An aberration? No, just more MTV

It takes a certain kind of culture to generate young people capable of the activities portrayed in the Abu Ghraib photos, and it's to America itself that we should look to find the cause

by Jennifer Matsui <jmatsui@republic-news.org>

The recently released photos of young American army reservists gleefully torturing Iraqi inmates in the Abu Ghraib prison has done what no apocalyptic, "enviro-gheddon" blockbuster has ever achieved with a billion dollar budget: provide convincing visual evidence that it's the end of the world as we know it.

Unlike the Hollywood version, though, we can applaud the outcome of this disaster, even while ducking hailstones the size of bowling balls pitched down on us from the ozone-depleted heavens by a wrathful entity with a long flowing beard and spotless white robes.

"The Day after Tomorrow" premiered last week but American audiences didn't have to leave their houses to experience the thrill of watching tidal waves engulf Pennsylvania Avenue. The damage left in the wake of these torture allegations couldn't have been more fitting if the Statue of Liberty had hurtled off her pedestal and crushed the presidential motorcade during a campaign whistle stop in Kalamazoo.

A handful of snapshots from Abu Ghraib's polaroids of the damned did more to seal the fate of the Empire in ways that not even depleted uranium, murderous sanctions, or fabricated evidence of WMD's could ever match for unrivalled impact value.

The impish grin of low-rung prison administrator Lynndie England giving the thumbs up to her own macabre handiwork (a human pyramid of stripped and hooded Iraqi men) is what will be seared into the collective memory long after fossil fuel and syndicated "Friends" have run their course.

The defining moment in the fall of a corrupt regime has finally been captured. But this time the cameras have zoomed in on the real tormenters of the Iraqi people.

Not surprisingly, the real face of war is a youthful American one with the casual cruelty of the minimum wage worker doing corporate America's dirty work in yet another charnel house.

It seems only fitting that private England worked at a chicken processing plant before doing her stint in the reserves. While fulfilling the dreaded prophecy of accidental early motherhood (the reason why so many uneducated, rural women enlist in the first place), the now pregnant former prison administrative assistant has had at least one wish partially granted. The future meteorologist and "storm chaser" is at the centre of a hurricane herself and has become a lightning rod, no less, for the earth-scorching blowback which is certain to follow.

In a perverse plot twist, eerily consistent with the underlying logic of America's latest war against humanity, PFC Lynndie England was discovered to have been torturing Iraqi men along with her male colleagues almost a year to the day after her fellow West Virginian colleague, Jessica Lynch, became a fictional and celebrated symbol of defiled American womanhood.

The invasion of Iraq, remember, was a "humanitarian mission" meant to "liberate" all those poor, oppressed women cowering under their burqas in . . . Afghanistan. And with each attempt to tear the veils off Muslim women-whether they like it or not-Americans have only succeeded in exposing their own abominable and tyrannical puritanism, not to mention an abysmal grasp of geography. The sodomization of Muslim lands is no longer a blunt metaphor for American hegemony in the Middle East but a literal description of its foreign policy, which is gleefully carried out by the illiterate, low wage earners on its payroll.

Predictably, conservative talk show host (and spiritual godfather of private England's unborn child ), Rush Limbaugh dismissed the torture allegations, chalking up the images of Iraqi prisoners with electrodes attached to their genitals, among other unspeakable acts of barbarism, as nothing worse than a harmless fraternity hazing incident. According to him, the military police guards under the command of Brigadier General Janice Karpinski (who will surely find a new career for herself playing the lusty warden in the SS version of women in prison films), were simply "blowing off steam." "No worse than what happens in a Madonna or Britney Spears video," the compassionate conservative prattled on, perhaps to soothe the ruffled consciences of the NASCAR dads in his audience who might be unnerved by the sight of their daughters exposing the skeletons in their own outhouses.

Still, Limbaugh has a point, even if his sociopathic moral failings render him incapable of empathy or recognizing the irony underlying his own words. The gruesome legacy of Abu Ghraib is the stuff of MTV and the countless sophomoric "comedies" for the teens to early twenties demographic of male viewers who were conceived during drive-in screenings of "Animal House" and "Porky's." Had it not been for the adverse publicity, someone at FOX could have cast these cheerfully homicidal "pranksters" whooping it up with their "clueless" captives in the next "American Pie" or "Malcolm in the Middle" spin off. Why then, should anyone be surprised when Americans "serving" overseas conform to the exact behavioural norms they learn from beer and car commercials? After all, who else are they serving except the interests of a cabal of Wall Street profiteers in the business of war to expand their markets for the coveted items on display during half time at the Super Bowl?

Throughout its bloody history, the US has exempted itself from a long and impressive list of atrocities, dismissing them as Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld did recently, as mere "aberrations" which in no way reflect the values of Americans themselves. Despite their craftily mumbled "apologies" and disingenuous hand-wringing, administration officials can no longer pretend "the actions of a few" are anything but a reflection of the nation as a whole.

Almost as painful as the photos themselves, has been the official response to the crisis by the administration and their apologists in the mainstream media who are working overtime to stem the coming tide of retribution from future detainees of American administrated prisons around the globe. Instead of calling for Rumsfeld's resignation, Americans should demand the immediate withdrawal of their troops from Iraq and bring the perpetrators from the highest level down to justice in an international court of law. Demanding anything less than that will only prove the complicity of the American public with the atrocities committed in their name. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, the puckish and crinkly leer of the smarmy, frat boy father is imprinted on the faces of all his sons and daughters serving under him, whether or not they wear the uniform.

The brutal occupation of Iraq will no doubt continue unabated for years to come but the "war" itself goes on in name only. The imaginary moral high ground that the US has used to legitimize the sufferings of Iraqis under its dictatorship can no longer be cloaked in the high-flown language of "liberation" and "democratization." Lynndie England wielding an imaginary rifle butt at her dark-skinned conquests has proved to be the most enduring and accurate reflection of the administrations' real aims in the phantom war on terror.

Fittingly, though, Lynndie England, the khaki-clad poster girl for human rights violations, has become the catalyst for America's withdrawal from Iraq and quite possibly its exit from the world stage. After all, with a superpower like this, who needs "enemies"?

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