I haven't fully digested the disgusting news that U.S. Marines have been caught on video urinating on dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, so this post is not offered as a coherent think-piece. But what is there to think about, anyway? What is there to say, really, except that there's absolutely no excuse? No excuse for the policy makers and officers, but neither is there one for the brutalized young perpetrators. Their lowly enlisted status doesn't excuse them; we should offer them compassion, but not absolution, for the guilt they carry. The next time I'm in a U.S. airport and the passengers break out in applause when the gate agent or flight attendant congratulates "our men and women in uniform," I'll remember this incident.
In keeping with its maddening, self-regarding role as the American Pravda, a hand-wringing New York Times "analysis" worries that "the images could incite anti-American sentiment at a particularly delicate moment in the decade-old Afghan war." Well, how could they not have that effect? And why shouldn't they?
Jafar "Jeff" Siddiqui, a Pakistani-American acquaintance of mine who lives near Seattle, where I live, writes a reliably candid blog called "PenJihad." In his latest installment, aptly titled "Marines Urinating on Dead Muslims," Jeff offers this challenge to his fellow American Muslims: "There is no action against the anti-Muslim hate-mongering climate in this country because we Muslims do not do anything to make ourselves politically significant so, why should anyone care about us?" This echoes my own 2010 article "Muslims in America: Time for a Movement?" The question mark is important, because I'm not a Muslim, and I won't presume to tell people who are more vulnerable in American society than I am what they should do. But I am an American, and I still believe, as I wrote in that article, that "Muslims have a historic opportunity to play an important leadership role in American society today" - not only for their own sake, but for the sake of our politically rudderless and morally feckless society as a whole.
I happen to have just this week submitted to the "Books & Authors" section of the Pakistani newspaper Dawn my long-overdue review of a powerful book, a collection of writings from Indian periodicals and websites compiled and edited by Sanjay Kak, titled Until My Freedom Has Come: The New Intifada in Kashmir. Congratulations to Penguin India for publishing such a book. In one piece, "Kashmir's Abu Ghraib?", contributor Shuddhabrata Sengupta describes an appalling YouTube video tagged "brothers watch, sisters please do not watch" and popularly known as the "Kashmir Naked Parade Video," apparently shot by an offending Indian soldier himself with a cell phone. There's no need for me to describe the video; you get the picture. "At least in the pitched street battles, we see adversaries, albeit unequal adversaries, policemen, paramilitaries, soldiers one side, and the angry tide of stone-pelters on the other," writes Sengupta.
Here, there are no adversaries. Prisoners are not in a position to be adversarial when surrounded by heavily armed men in uniform. What we see instead are unarmed captives, people who are in no position to threaten or endanger the security forces. That such people should be made to undergo a humiliation such as this is proof of the extent to which the forces of the Indian state in Kashmir have become brutalized by the experience of serving in Kashmir.
While the making of atrocity images such as these have for long been a part of the apparatus of violence, the ubiquity of mobile phones as recording devices, and of internet-based social networking sites as vectors of circulation has taken the phenomenon to a new level. We have no clear understanding of what motivates the making of these images. Are they meant as evidence of a "job well done" - to be shown to superiors who actually sanction torture and humiliation but have no way of assessing their effectiveness or actual operation because of the legal difficulty involved in maintaining official records of "unofficial" secrets? Or, are they simply testosterone-fuelled perversities, operating in the same sphere as MMS messages of pornographic sadism?
There is need for further research on questions such as whether or not the makers of these atrocity images are also consciously seeking each other out, both as audiences and as competitors, in a new economy of prestige linked to the capacity to represent and circulate one's own cruelty. In other words, are the makers of the videos in Kashmir, or in the Jaffna peninsula, aware of, and in some senses seeking to out-do the actions of their peers and predecessors in Abu Ghraib? Also, is there an informal network of know-how, pertaining to techniques for torture and humiliation that lubricates the virtual matrix inhabited by the protagonists of the so-called "global war on terror", that operates in much the same way as the networks that bring together paedophiles and sex offenders on online platforms in the darker parts of the internet? Finally, how and why do these videos leak out of these networks into the wider public domain? Are there weak, conscience-stricken, anonymous whistle-blowing links at the fringes of even the darkest recesses of power (as is evident from the centre of the WikiLeaks storm) that cannot bear the burden of carrying power's dirtiest secrets?
The irony of a Pakistani atrocity being briefly misattributed as an Indian one only underscores the fact that when it comes to the everyday operationalization of state terror, the security apparatuses of India and Pakistan aspire to the same low standards, which make it quite possible for those seeking to score a few cheap propaganda points on either side to - deliberately or otherwise - confuse one perpetrator for another.
ETHAN CASEY is the author of Alive and Well in Pakistan: A Human Journey in a Dangerous Time (2004) and Overtaken By Events: A Pakistan Road Trip (2010). His next book, Bearing the Bruise: A Life Graced by Haiti, will be published in March 2012. Web:www.ethancasey.com or www.facebook.com/ethancaseyfans
Follow Ethan Casey on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ethan.casey
http://c-dawson.blogspot.com/2012/01/to-pee-or-not-to-pee.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jan/18/british-soldiers-afghanistan-child-abuse-claims
"Military police have launched an investigation into claims that British soldiers abused two children during their tour of duty in Afghanistan.
The Ministry of Defence confirmed an inquiry had begun into two soldiers from the Mercian Battle Group, which is serving a six-month stint in the country.
The Sun newspaper reported that the men, who were from lower ranks, had been arrested for allegedly abusing a boy and a girl, who were aged about 10."
Now, would you argue that it's worse when Western soldiers rape Afghan children before or after they kill them?
And how would that contribute to the strategy of -ahum- "winning hearts and minds?
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=4cd_1326415154
There is nothing "lowly" about enlisted men and women in the armed forces. These are mostly altruistic, caring, committed, highly trained people that have chosen to serve this country, including those who demean them. They are also mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, children, students, college graduates...dedicated, hard-working people who accept challenges that others refuse. These incredible people who you so callously refer to as "lowly" are responsible for billions of dollars in equipment, as well as the lives of the men and women that they lead, follow, or serve alongside. These individuals often have to make life and death decisions, including sacrificing their own safety for the benefit of others. There is nothing lowly about these people.
You are free to think that, you are free to write this column...thanks to men and women in uniform. Your statement shows your ignorance of the service and sacrifice of people like myself who give of ourselves and willingly put ourselves in harm's way to ensure our loved ones and people like yourself can be free. This also shows blatant prejudice of an entire group based on the actions of a few.
May you continue to enjoy the freedoms earned by men and women that volunteered to ensure you never lose them.
A nation and its people who deliberately engage in the systematic conquest, subjugation, torture, imprisonment and killing of others must by the laws of physics and divine nature have the same calamities delivered upon themselves.
http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/911caneasilyrevi.html
In reference to murder of Iran nuclear scientist:
fbi/cia/mossad clandestine murders include perceived threats to national security and whistleblowers who report methods & practices of the USA assassins:
http://sosbeevfbi.ning.com/forum/topics/must-prosecute-fbi-cia-assassins-for-clandestine-murders?xg_source=activity
See also:
http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/part4-worldinabo.html