America's Shame: Torture in the Name of Freedom

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Der Speigel

 

February 20, 2006

America's Shame

Torture in the Name of Freedom

 

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

 

 

The new pictures from Abu Ghraib provide the most recent evidence:

America's moral bank account is empty -- and it has lost the image

wars. The entire Muslim world no longer trusts the world's most

powerful nation.

 

They are photos that make your blood run cold. They take your breath

away. They turn your stomach. They are photos that make you wonder

what kinds of human beings would do these things to other human

beings. They trigger anger, disgust and shame.

 

One photo shows a prisoner being sandwiched between two stretchers,

like some perverse ad for a burger. In another, a disoriented

detainee, his body smeared with an unidentified substance, stumbles

down a prison corridor. A third image depicts a hooded man waiting

helplessly on a stool, with electric cables attached to his body.

There are many more -- and they all show prisoners being deliberately

humiliated for their captors' amusement, men stripped naked and forced

into submission. But it's not just humiliation -- the photos also

depict physical pain. In one photo, an American soldier kneels on the

back of a naked Iraqi prisoner, a puddle of blood indicating rough

treatment. In another, a prisoner bows deeply, servant-like, in front

of an American military officer: Uncle Tom's Cabin in the Middle East.

 

Once again, images from Abu Ghraib will burn themselves into the

world's collective memory, the shocking legacy of a superpower gone

astray -- icons of America's shame. They will become the images future

generations most associate with the war in Iraq, just as the photo of

a pro-US Saigon police chief holding his pistol to a Vietcong

guerilla's temple, his finger about to pull the trigger, has become a

symbol of the Vietnam War.

 

It's hardly relevant that the previously unpublished Abu Ghraib photos

taken in 2003 -- about two dozen of them -- are merely variations on

familiar themes. It also doesn't matter that at least some of the

perpetrators -- absent higher-ranking officers -- have already been

hauled before US military courts. Just as their predecessors, these

new pictures have the power to generate a dynamic of their own --

making them the perfect propaganda tool for ideological adversaries.

 

Egging on the faithful

 

Muslims, particularly in Pakistan and Malaysia, are still incensed

about the publishing of the Prophet Muhammad caricatures in European

newspapers. Last Friday at least 10 people died in the Libyan city of

Benghazi when police tried to stop them from storming the Italian

consulate. Italian Reform Minister Roberto Calderoli had raised their

ire by appearing on television in a T-shirt showing a cartoon of the

Prophet Mohammed.

 

Governments in countries like Iran and Syria have egged on the

faithful even further. Meanwhile, Europeans and Americans justifiably

championed the freedom of the press as a value worth defending --

against agitators on both sides.

 

The impact of these new Abu Ghraib photos is only amplified by the

fact that they coincide with the unrest triggered by the Danish

Muhammad cartoons. In the Islamic world, the photos are seen as proof

that the US military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq are little more

than thinly veiled colonial expeditions conducted in the name of

democracy.

 

From the perspective of the Middle East, the freedom and human rights

the Americans profess to be bringing to an oppressed world are nothing

more than a front, Washington's false alibi in pushing its agenda of

globalization. And for many in the Arab world, they are merely the

sinister elements of a slick and even fraudulent marketing campaign

aimed at humiliating Muslims.

 

The crimes committed by US soldiers in the name of freedom and human

rights, documented in unalterable photographs, appear to confirm the

suspicion that America's true aim is something entirely different --

that the US is primarily interested in imposing its own world order

and preserving its dominance.

 

In short, for the United States, the most powerful and influential

global power ever, the images from Abu Ghraib -- and the ongoing

debate over the legality of its prison camp at Guantanamo -- have

produced a moral catastrophe that's likely to endure for a very long time.

 

Victorious images quickly overshadowed

 

If Washington had had its way, entirely different images would have

come to symbolize the US campaign against Iraq's dictator Saddam

Hussein. The image of the toppling of that giant statue of Saddam

Hussein in Baghdad, for example -- the ideal symbol of the dictator's

downfall. And then there was the triumphant US President George W.

