The History of 0

When time has erased all details and ambiguities concerning the Iraq war the Abu Ghraib pictures will still be remembered, for two interrelated reasons. First, the pictures may be seen as part of a particularly cruel form of torture, in which the act of exposure multiply the feeling of shame. The significance of the pictures rests not in what they depict but in the fact that they were taken at all. The sexual nature of the torture, the use of the camera to multiply the feeling of shame, and the fact that the soldiers through their inclusions in the frame show no shame constitute their truly shocking nature. Second, the pictures provoked significant debate. They were used as forms of resistance against the “coalition of the willing”, with the Bush government afterwards trying to exercise damage control. The reason that the pictures had such impact was not the event itself — the fact that torture was applied. Most people know that such acts occur in wars. However, the various photographs, especially the hooded man in the “Jesus Christ pose” with wires attached to his limbs, had iconic potential. On a more fundamental level the perverse practices known from the prison worked as a secret and disavowed basis of American power, which was brought to light. Suddenly, American ideals appeared on the same plane as their constitutive exceptions. This left the administration with the choice of either denying the existence of this “downside” or in generalizing the exception (legalizing torture etc.). It was in fact by not choosing one of the strategies, but playing both cards simultaneously, that the Bush government lost so much prestige.