Last Words
The weekend is upon us - it has been a full week here at the book club - so rather than try to land a grand conclusion here after Robert Stone's generous wrap-up, and dark notes of hope, I just want to thank everyone who has joined this discussion of Standard Operating Procedure: the excellent panel of discussants, the commentator-respondents, and the vast silent majority of TPM readers (to whom I belong) who take it in without weighing in, and then go out to spread the words or thoughts they've mulled here. E.J. Graff insists that I understate the purpose or activist ambitions of my work - but I assure you, I do not write to change the world but rather to describe how it is, and with the understanding that if it changes in response to anything I say it may not be at all as I would intend or wish it to go. I write and report, I suppose, because I wouldn't know what else to do with myself - because I have to - and in the hope that what I write will be read by thoughtful people who find it worth taking in and perhaps chewing over. One hardly ever knows if or how that's happening, and a book club like this is therefore truly its own reward.
I will respond, over the coming twenty-four hours, in the comments sections, to a number of points and questions raised in this afternoon's posts. I hope that if you've stayed with the discussion to this point, or just found dipping in and out engaging, you will read the book. There's a lot more to it.
This Book Club was ruined early on by the shift towards drama and pop-psychology, particularly by Mary Karr and Jeffery Goldberg who shifted the discussion about gender politics and the Israel/Palestine conflict, inevitably leading to superficial navel gazing rather than substantive discussion of the facts of Abu Ghraib.
As a result the Book Club has dramatized the minutia, but failed larger issues, including chain of command and their accountability in creating this situation.
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What wasn't discussed:
The civilian and military leadership made a number of policy decisions, ranging from an embrace of torture, extraordinary rendition, placing the prisoners in an active combat zone in Hussein's old gulag, a complete failure of supervision, and a seemingly deliberate break down of chain of command and accountability as CIA interrogators were encouraging torture to "soften up" detainees.
Soldiers who became sadists in this environment are still accountable under the principles of Nuremberg, unless we wish to exonerate them all, under the premise no reasonable person would not torture in that situation.
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Instead of discussing those real issue, this week has been wasted in a fluff-fest of Dr Phil and Dr Ruth psychobabble. Whether Lynndie England should be exonerated as a "sweet country girl" or not. Whether Israel's war crimes are better or worse than ours.
This is better than the MSM? How?
Because there's even more navel gazing and pop-psychology? Because the identity politics are a slightly higher grade? Are these pundits significantly better than Dr Phil? Looks the same to me.
June 27, 2008 7:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
If this looks the same to you as Dr. Phil, then Kozmik, you my friend are functionally blind.
June 27, 2008 7:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
While I've been warned (and have silently agreed) not to feed the trolls, in your case, kozmik, I'm going to make an exception.
You seem to think that the subject of the week's discussion should have been about Crime and Punishment -- that is, "accountability" for those involved in the Abu Graib scandal. And you appear frustrated that centrally, it hasn't been about that, at all.
It's been about the photographs (Mark Twain and King Leopold), about their immediate effects upon the American public, about whether the images they depict constitute reality (natural or political), or act as substitutes for that reality, or even, offer viewers a psychological crutch to avoid facing their own moral obligations.
In testing the common subjective interpretation of those images -- the "reality" of those images -- Gourevitch decided to ask the photographic subjects what they were thinking and feeling at the time the photos were snapped. But since none of us can judge the truthfulness of the subjects' responses, arguing Gourevitch's results is fruitless.
We can, however, argue the place and use of images in our political and moral culture. So, stand back, put your phenomenological epoché in place, and perspectivise -- always perspectivise -- away.
June 28, 2008 8:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you. (Trying to keep hope alive? :-))
June 28, 2008 1:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Aha, I caught you. You're copping Thoreau's: "I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad."--Civil Disobediance.
But of course Thoreau DID make the world a better place to live in, just as he intended, and I wish the same for you.
June 27, 2008 8:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
It was a good discussion. I thank Philip Gourevitch for reading and engaging with the comments.
June 27, 2008 11:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you, it was an interesting discussion - were you able to interview Feith, Myers, Miller or Sanchez?
June 28, 2008 10:57 AM | Reply | Permalink