Bush's televised appearance on the aircraft carrier " Abraham Lincoln, "

a banner emblazoned with the words " Mission Accomplished " proudly and

telegenically hovering in the background.

 

But even as the president was announcing an end to hostilities in

Iraq, a bitter and brutal Iraqi insurgency was just getting under way

-- a resistance that brought together former officers in Saddam's army

with foreign al-Qaida fighters. The victorious images were quickly

overshadowed. Even the former dictator's trial comes across as a farce

these days, despite all efforts to convey the impression of law and order.

 

The battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqis can likely already

be penciled into the loss column -- the inability to provide such

basic necessities as electricity and drinking water for everyone

represents a major strike against the US military. The daily suicide

bombings and kidnappings mostly hit ordinary Iraqis. For many of them,

life is now more difficult than it was under Saddam. The American

military, too, is suffering. Losses mount almost daily; the death toll

had reached 2,272 by last Friday.

 

And now the Americans have also lost the battle of images.

 

Part II: The Moral Decline of " God's Own Country "

 

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has distanced himself from Washington,

saying that the new Abu Ghraib photos are evidence of events " unworthy

of a civilized society. " Indeed, the new photos from Abu Ghraib are so

horrific that the administration in Baghdad has opted not to reprint

them in government-affiliated media. Outrage over the images seems to

be developing in slow motion in Iraq and other Arab countries, almost

as though they merely prove what Muslims already expect from America.

The anger over the images reflected in the headlines of newspapers in

the Middle East was still less vehement by the weekend than the

still-raging furor over the Danish Muhammad cartoons.

 

Australia -- whose government is considered even more loyal to Bush

than British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his cabinet -- was the

source of the new images last Wednesday. Despite the fact that

Australian Prime Minister John Howard has sent 460 troops to Iraq, the

country has a number of press outlets often strongly critical of the

government. The television network SBS, which published the images, is

among them.

 

Reporter Olivia Rousset had researched a story about Abu Ghraib for

the network's investigative program called " Dateline. " As part of her

reporting, she traveled to New York, where she met with two soldiers

who had worked at Abu Ghraib and their attorneys. A DVD, produced by

the US Army's Criminal Investigation Command and showing dozens of new

images of prisoner abuse, eventually found its way into the reporter's

hands.

 

Reprehensible level of brutality

 

Back in Sydney, Rousset discussed the DVD with her producer, Mike

Carey, with fellow journalists and with the network's lawyers. The

images clearly weren't fakes. The disk given to Rousset by her contact

contained files that linked the pictures to a computer owned by

Charles Graner, already in prison in the United States for his role in

the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.

 

Was showing these photos to the world the right thing to do? They

depict a new, even more reprehensible level of brutality, including

photos of dead prisoners and extreme abuse. In one image, a prisoner's

tongue appears to have been cut out (although the event is so far

unproven).

 

The network decided to broadcast all but the very worst of the images,

and the images quickly circled the globe.

 

They appeared to be a part of unpublished documents that had already

come to light during an investigation by the US military, but were

then filed away. American media reportedly also had access to the

material, but declined to publish it, either on the advice of the

Pentagon or for reasons of self-censorship. Immediately after the SBS

report, though, Salon.com, which received a similar DVD at virtually

the same time SBS did, decided to publish 18 of the new photos.

 

US government officials reacted to the newly published photos with

provocative indifference. According to a Pentagon spokesman, the

images were regrettable but old news. The White House, for its part,

expressed outrage over the decision to release the photos in what it

called the current " heated mood. "

 

This official US indifference is most likely a pretense. Ever since

the Washington Post revealed that terrorism suspects have apparently

been interrogated in special CIA prisons in Eastern Europe, the US

Justice Department has been searching for whoever leaked the story and

threatening journalists with coercive detention. The journalists, says

Gary Wasserman, a professor at Washington's Georgetown University,

could even end up facing stiffer penalties than the uniformed

torturers. Nevertheless, CIA Director Porter Goss insists on

continuing the program, saying that " we are at risk of losing a key

battle -- the battle to protect our classified information. "

 

Good news has become a rarity

 

At CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, a special task force

nicknamed " Leak Chasers " has been assembled to scan the media for

leaked information. Last Wednesday, Republican politicians announced

that they were considering new legislation that would strengthen

prohibitions against publicly disclosing information deemed a threat

to national security.

