Taking a break from the usual landscape stuff you’ll find here – don’t worry, it will be back soon! – I’d like to draw attention to a New York Times article posted today: “Images, the Law and War” (You may need to “join” the site there to see it.)
I’m not going to take sides here – not at the moment, anyway – on the question of whether President Obama is right or wrong to withhold the release of additional photographs that reveal painful truths about our treatment of captives in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have an opinion, but I’d rather you consider the article and the underlying issues it illustrates for yourself. The article, in my view, does an admirable job of laying out the complex and conflicting values that collide in questions like this one.
It also provides clear evidence of the power of photographic images and their ability to affect those who see them.
Sometimes the right answer is hard to come by and I understand any fear about putting the lives of our soldiers at risk. After all, I have relatives in the service (Army and Navy). As I see it though, our soldiers were already put at risk in sending them into this &^%*^ war of choice and then their lives were put at even more risk with this immoral and illegal directive to torture. One former Army interrogator who appeared on the Daily Show (I can’t remember his name) has claimed that at least 3000 of our dead in Iraq can be attributed to revenge killings because of our torture of Iraqi’s. If we hadn’t tortured anyone, a lot of them would still be alive.
The bottom line for me is, torture does not work, it is illegal, and it is illegal because it is immoral. As an example I suggest reading the chapter on the witch hunts in “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” by Charles McKay. He describes how people were tortured to extract confessions of witchcraft and then when they confessed, they were burned alive at the stake. Really, why on earth would an innocent person confess to witchcraft knowing they would only be burned alive? They would only do it to stop the immediate pain. Torture gets confessions but they are worthless.
In my mind, torture is such is blight on our nation that we as a nation must confront it. Too many people think it is OK, and justified, and a valuable tool and to me that is appalling. I’m not sure how best to do it but I think they need to be educated otherwise and I tend to believe that releasing the pictures so we can see what has been done in our name might be one way.
After all, we made the German people go into the Nazi death camps after the war to make them see the bodies and smell the stench of death perpetrated in their name. We made them witness the crime. I think America needs to witness the crime. As an American, I do not want this precedent of torture to stand. I disagree with Obama. Release the pictures and let the power of photography educate.