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Friday Fronts
21 March 2008:
"Exposure," in The New Yorker
Sabrina Harman, by Nubar Alexanian
One of the "hard thoughts" that make up the superstructure of J M Coetzee's recent novel, Diary of a Bad Year, is entitled, "On national shame."
An article in a recent New Yorker makes it plain as day that the US administration, with the lead taken by Richard Cheney, not only sanctions the torture of prisoners taken in the so-called war on terror but is active in every way to subvert laws and conventions proscribing torture. ...
Demosthenes: Whereas the slave fears only pain, what the free man fears most is shame. If we grant the truth of what the New Yorker claims, then the issue for individual Americans becomes a moral one: how, in the face of this shame to which I am subjected, do I behave? How do I save my honour?
Three years ago last summer, we were rocked by the publication of the Abu Ghraib photographs that have hung ever since in the atmosphere, a bad smell that will not be purged by blathering exculpations from on high or jury-rigged convictions of low-ranking soldiers. Understanding "what went wrong" in Tier 1A of the prison at Abu Ghraib in Iraq has become an obviously vital task for our democracy, the constituting theory of which holds all Americans responsible for the atrocities. Just as obviously, the matter is one that we would all rather not think about.
Philip Gourevitch, editor of the Paris Review, and documentarian Errol Morris have collaborated on a project designed to provide remedial support for our fainting, failing moral fibers. Entitled Standard Operating Procedure, the project consists of a book and a film, and its thesis would appear, in advance of publication and release, to be that there was no "standard operating procedure" to guide servicemen and --women charged with operating the prison at Abu Ghraib. The collaborators say as much in an excerpt from (but possibly a pendant to) the project that appears in a more recent issue of The New Yorker — the current one. The excerpt makes it instantly clear that Standard Operating Procedure will be required reading/viewing for every American with a conscience.
As I read the piece, "Exposure" — it's an account of the Abu Ghraib photographer's highly conflicted response to what she saw — I considered excerpting, for this page, just about every other paragraph. Mr Gourevitch and Mr Morris excel at the kind of understated outrage that detonates in the reader's mind, not on the page, and the tact with which they presume familiarity not only with the photographs but with the aftermath of their publication is invitingly humane. But when I read the following paragraph, I knew that it would have to be the one that I set before you. The last line, in which Specialist Sabrina Harman shares her assessment of the comrades who tortured and humiliated prisoners, comes from the Heart of Darkness that the wrecking firm of Bush, Cheney & Rumsfeld has ripped out of normal quiescence and put in charge of their War on Terror.
On Tier 1A, Harman liked to sneak cigarettes and doses of Tylenol or ibuprofen to prisoners who were being given a hard time. These small gestures gave her comfort, too, and it pleased her that prisoners sometimes turned to her for help. But Harman was generally as forgiving of her buddies as she was of herself. When toughness failed her, and niceness was not an option, Harman took refuge in denial. “That’s the only way to get through each day, is to start blocking things out,” she said. “Just forget what happened. You go to bed, and then you have the next day to worry about. It’s another day closer to home. Then that day’s over, and you just block that one out.” At the same time, she faulted herself for not being a more enthusiastic soldier when prisoners on Tier 1A were being given the business. When she was asked how other M.P.s could go at it without apparent inhibition, all she could say was “They’re more patriotic.”
With the making of Standard Operating Procedure, it becomes marginally easier to believe that the day will come when the named partners, at least, of the aforementioned wrecking firm will stand in the dock, at The Hague or elsewhere, and face the consequence of their crimes, which could be nothing less than life imprisonment; as to additional punishment, the present mind is beggared. The thirst for vengeance is hard to think around. I don't know if I seek vengeance or not. All I know is that I want the national honor restored to the sufficiently tattered state in which the first Bush Administration found it.
Mr Coetzee's diarist continues,
Impossible to believe that in some American hearts the spectacle of their country's honor being dragged through the mud does not breed murderous thoughts. Impossible to believe that no one has yet plotted to assassinate these criminals in high office.
Indeed. One strives to rise above these free-flowing impulses and to remember that there is a court at The Hague, established to render acceptable justice in such cases. Meanwhile, what of those Americans whose honor remains unsullied, who find their government's agents of torture "more patriotic"?
Copyright (c) 2008 Pourover Press