An important thing we all need to keep in mind is that Abu Ghraib is essentially foreign, geographically and especially metaphorically; and the same with the prisons in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. These are foreign places and the prisoners in them are, regardless of their residency status, foreigners to us here in the United States.
This scandal may reach up through the ranks to the politicians and their bosses, but it never comes home except as news. It's over there. Out there.
Even though the United States has the highest per capita rate of incarceration in the industrial world, even though logically you would expect that men who would do such things for the motives imputed to them by most people - to protect their economic interests and bases of power - would be more rather than less likely to use more rather than less brutal methods to protect themselves, the closer the threats in question come to their actual homes and their children and their wives.
Even though you would expect that men who would be so conscienceless as to allow, even to order that methods of interrogation and manipulation as inhuman as what we're now glimpsing in Iraq and Cuba and Afghanistan and that witnesses have been adamantly and vehemently testifying to the existence of in other American military theaters for decades, even though you would logically expect that men who would do such things would do things even more rather than less brutal the closer it gets to them personally, nonetheless we can be assured that nothing of the kind is taking place, here in the US.
Even though the American prison system is now essentially a publicly-funded private industry, even though there are almost no working safeguards in place for the human rights of prisoners in the United States, even though the publicly-funded American prison industry isn't answerable to the public in any but the most nominal and bureaucratically convoluted way.
We can be assured that nothing resembling the sadistic practices of the guards at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantanamo in Cuba and Shebarghan in Afghanistan is taking place here in the United States, because the people who would be doing those things if those things were being done - and the servile and obedient media that contributed so greatly for so long to the masking and covering up of the foreign examples of these practices, in Iraq and Cuba and Afghanistan, and God knows in Indonesia and the Philipines and most of Latin America and a great portion of Africa - they, and the media that serve them, would tell us, if they were doing those things here at home in the US. Or someone would.
This scandal may reach up through the ranks to the politicians and their bosses, but it never comes home except as news. It's over there. Out there.
Even though the United States has the highest per capita rate of incarceration in the industrial world, even though logically you would expect that men who would do such things for the motives imputed to them by most people - to protect their economic interests and bases of power - would be more rather than less likely to use more rather than less brutal methods to protect themselves, the closer the threats in question come to their actual homes and their children and their wives.
Even though you would expect that men who would be so conscienceless as to allow, even to order that methods of interrogation and manipulation as inhuman as what we're now glimpsing in Iraq and Cuba and Afghanistan and that witnesses have been adamantly and vehemently testifying to the existence of in other American military theaters for decades, even though you would logically expect that men who would do such things would do things even more rather than less brutal the closer it gets to them personally, nonetheless we can be assured that nothing of the kind is taking place, here in the US.
Even though the American prison system is now essentially a publicly-funded private industry, even though there are almost no working safeguards in place for the human rights of prisoners in the United States, even though the publicly-funded American prison industry isn't answerable to the public in any but the most nominal and bureaucratically convoluted way.
We can be assured that nothing resembling the sadistic practices of the guards at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantanamo in Cuba and Shebarghan in Afghanistan is taking place here in the United States, because the people who would be doing those things if those things were being done - and the servile and obedient media that contributed so greatly for so long to the masking and covering up of the foreign examples of these practices, in Iraq and Cuba and Afghanistan, and God knows in Indonesia and the Philipines and most of Latin America and a great portion of Africa - they, and the media that serve them, would tell us, if they were doing those things here at home in the US. Or someone would.
