Monday, May 24, 2004
Susan Sontag, author of On Photography, writes in the Guardian today on those pictures and their effect:
You ask yourself how someone can grin at the sufferings and humiliation of another human being... people do these things to other people. Not just in Nazi concentration camps and in Abu Ghraib when it was run by Saddam Hussein. Americans, too, do them when they have permission. When they are told or made to feel that those over whom they have absolute power deserve to be mistreated, humiliated, tormented. They do them when they are led to believe that the people they are torturing belong to an inferior, despicable race or religion. For the meaning of these pictures is not just that these acts were performed, but that their perpetrators had no sense that there was anything wrong in what the pictures show. Even more appalling, since the pictures were meant to be circulated and seen by many people, it was all fun. And this idea of fun is, alas, more and more - contrary to what Mr Bush is telling the world - part of "the true nature and heart of America".
Meanwhile, survivors have explained why they had guns and why they were near the Saudi border, now there's videotape of what was going on before the attack. Did the US cock-up and fire on a wedding party?
You ask yourself how someone can grin at the sufferings and humiliation of another human being... people do these things to other people. Not just in Nazi concentration camps and in Abu Ghraib when it was run by Saddam Hussein. Americans, too, do them when they have permission. When they are told or made to feel that those over whom they have absolute power deserve to be mistreated, humiliated, tormented. They do them when they are led to believe that the people they are torturing belong to an inferior, despicable race or religion. For the meaning of these pictures is not just that these acts were performed, but that their perpetrators had no sense that there was anything wrong in what the pictures show. Even more appalling, since the pictures were meant to be circulated and seen by many people, it was all fun. And this idea of fun is, alas, more and more - contrary to what Mr Bush is telling the world - part of "the true nature and heart of America".
Meanwhile, survivors have explained why they had guns and why they were near the Saudi border, now there's videotape of what was going on before the attack. Did the US cock-up and fire on a wedding party?