 

But the reality is that the White House, the Pentagon and the

intelligence agencies are at a loss. Good news has become a rarity,

bad news is beginning to pile up and the Bush administration's

approval ratings have plunged to all-time lows. The cumulative effect

of the recent spate of bad news is devastating -- even for a

government so unwilling to admit shortcomings.

 

While many in the Muslim world rub their hands in glee, the West

watches the moral decline of " God's own country " with painful

astonishment. And it's a decline led by a president who, more than

most of his predecessors, invokes his born-again Christianity and his

desire to bring good into the world and to punish evil. Instead, the

Bush Administration has become the picture of incompetence. The bad

news continues to mount and America is growing impatient.

 

Take the embarrassing story of Vice President Richard Cheney

accidentally discharging a load of birdshot into a 78-year-old

attorney instead a flock of quails. While his victim was rushed to the

emergency room, Cheney apparently felt it unnecessary to notify the

authorities -- or the media. He only submitted to police questioning

10 hours after the accident providing a growing number of government

critics with yet more evidence of this government's arrogance.

 

Although Cheney's negligent hunting accident is unlikely to have legal

repercussions, another affair is more ominous and could even lead to

impeachment proceedings. A federal prosecutor has accused Cheney aide

Lewis " Scooter " Libby of committing perjury and obstruction of justice

over the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, whose husband accused the

Bush administration of using false information to bolster its

propaganda campaign leading up to the Iraq war. Libby, Cheney's former

chief of staff, has now told a special investigator, who was appointed

by the president, that he acted on behalf of his superiors.

 

And then there is the issue of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who has been

accused of attempting to bribe influential Republicans with ties to

the White House. Abramoff has already filed a guilty plea, although he

has declined to identify those who accepted his bribes. Bush has

claimed that he doesn't recall the man. Abramoff, however, says that

he knows the president, and that Bush has even asked about his

children. A photo showing the two men together has now surfaced

calling Bush's honesty into question.

 

Bush's standing abroad couldn't be worse

 

In yet another setback for the Bush administration, a congressional

investigation into government shortcomings during Hurricane Katrina

reached devastating conclusions about the administration and officials

at other levels of government. According to the report, Bush's

response to catastrophic flooding in New Orleans came far too late and

was indecisive, while his Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael

Chertoff, was a complete failure.

 

Finally, the White House has come under fire over allegations of

illegal wire-tapping without court approval, a practice that was

secretly authorized by the president following the terrorist attacks

of Sept. 11, 2001 and remains in place today. Big Brother has been

busy, at least according to the Washington Post, which reports that

the government has already investigated 325,000 people as possible

terrorism suspects in its secret program. The Democrats, seemingly

paralyzed for so long, view the violation of fundamental civil rights

stemming from the illegal wire-tapping program as so serious that they

are considering filing impeachment charges against Bush in an attempt

to drive him out of office.

 

That's unlikely to happen, and Bush will probably survive his second

term. But a majority of Americans no longer trust the country's leader

and commander-in-chief. In fact, 55 percent of Americans now believe

that sending troops to Iraq was a mistake.

 

While Bush's reputation suffers at home, his standing abroad couldn't

be worse. In some countries in the Muslim world, Bush is viewed as

even more dangerous than terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. Of course,

a self-righteous distortion of reality plays an important role here,

especially in the Arab world. In many of those countries where there

has been such a public outcry over American human rights violations,

human rights are systematically trampled upon.

 

Unlike Saddam Hussein's thugs and the current al-Qaida terrorists in

Iraq and Afghanistan, the Americans haven't committed thousands of

murders or cold-bloodedly beheaded innocent hostages. But the moral

masters of the universe, these self-proclaimed forces of good so

intent on bringing freedom and democracy to the world, have betrayed

their own ideals and lost their credibility. And their troops aren't

the only ones to blame.

