Abu Ghraib is far from our only national stain; Guantánamo is arguably worse. But Abu Ghraib was the wake-up call for many of us, the first proof of what we had feared, that we were, in fact, engaged in torture and degradation in our military prisons, that far from upholding the principles of our nation, we had abandoned them.
There was no ignoring the facts on the ground; the dead were dead, the degraded degraded. We had photographic evidence of it. We could see it. And we were horrified.
Well, except for the Bush Administration. Oh, they mumbled about “bad apples,” and Donald Rumsfeld claims he offered his resignation. But Rummy wasn’t allowed to resign, and the Bush Administration didn’t take any real steps to ensure that the events wouldn’t be repeated. How could they? After all, Abu Ghraib happened because of the Bush Administration’s policies, their subtle and cute distinctions between torture and “cruel, inhuman, and degrading” actions — the latter of which were okayed at the highest level of government. When you create a culture in which waterboarding is considered a perfectly acceptable means of questioning, you create the events of Abu Ghraib.
Sadly, Abu Ghraib was not the end of it; even knowing what was being done in our names, Americans re-elected George W. Bush. We continued a policy of degradation and extraordinary rendition and, yes, torture through to this very day. And those actions have stained our nation’s soul, and helped to make us the international pariah that we are today.
Hopefully, the Obama Administration can work to undo that damage. Hopefully, they remain true to their promises to close Guantánamo and end torture. But it is too late for those who died in our custody, and too late for those who were tortured in the name of freedom. We can only offer our apologies, and never, never allow ourselves to go down that path again.
