The Abu Ghraib Effect

145 Pages·2007·1.53 MB·English

by  Stephen F. Eisenman

The Abu Ghraib Effect
Stephen F. Eisenman

the abu ghraib effect

The Abu Ghraib Effect
Stephen F. Eisenman
reaktion books
For OKW
Published by Reaktion Books Ltd
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London ec1v 0dx, uk
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk
First published 2007
Copyright © Stephen F. Eisenman, 2007
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of
the publishers.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Cromwell Press, Trowbridge, Wiltshire
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Eisenman, Stephen
The Abu Ghraib effect
1. Abu Ghraib Prison 2. Torture in art 3. Suffering in art
4. Pathos 5. Prisoners of war in art 6. Prisoners of war -
Abuse of - United States 7. Iraq War, 2003-Atrocities
I. Title
704.9’4936564
isbn 978 1 86189 309 3
Contents
Preface 7
1 Resemblance 11
2 Freudian Slip 18
3 Documents of Barbarism 42
4 Pathos Formula 60
5 Stages of Cruelty 73
6 Muscle and Bone 92
7 Theatre of Cruelty 101
8 Orientalism 108
Afterword: What is Western Art? 111
References 123
Acknowledgements 139
Photographic Acknowledgements 141
For the purposes of this convention, the term ‘torture’ describes
any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or
mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as
obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession,
punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is
suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him
or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any
kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instiga-
tion of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or
other person acting in an official capacity.
No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state
of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other
public emergency may be invoked as a justification or torture.
No state party shall expel, return or extradite a person to
another state where there are substantial grounds for believing that
he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.
– United Nations Convention Against Torture, 19841
To articulate the past historically . . . means to seize hold of a
memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.
– Walter Benjamin, 19402
Preface
The images of torture from Abu Ghraib Prison are among the
most searing and disturbing to have appeared since the com-
mencement in 2003 of the us war against Iraq. They have been
reproduced in newspapers and magazines all over the world, and
seen by nearly everyone with access to television and the internet.
Though the few dozen published pictures are merely a fraction of
the thousands that exist, their documentary significance is never-
theless clear: in this particular place, remote from the United
States, and at that particular time, 2003–2004, men and women
from the military treated fellow human beings with contempt and
cruelty, stripping them naked, binding them, sexually abusing
them, beating their bodies with fists and sticks, menacing and
attacking them with dogs, killing them.1Such behaviour, as the un
Convention Against Torture makes clear, is illegal, can never be
justified, and the perpetrators should be identified, arrested and
punished to the fullest extent of military, civilian and international
law. In addition, any policies, practices and procedures that permit
or in any way encourage torture should be ended. This much is
clear, but much else is unresolved.
Blame, for the most part, has not been apportioned, nor
punishments meted out. The us Congress in 2004 received just
twelve hours of sworn testimony about Abu Ghraib and issued
no final reports. Four additional investigations – by the Defense
Department, Army, Navy and cia – yielded 150 allegations of
torture (euphemistically labelled ‘abuse’), but only a handful of
prosecutions and convictions.2 The us Army confirmed that at
7
least 27prisoner deaths at Abu Ghraib were homicides, but the
longest sentence received by a soldier convicted of murder was
3
three years. Though journalists, lawyers, and human right advo-
cates have unambiguously exposed the responsibility of senior
military and civilian authorities for policies that condone or legit-
imize torture, none have been charged with crimes, none have
been dismissed, and none demoted or censured. The Abu Ghraib
pictures were not debated or even much discussed by the candi-
dates in the 2004Presidential campaign, and the issue did not pre-
vent George Bush’s re-election. Alberto Gonzales, the author of a
memo sent to the President which argued that the us possessed
the right to torture detainees in the so-called ‘war on terror’, was
promoted in 2005 from the position of White House Counsel to
Attorney General. Every single Senate Republican voted for his
confirmation, in addition to six Democrats.
Though President Bush suffered a significant decline in
popularity in 2005–2006, that fact is largely attributable to
Hurricane Katrina, high gasoline prices and a failed war effort,
not fallout from revelations about the torture of prisoners in
Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, secret detention facilities around the
world, and ‘extraordinary rendition’ – the practice (specifically
outlawed by the un Convention cited earlier) of kidnapping ter-
rorism suspects and transporting them to locations where torture
is practised routinely. Given this history, it is reasonable to
assume that a majority of us citizens are not much bothered by
the fact of ustorture. While a Gallup Poll conducted immediately
after the release of the Abu Ghraib photographs indicated that
54 per cent of Americans were ‘bothered a great deal’ by the
revelations, a year later the number had declined to just 40 per
cent. In December 2005an ap/ipsospoll revealed that 61per cent
4
of Americans agreed that torture was justified on some occasions.
The May 2006 report by the un High Commission for Human
Rights about ustorture at Guantanamo Bay was widely reported
in newspapers, on radio and television, but produced no great
outcries, public protests or congressional investigations. Can so
many Americans have come to accept torture as a matter of dull
routine?
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