 

Americans don't see themselves as fighting to capture strategic bases

or gain control over new oil wells, but rather as missionaries out to

make the world a better place, one endowed with freedom and human

rights. Gradually, though, it's not just the Muslim world which no

longer believes such claims.

 

Two names are especially emblematic for America's disgrace: Guantanamo

and Abu Ghraib.

 

Part III: " The Repertoire of Classic Torture States "

 

Only very few people are familiar with the full scope of American

prisoner transports in connection with the so-called war on terror.

Vice President Cheney has seen to it that even many within the US

government remain uninformed, and that only the heads and deputy heads

of the Senate and House intelligence committees are kept in the loop.

In September 2002, then CIA counterterrorism director Cofer Black told

a group of members of Congress that the reason for this extraordinary

level of secrecy was that everything was " strictly confidential. " " All

you have to know, " he said, " is that there is a pre-9/11 and a

post-9/11 era. The gloves came off after 9/11. " The camp at

Guantanamo, a US military base on the Cuban coast, became the

government's preferred detention center for what it calls " enemy

combatants. "

 

It remains unknown as to whether CIA interrogators at Guantanamo are

still permitted to employ six notorious methods to extract information

from prisoners. The " attention slap " involves hitting the prisoner in

the face with the edge of the hand. " Long time standing " means forcing

a prisoner to stand uninterrupted for up to 40 hours, a practice that

prompted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to remark that his job also

requires that he spend hours on his feet. In another technique,

" waterboarding, " the prisoner is repeatedly doused with water until he

believes he is drowning.

 

" These are all methods in the repertoire of the classic torture

states, " says Austrian United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture,

Manfred Nowak. In a letter published last Wednesday, Nowak and four of

his counterparts sharply denounced the US for continuing to maintain

the prison at Guantanamo.

 

" Serious, objective, independent fact-finders "

 

With his bushy moustache and the air of a benevolent uncle, Nowak, a

law professor at the University of Vienna, would normally be

considered a good-natured man. But nowadays he has trouble containing

his rage. The Bush administration dismissed his report as " useless, "

accusing him of partisanship because he turned down an invitation to

visit Guantanamo. Nowak, though, countered that the invitation was

useless because he was denied permission to interview prisoners --

though US Defense Secretary made it clear that Nowak and his team were

welcome to come inspect empty cells.

 

" We are serious, objective, independent fact-finders, " Nowak said in

response. " We would undermine the UN's fact-finding capacities if we

were to accept an invitation that we are not accepting from any other

state in the world. "

 

Nowak has been in office since December 2004, in a position that

requires him to scrutinize the world's torture chambers. But he has

rarely received such treatment, even in the People's Republic of

China, where he conducted an investigation last November. His

conclusion on the matter of Guantanamo is that the American government

has gradually begun chipping away at the prohibition on torture.

 

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan hasn't been the only one to call for

the closing of Guantanamo. The German chancellor, the European

Parliament and even the British government, America's loyal ally and

frequently derided as a " poodle " to its masters in Washington, have

all called for shutting down the detention camp. Washington, they say,

should either release the 490 prisoners currently being held at

Guantanamo or it should allow them to stand trial before regular

courts. Many of them are not accused of hostilities against the United

States or its allies. " Most, when captured, were innocent of any

terrorist activity, were Taliban foot soldiers at worst, and were

often far less than that. And some, perhaps many, are guilty only of

being foreigners in Afghanistan or Pakistan at the wrong time, " writes

the weekly politics magazine National Journal.

 

The Washington Post is of the opinion that Rumsfeld established the

foundation for the crimes in Abu Ghraib at Guantanamo, when it " swept

aside the Geneva Convention. " It's a claim that is difficult to

refute, especially in light of the fact that, from August to early

September 2003, a team from Guantanamo trained the guards at Abu Ghraib.

