"Stop looking; it's not pleasant"

During a rousing game of Apples to Apples a few nights ago with my roommates, roommate's sister and sister's friend, I was talking to Samy and he mentioned that he was reading about the Abu Ghraib Scandal. I took a look a look at Salon.com's coverage of it, and promptly became a rather depressing addition to the game.

279 photos of despicable, disgusting, and utterly disheartening evidence of total disregard for human life. Conducted in the name of protecting my liberty and me. They held (hold?) prisoners there under suspicion of involvement in all sorts of bombings and conspiracies, and yet many of them were "ghost prisoners:" "whose imprisonment and death would not normally have been included in official prison records," and who may or may not have had roles in the crimes. Yes, I've heard that the MPs weren't given any orders but to "keep the prisoners awake;" yes, I've heard that they were "under unimaginable stress " and that they're not to blame. Yes, I've heard that they were "just a few bad apples." And if anyone thinks these statements are an excuse, they are despicable, too.

All this after my own mother has shown her bright and shining colors as a prejudiced American who believes that Muslims can have multiple wives and drape them in burkas while they stroke their beards and plan the destruction of all things good and pure.

And yet I can't bring myself to allow my terrified and constant sadness at the situation to decompose into anger. Forgive the Anne-Frankishness, but really, I like to think to myself that those specialists were deranged, mentally insane or unclear, actually under duress or at least so much stress that they were not acting in their right minds. I know that those specialists were at one point good to people in their lives; they have values, they are human, they had some logic turning in their heads that validated their actions in their view. I'd like to think they didn't knowingly hurt, kill, and humiliate. And my mother? My mother is not evil. My mother is not so irrational, not always; she cares about her family, she strives to be a good and virtuous person. And even if both of their systems of logic fall short of perfect or perfectly good, who am I to judge?

I don't know what to think or do about inhumanity as an American governmental standard or bigotry as a family sentiment. Maybe I should just give a shit and be articulate for once, create an argument as to why every American should see these photos and weep or why even Asian Americans should feel comfortable allowing Muslims into their homes and families, and share it with whatever powers that be.

But then again, who's going to listen? Whatever is going on in the Middle East, or anywhere else prisoners are being held, under American forces or otherwise, we'll only hear a little bit of it, 3 years and thousands of unnamed corpses later. And what good's an argument over guns and troops and government sanction? What good's an argument over your family's convictions?