This is the first freelance assignment I’ve had the time to accept in a while, and while I’m thrilled with how it turned out, I’m stumped as to how I should categorize it here in my blogg. I created the Shalampti category for unpaid projects, but what should paid projects be called?
If only all problems could be so pleasant.
A larger version can be seen here.
“‘Laws are like cobwebs, for if any trifling or powerless thing falls into them, they hold it fast, but if a thing of any size falls into them it breaks the mesh and escapes.’”
Anacharsis, c. 600 BC, quoted in From Hell, Chapter 12, ii. Paddington Q, Australia: Eddie Campbell Comics, 1999.
Following up on my recent blogg entry on the efforts to protect the Bush administration from the legal consequences of its lawbreaking, I just read an article by Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris from the March 24, 2008 issue of The New Yorker on Sabrina Harman, the woman who took many of the pictures of torture that led to the scandal over the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The article is both fascinating and repulsive, but the part that I found most disturbing is the legal consequences for Harman and the other Military Police (M.P.s) serving at the prison, and the lack of legal consequences for the military and civilian leadership above them that encouraged the abuses at Abu Ghraib.
According to the article, the soldiers in Harman’s unit “[…] were combat M.P.s, trained to support the operations of front-line forces,” not “[…] internment and resettlement M.P.s, who are trained according to the Army’s extensive doctrine on handling all manner of wartime captives and displaced persons” (48, 49). However, this very lack of training on how to deal with prisoners and a lack of knowledge on the Geneva Conventions actually served the Bush administration, who designated insurgents as “unlawful combatants” to deny them P.O.W. status and hold them “in isolation and secrecy, without judicial recourse” (49). Harman’s unit did not act of their own accord without direction or approval from their commanders. Corporal Charles Graner claimed he showed photographs of the torture,
[…] To officers higher up the chain of command, and […] nobody objected to what they saw. On the contrary, after a month on the job, […] Graner received a written assessment from his captain, a frequent visitor to the block [where the torture at Abu Ghraib occurred], who said, “You are doing a fine job…. You have received many accolades from the M.I. [Military Intelligence] units here.”
Similarly, Staff Sergeant Chip Frederick was told of a new prisoner, who turned out to be innocent of any crimes, “‘I don’t give a fuck what you do to him, just don’t kill them,’” by an Agent of the Army’s Criminal Investigative Division (C.I.D), also known as the military’s F.B.I. This is the prisoner who was hooded, draped and forced to stand on a cardboard box with wires tied to his fingers with the instruction that if he fell off, he would be electrocuted.
Gourevitch and Morris write that, despite all this, “The only person ranked above staff sergeant to face a court-martial was cleared of criminal wrongdoing,” while Harman and the other soldiers in her unit were given punishments “[…] ranging from a reduction in rank and a loss of pay to ten years in prison” (56, emphasis added). Which is disgusting. I believe that torture is always wrong, and Harman’s unit deserves punishment for their participation in the abuses at Abu Ghraib. However, it is important to note that they were soldiers acting under orders, whether official or not, that came all the way from at least Donald Rumsfeld, if not President Bush himself, as reporters Seymour Hersh and Phillip Carter have shown. The argument has been made that torturing high value targets leads to actionable intelligence that saves American lives. President Bush himself made this argument, saying, “‘When we find someone who may have information about a potential attack, you bet we are going to detain them and you bet that we are going to question them. […] Because the American people expect us to find out information, actionable intelligence, so we can defend them.’” If this is really how Bush felt, he and his administration should have accepted responsibility for what happened at Abu Ghraib rather than let the soldiers there take the fall. To blame those soldiers as “a few bad apples” in order to protect you and your friends from legal consequences is the worst sort of cowardice, and directly contradicts the frequent assertion that the President “supports the troops.” He doesn’t. He’s a liar, a hypocrite, a coward and a criminal, and he and his administration should be held accountable for their crimes.
“[…] I can’t work a job / Like any other slob / Punch it in / And punch it out / And sucking up to Bob / Marrying a beeatch / And have seven keeads / Giving up / And growing old / And hoping there’s a god.”
Rivers Cuomo, channeling Kubla Khan, in Weezer’s “Troulbemaker” from their latest self-titled album, also known as “The Red Album.”
Amanuensis –noun. A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.
2008. This adorns the cover of my little pocket notebook, in which I write down ideas, quotes, to-do lists and little missives of self-hatred.
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Excerpt from Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan, or, A Vision in a Dream. A Fragment,” originally written in 1797 or 1798 and published in 1816; reprinted online by HistoryofIdeas.org, University of Virginia Library, 1999.
Amanuensis –noun. A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.
Clave and I have started working our way through Jessica Abel and Matt Madden’s comics-making textbook, Drawing Words and Writing Pictures. One of the earliest exercises is to depict “a person running,” the results of which are below. Clave said it looks like he’s barely moving, to which I responded, “Since he’s supposed to be me, that’s the point.”
“‘Laws are like cobwebs, for if any trifling or powerless thing falls into them, they hold it fast, but if a thing of any size falls into them it breaks the mesh and escapes.’”
Anacharsis, c. 600 BC, quoted in From Hell, Chapter 12, ii. Paddington Q, Australia: Eddie Campbell Comics, 1999.