 

No compunctions about torture

 

No one has claimed that the military leadership at the prison, or even

the Pentagon, approved or even ordered the grisly excesses. But the

atmosphere was clearly such that lower-ranking soldiers felt no

compunctions about implementing " torture-like interrogation methods. "

They committed torture with a good conscience, torturing for freedom,

for the superiority of the West -- at least as they saw it.

 

The idea that a few bad apples were responsible for the Abu Ghraib

torture scandal has been reflected in the US's legal treatment of the

affair, one in which not a single politician has been called to

account. Six suspects were named in the torture investigation headed

by Major General Antonio Taguba. None of them had climbed higher than

the rank of sergeant on the military career ladder. Sergeant Charles

Graner began serving a 10-year prison sentence for a series of

criminal acts against Iraqi prisoners on January 15, 2005.

 

On October 20, 2004, Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick filed a plea of

guilty on all charges. Frederick, who has since been given a

dishonorable discharge from the military, was sentenced to eight years

in prison. After confessing before a military court on May 19, 2004,

Jeremy Sivits was demoted to the rank of private and sentenced to one

year in prison. Armin Cruz, also demoted, was sentenced to eight

months in prison.

 

The two female soldiers convicted to date came away with even lighter

sentences. Sabrina Harman, declared guilty on six counts on May 17,

2005, received a six-month prison term. Megan Ambuhl was fined half a

month's pay and demoted to the rank of private. On September 27, 2005,

Lynndie England, whose name was not mentioned in Taguba's report but

gained notoriety as a result of photos depicting her holding a leash

attached to an Iraqi prisoner, was handed down a three-year prison

sentence, much lighter than the 10-year sentence she had been expected

to receive.

 

$6,000 fine for murder

 

When Iraqi Major General Abd al-Hamid Mauhush, viewed as a close

associate of Saddam Hussein, was apprehended in November 2003, the

Americans were keenly interested in getting him to talk. He was

considered one of the leaders of the Iraqi insurgency against the US

military. His interrogator, Corporal Lewis Welshofer, resorted to a

number of excesses in an attempt to extract information from Mauhush.

According to a military prosecutor, the captured Iraqi was treated

" worse than a dog. " Welshofer finally stuffed the prisoner into a

sleeping bag and Mauhush died. In January, the US soldier was

sentenced to a $6,000 fine and was restricted to his home, office and

church for a period of two months.

 

Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, head of Abu Ghraib Prison at the

time of the prisoner abuses, was demoted. Karpinski, now a colonel,

sees herself as a " scapegoat " for her superiors, including then US

military commander in Iraq Ricardo Sanchez, who is expected to retire

from the military this summer and receive a generous government pension.

 

Those with political responsibility for the affair have fared even

better. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld claims that he offered

his resignation twice -- in vain. Instead of being dismissed, he was

appointed to Bush's second-term cabinet.

 

Far from being held accountable, those who helped pave the legal way

for a policy that essentially deprived prisoners in the war on terror

of all rights and gave the president carte blanche to issue orders

that in some cases violated international law have even experienced

career advances. Former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales was

promoted to Attorney General. Michael Chertoff, previously the CIA's

chief counsel, is now Secretary of Homeland Security. And Jay Bybee, a

lawyer and author of the notorious memo that declares legal any

interrogation method that does not end in death or lasting physical

damage, was even rewarded with a federal judgeship by President Bush.

 

Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have since been incorporated into the

vernacular as cautionary examples of what happens when the end

justifies the means. Books have been written about the issue, and the

ever-escalating battle of cultures has even found its way into films.

 

The clash of cultures on the big screen

 

The cinema has turned into a new forum for revenge, for the

uninhibited expression of opposition to the images from Abu Ghraib.

The Turkish film " Valley of the Wolves, " for example, is a pure

cinematic slap in the face against Hollywood and Bush administration

propaganda, an angry indictment of America and the west that's as

naïve as it is perfidious.

