the US military 'cakewalk' over the Tigris bridges.
As the Americans know, Iraq's defeats are deceptive. To conquer them you have to be either immortal or strip them of their unique rebellious nature, self confidence and pride.
It is not difficult for humans to turn anti human-- it happens all the time. Less frequent are cases where dogs revert to their true wolf-like nature but they are still considered man's best friend. Not the ones seen in the American album of torture, though. Those unmuzzled military dogs have not reverted to their killer instinct naturally. They were made to revert using human blood and flesh. The soldiers seem to use full strength to restrain them. They have tasted human flesh and they want more.
"You cannot imagine those acts were committed by a human being," said Kim Hong-Sim, a 23-year-old gift shop employee in North Korea, the most isolated state in the world. "The country appears to have no discipline."
"Pimps...don't do what the Americans do," said Abdel Wadoud Muhbal, a currency trader in the Iraqi capital. "Who takes a bearded man, a Muslim, and lays him down with his face in another man's genitals? They want Jihad."
Americans eat human beings and nightmarishly shred women and place severed heads and human parts neatly in plastic bags but only in movies. This is real. Who sent this evil crop to the Middle East? Who told them it is OK to kill Iraqis? It is OK to torture them? It is natural and human to be un-human?
Let's not blame the students for understanding too well the lessons of the teacher. Let's not attempt to find easy scapegoats in the few bad apples from Appalachia who came to Iraq to have some fun in the presumed picnic that turned out to be a dive into the unknown.
President George W. Bush told them to do it. It was not a direct order but every time Iraq is mentioned, out comes the now all too familiar labelling of Iraqi men and women who are standing in his way. Anybody unlucky enough to be detained in any circumstance is considered one of the "terrorists, thugs, killers, losers, deadenders, remnants of the old regime, haters of freedom etc." The Commander in Chief has singled out those hapless people as enemies in hundreds of occasions in the past two years.
Why is that a crime, Colonel Brown? You wanted the English out? You are the
No proof has ever been provided by Bush to link Iraq to the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington but the message is tirelessly repeated on every possible occasion. One prominent terrorism expert, who would only speak on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Bush may be trying to blunt increasing criticism of the Iraq campaign by underlining the link in the public's mind between Iraq and security at home. "I wonder if there's not a connection to the president's speech (Monday 24 May) when he mentioned terrorism 18 times in the context of Iraq. Isn't this a very convenient way of linking back to the United States that Iraq is part of the broader war on terrorism?"
This is not fooling many people outside Bush's constituency anymore.
The notion of fighting a campaign against terrorism so as to support human rights, while simultaneously trampling on them to achieve this, was no more than double speak. "The United States has lost its moral high ground and its ability to lead on peace and human rights elsewhere," Khan said at a press conference in London on May 26 to launch the annual report.
While the commander in chief is the one to put on trial, that does not mean the soldiers are blameless. They have done things in Iraq they would not do in their own country. Even if they were given explicit orders to commit these acts in America they would not have done them. It is not just inhuman to commit such crimes in America but also illegal. For even lesser crimes you can be put behind bars for a very long time.
In Iraq it was different. It is not because Iraqis have a darker skin; there are more Americans with dark skin in America than in Iraq. It is not because Iraqis have a different tongue and culture; millions in America have different cultures and mother tongues. Whether they were originally part of a crop of anti-humans or became so in Iraq is difficult to ascertain. What we know, and let's be frank about this, is that they enjoyed what they were doing. Some knelt within inches of a dead Iraqi's bruised face, then smiled...waiting for the photo to be taken.
How would Sabrina Harmon (photo) feel if the dead man was her father and the sunshine smile was on a moustached face of an Iraqi soldier? One day she will have to bring life to this world. What would she tell her children? How will they feel when they see that photo which will be with us for eternity?
Perhaps one shouldn't ask because one can see the answer in the photo. The dogs were beasts then we made them our friends and we have made them beasts again. The photo is saying as much. "I am supposed to be a giver of life but this is what I have become. I, too, have been made a beast and there is nothing I can do about it."
Middle East commentators have said repeatedly that Arabs do not understand the depth of American shock of the 9/11 attacks. It could be because the American government and media did not explain it well enough. It is also possible many Americans are still deeply traumatised by the attacks and some are trying to find expressions of the trauma in traumatising others even if they know they are innocent.
Is that the case?
The invasion of Iraq will be reversed and the US may find itself forced to leave the entire Middle East. There will be new presidents, new agreements and new friendships but hatred will outlive all of these. Some people, on both sides, will do something, somewhere, sometime and the haunting memory of Iraq will be wide awake in seconds. Not many Americans are aware what American soldiers have done in Iraq but some do: Said a New York Times editorial: "It seems gloomily possible that in years to come, when people in the Middle East recall the invasion of Iraq they will speak not of lost American lives or the toppling of a brutal dictator. The most enduring image of the occupation may be those pictures of grinning American soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners."
Iraqis are victims of American torture in Abu Ghraib and other prisons and detention centres across Iraq just like other innocent Arabs and Muslims detained in Guantanamo and Afghanistan, but this is a human tragedy before it is an Iraqi one. People all over the world have looked at these photographs with shock and disbelief. The moral standing of the US in the world has been shaken and the political and economic leadership will be challenged as well. The Bush administration should avoid chastising other governments for abuse and violations of human rights. Even North Koreans are shocked.
The Christian Science Monitor suggested European public disgust at the pictures probably rules out any chance that America's NATO allies will offer military help securing the transition to Iraqi rule in Baghdad. In the long run, some observers worry, the photographs could perpetuate a graver transatlantic rift. "They might help create an 'Iraq generation' in Europe like the 'Vietnam generation,'" suggests Bernhard May, an expert on European relations with the US at the influential German Foreign Policy Society in Berlin. "If a whole generation comes to think of America in terms of the Iraq war, then we are in trouble for years to come."
The picture in the Middle East is gloomier: "I will hate Americans and British people for the rest of my life," said Rana Izmerley, whose father died in American custody, "you said you were coming to bring democracy, and yet you kill my father. By accepting your governments, you accept what they do here in Iraq. You offer no proof that he did something wrong, you refuse him a lawyer and then you kill him. Why?"
Some soldiers who committed the crimes at Abu Ghraib have been put on trial and a few were sentenced but fellow US soldiers are still paying the price. Many mistakes (and ambitions) are fuelling the resistance to the occupation but the torture at Abu Ghraib and other detention centres throughout Iraq removed from the minds of many Iraqis the false hope that Americans are in their country to help. "These are the things that make Iraqis pick up a weapon and want to kill American soldiers," said Ghaleb Ribahi, 32 . "When I saw those pictures, I wanted to pick up a weapon too."
Ghaleb may not have picked up a weapon, but many did. The evidence can be seen in steadily mounting US losses since.
