I was appalled by the pictures of prisoner torture coming out of Abu Ghraid. Some may have been surprised, but I wasn't. This is yet another failure of Americans to learn from their own history. So what history am I referring to?
History: Part I - Racism: In World War II, there were American generals who protested the killings of some German generals Keitel and Jodl (and keep in mind that there were some that escaped American prosecution). On the other hand, a large number of Japanese officers were sentenced and killed and no one blinked an eye. (This is from an oral history account taken from the fantastic Studs Terkel book "The Good War.") Why? Racism. In the late 19th and early 20th century, there was a "Yellow Peril" stereotype (which mainly applied to the Chinese, but also the Japanese too). The Brits and the Americans thought that "the yellow people" were out to take over the world.
History: Part II - Prison Psychology: In a famous 1971 psychological experiment at Stanford University, Phillip Zimbardo ran a prison simulation. He had originally planned on running the experiment for two weeks. He had to call it off after six days. You'd figure that a group of 18 young men, split randomly into nine guards and nine prisoners would be fairly tame, right? The experiment crossed a line at some point. They stopped acting. The results are quite enlightening, as you will see if you wander on over to The Stanford Prisoner Experiment slide show. Particularly of interest are Slide number 33, which Zimbardo has posted one of the Abu Ghraid pictures and asked how this was similar to what the guards did at the SPE, as well as Slide 38, which details the reasons why they stopped, including this one: "First, we had learned through videotapes that the guards were escalating their abuse of prisoners in the middle of the night when they thought no researchers were watching and the experiment was 'off.' Their boredom had driven them to ever more pornographic and degrading abuse of the prisoners."
I hope Rush Limbaugh goes to jail. He isn't gonna know what hit his big stupid ass. They're just tryin' to blow off some steam, Rushy-baby, and you're an Oxy-contin-gobbling enemy of the people, so bend over and grin.