 

The technically complex action film simply reverses the perspective,

turning American heroes into thugs, while Muslim patriots heroically

defend their homeland, their culture and their honor. The " Axis of

Evil " no longer lies in the Orient, but in the West. A mirror is held

up to the United States that projects a cleverly distorted image: good

versus evil, the noble versus the lowly, the honorable versus the

underhanded, Islam versus Christianity and Judaism.

 

The latest round in the battle over images and cultures begins with a

bloodbath. The location is a village somewhere in northern Iraq where

a wedding is being celebrated, a peaceful gathering of Turks, Kurds

and Arabs. The men dance and the women look on, while children play in

their midst. But then some of the men, in a burst of enthusiasm not

uncommon in the region, raise their weapons and shoot into the sky.

 

Part IV: Anti-Americanism on the Silver Screen

 

This is the signal US soldiers who have been hiding nearby have been

waiting for. " Okay, now they're terrorists, " says an officer,

commenting on the celebratory gunfire. Then his group of Rambo-like

warriors storms the village, threatening the guests and assaulting the

women. When a young boy shyly touches an American soldier's gun, the

soldier shoots the boy, triggering a massacre in which dozens of

wedding guests are killed. The groom is executed with a gunshot to his

head.

 

The film, which cost €10 million to produce, making it the most

expensive Turkish production of all time, has already brought record

numbers of viewers into cinemas since it was first released in early

February: more than 2 million in Turkey, but also hundreds of

thousands in England, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria and

Switzerland. In Germany, where " Valley of the Wolves " is being shown

in Turkish with German subtitles, 236,000 people, mainly Turks, saw

the film in the first week following its Feb. 9 premiere. Whenever

American villains and sadists die in the film, enthusiastic audiences

applaud.

 

The protagonist in " Valley of the Wolves, " already made popular in

Turkey by the eponymous television series, is intelligence agent Polat

Alemdar, played by popular Turkish actor Necati Sasmaz. The actor

plays a sort of Turkish James Bond, but unlike the dapper Briton, who

often shows complete disregard for rules, procedures and his

superiors, Alemdar is a loyal nationalist whose only obligation is to

his fatherland.

 

Turkish honor

 

Alemdar's mission is to restore Turkish honor, a sentiment triggered

by a real-life incident. In July 2003, American troops in northern

Iraq detained four Turkish officers and, like terrorists, took them

away with bags placed over their heads. The " bag affair " dealt a

sensitive blow to the Turk's chronically low self-esteem and to this

day is viewed as a national disgrace.

 

In the film, one of the humiliated officers commits suicide, shouting

" Long live the fatherland! " before taking a pistol to his head.

Intelligence agent Alemdar goes into battle to avenge the officer's

death. " I am a Turk, and I will kill anyone who places a bag over the

head of a Turk, " the agent announces on the screen, to the cheers of

many viewers. In the end, Alemdar plunges a dagger into the heart of

the despised American.

Serdar Akar cleverly intermingles reality and fiction in the

film. One scene is a re-enactment of the torture and abuse at Abu

Ghraib prison, including a female guard beating a prisoner and

threatening him with a vicious German Shepherd. The Frankfurter

Allgemeine Zeitung called it " a hateful cinematic sermon, " while the

influential weekly Die Zeit described the film as a " battle of

cultures in cinemascope. "

 

Anil Sahin, managing director of Maxximum Film und Kunst GmbH, which

distributes the film in German theaters, sees these reviews as

excessive. " Finally we have a film that shows the ugly face of war in

Iraq and of America, " says Sahin, whose company touts itself as

forming " an effective cultural bridge between Europe and Turkey. "

 

In fact, " Valley of the Wolves " uses the same approach with which the

American cinema reacted to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the

1980s and intensification of the Cold War. In films like " The Red

Tide " (1983), the Red Army marches through the United States like some

marauding force, challenging the country and its inhabitants to defend

themselves unconditionally. And in other revenge-oriented Hollywood

action films, the villain is often an ugly Arab.