I got to thinking about this quote after reading an essay by Andrew Sullivan in which he argues, quite convincingly, that the Bush administration’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” are very similar to those developed by the Nazis for special prisoners, such as the paramilitary insurgents Germany faced in Norway. Much like insurgents in Iraq, these men fought out of uniform, prompting the Nazis and the Bush administration to argue that such fighters do not qualify for the protections against torture for POWs captured in traditional combat. Sullivan says,
Freezing prisoners to near-death, repeated beatings, long forced-standing, waterboarding, cold showers in air-conditioned rooms, stress positions […], withholding of medicine and leaving wounded or sick prisoners alone in cells for days on end – all these have occurred at US detention camps under the command of president George W. Bush. Over a hundred documented deaths have occurred in these interrogation sessions. The Pentagon itself has conceded homicide by torture in multiple cases.
The Nazis even had the same name for these techniques: “Verschärfte Vernehmung,” which translates to English as “intensified interrogation,” “sharpened interrogation” or “enhanced interrogation.” Sullivan is careful to say that he’s not arguing that Bush is Hitler, and states emphatically, “There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007.” It is clear, however, that the Bush administration has taken on noxious practices and arguments once made by Nazis. We should be disgusted by Bush’s enhanced interrogation techniques even if they aren’t similar to those used by the Nazis, but given the way we use Nazis and Hitler as shorthand for evil and our opposition to the same during World War II as proof of our moral superiority, the similarity is all the more despicable.
But what makes all of this even more horrifying, and relevant to Anacharsis’s argument, is the way the Washington political establishment is arguing against holding the Bush administration responsible for all the ways it’s broken the law over the last 8 years. In a recent post for his blog at Salon, Glenn Greenwald quotes former Congressman Harold Ford as being against criminal prosecutions of the Bush administration because, “‘“I think that accountability was brought in 2006 when [the GOP] lost in the House and the Senate […]. And we have only eight more months of George W. Bush . . .”’” Anachrasis made his comparison of laws to cobwebs 2600 years ago, so we know this sort of thing isn’t new, but Greenwald also points out that during the Iran / Contra scandal, prominent Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen defended the pardon of Casper Weinberger, one of the men who broke the law for the Reagan administration, because he pushed his own cart and did his own shopping at Safeway. As some have pointed out regarding The Daily Show, one of the ironies of today’s political discourse is that comedians are, in some cases, making better political arguments for justice than politicians and political commentators. Comedian Patton Oswalt makes just such an argument on his CD Feelin’ Kind of Patton:
I mean, if the standard for impeachment is covering up a burglary, or getting a blowjob, if that equals, “you’re impeached,” then shouldn’t Bush have been executed at this point? Like, honestly, if that is, I’m just saying, if that’s your standard, he should’ve just been beaten to death on the lawn of the White House with like, Aerosmith playing, and be like, “Yeah! Fuck that guy!” Big monster truck rally, and everyone drunk, “Yeah, fuckin’ asshole.” But nope.
Even more depressing, things may not get better under an Obama administration, given his reversal on the FISA legislation legalizing the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping and protecting the telecom companies who made it possible from civil lawsuits. In October of 2007, the Obama campaign said “‘Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies,’” but then voted in favor of a bill early this month that does exactly that. In fact, in the same Salon post described above, Greenwald quotes an article for The Nation by Ari Melber in which Obama advisor Cass Sunstein “‘caution[s] against prosecuting criminal conduct from the current [Bush] Administration[, …] or even the “slight appearance” of it,’” because doing so would risk “‘[…] a “cycle” of criminalizing public service.’” The most obvious argument against this, of course, is that it isn’t public service that’s criminal, but criminal acts.
The Bush administration falls through the cobweb of the law with the assistance of its supposed political enemies. Meanwhile, Pfc. Joseph Patrick Dwyer, the former army medic made famous by a photo depicting him carrying an injured Iraqi child out of harm’s way, died this month of an apparently accidental overdose of prescription pills and aerosol fumes. Dwyer volunteered after 9-11, and was modest about the idea of being a hero, telling the Military Times, “‘Really, I was just one of a group of guys […]. I wasn’t standing out more than anyone else.’” Returning from Iraq, Dwyer suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, and in 2005 he thought his home was surrounded by Iraqis and he began shooting out his window. He and his wife separated due to his difficulties, but following his death she said, “‘He was a very good and caring person. He was just never the same when he came back [from Iraq], because of all the things he saw. He tried to seek treatment, but it didn’t work.’” In 2003, Dwyer said of the war, “‘I know that people are going to be better for it […]. The whole world will be. I hope being here is positive, because we’re a caring group of people out here.’”
The newest member of the hardpressed Baggs family, Carissa Alana Baggs, was born yesterday to my brother David and his wife B. Congratulations guys!
Don’t forget! The Brick House Gallery, 2837 36th Street (on the Corner of 36th Street and Broadway) tonight from 6-10 pm.
A scrap of paper I’ve been doodling on all week. You may notice both Batman and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle; Clave says I always find a way to fit them into any doodle, even if they’re almost hiding in this one. There’s also a new character here: Mat Cauthon, AKA “The Gambler,” from Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time fantasy series, which I’ve been listening to lately as audio books on my iPod. I don’t enjoy Jordan’s work as much as I do George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire (which will hopefully be an amazing new show on HBO very, very soon), but I’m not quite part of the group that artist and writer Abby Goldsmith describes as “[…] bitter ex-fans who continue to buy each new volume because they’re hopelessly addicted,” either. For example, although the series can be quite boring and silly at times, I was frustrated to discover yesterday, halfway through Crossroads of Twilight, that I’m missing the whole middle section of the book! Somehow the files were lost while uploading the CDs to iTunes, or never uploaded in the first place. As Mat himself would say, “Light burn me!”
