Using Abu Ghraib as a Prison was Stupid
Here’s a tip for anyone who plans to liberate a country from a nasty dictatorship known for torturing and killing dissidents: Don’t use that dictatorship’s most famous prison after the liberation. It may seem like the most perfect detention facility around — already equipped with cells and locks and walls and guard towers — but taking over the old dictator’s torture center and running it as your own makes it look like no true liberation has taken place; that one dictatorship has been exchanged for another.
Remember the famous picture of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad being pulled down by cheering Iraqis, aided by U.S. troops? It had tremendous symbolic value. Now imagine the symbolic value of razing Abu Ghraib, the building where Saddam sent his enemies to be tortured, maimed or killed.
No one knows how many Iraqis were held there during Saddam’s reign. His thugs were big on drqagging suspected dissidents off to undisclosed locations, with Abu Ghraib being one of the prime destinations because it was so well-equipped with cells and locks and walls and guard towers — and torture chambers. Families of detainees held there and in other Iraqi prisons were left to wonder if they’d ever see their loved ones again. Visitors were not allowed, and the accused were not allowed counsel or other humane contact with the outside world.
American troops in bulldozers breaking down the walls of Saddam’s most infamous prison would have been a lower-key but more practical — and more enduring — symbol of an American-led Iraqi liberation than pushing over a statue. It would have said, not only to Iraqis but to the rest of the world, “We hate prisons that are run by brutes and torturers so much that we delight in removing them from the earth. We are tearing down Abu Ghraib so no Iraqi mother will ever again need to wonder if her son is being tortured here.”
But no. In one of the greatest PR blunders of the Iraqi invasion, the “liberators” not only failed to destroy Abu Ghraib but decided to use it the same way Saddam had: As a place to hold suspects without counsel or regular contact with their families — and, as we now know, even Saddam’s Abu Ghraib tradition of prisoner humiliation and torture was continued.
Let’s assume we went into Iraq with the purest of motives; that we really wanted the Iraqi people to enjoy freedom, democracy, and prosperity. (Actually, I believe most Americans do want to bring these boons to the Iraqi people.)
Based on this assumption, our use of Abu Ghraib as a prison was one of the dumbest things we could have done. Even before it became public knowledge that some of our soldiers were treating prisoners there as if Abu Ghraib was still being run by Saddam, not by Americans, we had firmly associated ourselves with one of the most notorious symbols of Saddam’s brutality.
I am truly disappointed that the people currently running the American government and military don’t understand the fear a place like Abu Ghraib can strike into the hearts of a repressed people well enough to tear it down — and build a hospital or other humane building on its ruins instead of putting an “Under New Management” sign on the door and continuing to use it the same way it was used by the overthrown dictator.