 

The " Road to Guantanamo "

 

Of course, " Valley of the Wolves " is a malicious caricature. But, like

any caricature, its core is very real. This reality is also denounced

in a far more serious film titled " The Road to Guantanamo, " which

proved to be an audience favorite when it premiered at last week's

Berlin Film Festival. In a mixture of interviews, documentary footage

and recreated scenes, British director Michael Winterbottom ( " In This

World " ) tells the story of a handful of British Muslims who were taken

to the US detainee camp in Cuba two years ago and were not released

until March 2004. " The Road to Guantanamo " is a furious indictment of

the United States from the perspective of its victims.

 

In September 2001, a few days after the attacks on New York and

Washington, four friends -- Ruhel Ahmed, then 19, Asif Iqbal, also 19,

Shafiq Rasul, 23 and Monir Ali, 22, all " completely ordinary English

youth " (to quote Winterbottom), travel from their homes in the town of

Tipton near Birmingham to the land of their ancestors, Pakistan. Asif

is traveling there to meet the bride his mother has selected for him.

The others follow him to attend the wedding. Only later in his film

does Winterbottom reveal that two of the men have prior records for

minor offences, and all survive on part-time jobs.

 

But nothing comes of the wedding. At the suggestion of an imam, the

four young men, accompanied by Shafiq's local cousin, travel to

Afghanistan to provide humanitarian assistance, but they're also

seeking adventure. Director Winterbottom sees the journey to

Afghanistan as a " voyage of self-discovery " although, he adds, " we

weren't interested in attempting, from a nonpartisan standpoints, to

examine or prove everything they told us. "

 

Following a week-long odyssey, during which US forces bomb the Taliban

regime, Ruhel, Asif and Shafiq fall into the hands of Northern

Alliance troops on the road to Kandahar, and are eventually turned

over to the Americans. In early 2002, after countless interrogations,

the three Britons are loaded onto a plane and flown to Guantanamo.

 

Winterbottom and Assistant Director Mat Whitecross re-enacted all the

torture scenes with actors, filmed with handheld cameras and

interspersed interviews with the real prisoners. As a result, " Road to

Guantanamo " comes across as incredibly authentic. Winterbottom's

images will likely shape our image of Guantanamo more than the few

original photographs from the camp. The viewer himself is practically

held hostage.

 

Winterbottom's film is completely devoid of any suggestion that the

Taliban were bloody tyrants. The fact that the director shot numerous

scenes in Iran, which meant that the film had to be approved by the

Iranian government -- a regime with an established, quasi-official

policy of torture and murder -- raises some doubts as to its

educational intentions.

 

Blow meets blow in this cinematic battle of images, which portrays and

dangerously emotionalizes the clash of two cultures -- despite the

fact that it is apparently described simply and objectively. In his

film " Hamburger Lektionen " ( " Hamburg Lectures " ), which just premiered

at the Berlin Film Festival, director Romuald Karmakar reconstructs

two meetings between Mohammed al-Fasasi, the former imam at Hamburg's

Al-Kuds mosque, and the faithful in January 2000, meetings that were

filmed by an unknown person. Three of the suicide pilots of Sep. 11,

2001 apparently attended this mosque regularly and may have been in

contact with Fasasi.

 

Karmakar had the meetings in which Fasasi answered the attending

Muslims' questions translated verbatim into German and recited by

actor Manfred Zapatka. The outcome is a nightmarish document of

political indoctrination and systematic recruitment for jihad.

 

Haunting America for decades to come

 

Both lessons begin quite harmlessly with questions of general conduct

and religious discipline. But then Fasasi begins appealing to his

listeners' feelings of inferiority. Where does Islam's dignity go, he

asks, when Muslims are forced to sweep the streets in western

countries? The West, he later adds, has robbed Islam of everything,

and it's about time to strike back.

 

Fasasi claims that the West's wealth is based on exploitation of

Islam. Anyone who insults Islam, he says, is an enemy and must be

killed. Non-Muslim women and children lose their inviolability the

minute they hold a weapon in their hands, and the populations of

Western countries must be viewed as enemies, as are their governments,

and therefore destroyed. In essence, Fasasi is calling for total war

without regard for culpability, one in which the media and educators

should play a key role.

 

Our media-based society, no longer a monopoly of the West, is hungry

for images and produces them nonstop. To ensure that images do not

fade all too quickly, and in fact give off their own energy, they must

document something significant -- and then they'll endure.

 

The images from Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib will endure, and they will

haunt America for decades to come. A global power can make mistakes

and give in to folly, but when its moral foundation begins to crumble,

it is constantly forced to deal with the images of its own humiliation

and disgrace.

 

Anything goes once islands have been created outside the rule of law.

If Guantanamo is elevated to the status of acceptability -- if those

in detention are granted neither the presumption of innocence nor the

protections of the Vienna Convention -- isn't Abu Ghraib simply the

logical and foreseeable end of this long chain? Does it not become the

innate product of a new system the government has inaugurated in its

war against terror?

 

Abu Ghraib represents a substantial moral burden, but the Pentagon is

hesitant to turn over the prison on the outskirts of Baghdad to the

Iraqi government, as Minister of Human Rights Suher al-Chulabo has

demanded. Guantanamo is a scandal, but this government is unlikely to

shutter the camp, because it could very well be interpreted as a sign

of weakness. The camp's elimination will be up to the next US president.

 

What remains is cynicism. One of Egypt's leading newspapers summarized

it nicely last Friday with the headline to its lead story: " Freedom!

Democracy! Torture! " Two of the new prisoner abuse images are on page

nine of the paper. Sensational presentation and whipping the public

into a frenzy are no longer needed. After all, why break down open doors?

 

Even Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based network, simply broadcast the images

as little more than news. They speak for themselves and, in their

unparalleled drastic nature, cement in place an idea that has become

the core of the Arab world view: The West lies.

 

It touts human rights, and yet it rolls our sons in blood and dirt. It

complains about the excesses of Saddam Hussein, but it also forces

Iraqi men to masturbate on camera. It expresses outrage over our

primitiveness, and yet it films a man banging his head against a

prison door until blood finally gushes from his forehead.

 

Aura gone

 

Nowhere is the fallout from the images more dramatic, the resignation

greater, than among those in the Islamic world who had disdained the

extremists and had truly believed that the Islamic world stands a

chance of being reformed.

 

There are those in the Arab world who have welcomed the Iraq war and

America's project of democratizing the Middle East. " The fall of

Saddam established a fundamental moral concept in our political

culture, " says Egyptian telephone magnate Naguib Sawiris:

" responsibility. " Despite its many shortcomings, says Shibli Mallat, a

Beirut attorney and democratic challenger of Lebanese President Emile

Lahoud, the war in Iraq did put an end to appeasement in dealing with

the despots.

 

But who wants to listen to it anymore?

 

" The second group of Abu Ghraib images spells the preliminary end to

liberalism in the Arab world, " says Mohammed al-Sayyid Said of the

Ahram Center for Strategic Studies in Cairo. The secular, leftist and

moderate wings of all political groups, Said believes, launched a

faint-hearted attempt to take advantage of the new freedom last fall.

But, he adds, " it's over. "

 

There is some reason to believe that this justification for the

withdrawal is little more than an excuse. President Hosni Mubarak is

an autocratic ruler who brutally suppresses any opposition. The

" Movement for Change, " or Kifaya, has disappeared into oblivion, and

the Islamists have benefited.

 

America has forfeited its aura as a global power. It will be a long

time before the United States will be able once again to claim moral

superiority. America has inadvertently, but consistently, inflamed the

clash of cultures.

 

The great Winston Churchill once said that America had the habit of

committing every possible mistake to ultimately arrive at the right

decision. The first part of the Churchill quote is proving to be

reality, while the redemptive second part has yet to materialize.

 

By Erich Follath, Siegesmund von Ilsemann, Marion Kraske, Romain

Leick, Georg Mascolo, Mathieu von Rohr, Gerhard Spörl, Martin Wolf and

Bernard Zand. Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan