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Lisa Ann Pierce, W A M M
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Daily the images out of Iraq assault our senses with new revelations of inhumanity. In these days of war, the gap between the world in which we live and the world we work toward seems to be ever widening.
Just before the news broke about prisoner torture at Abu Ghraib and across Iraq, we planned this issue of worldwideWAMM to focus on the injustices faced by the common soldier and her or his family. We wanted to acknowledge that there are connections between the global systems of injustice that the U.S. military enforces and systems of injustice within the military. Now that task seems more important than ever—even if complicated by the brutality displayed by troops at Abu Ghraib.
At bottom, the story of Abu Ghraib is a story of dehumanization. Iraqi prisoners were stripped of their dignity, their humanity. While the images are shocking, we cannot pretend surprise. We have enough experience with war in our lifetime to know that this is what war is about: inhumanity. And we are well aware of the fact that torture has been used tactically throughout United States history.
Who could be so inhuman as to participate in such abuses? Talk radio and the print media are all aflutter with such questions. But once again, we cannot pretend surprise. We have enough experience to know that those who will participate in the systematic dehumanization of others must first, themselves, be dehumanized.
Articles in this issue of worldwideWAMM name a few of the many ways in which U.S. troops are dehumanized: risk of death and severe injury, exposures to environmental hazards, sexual abuse, scapegoating, and financial distress—to say nothing of the extraordinary psychological and spiritual injury involved in the taking of life. Gulf War veteran Chante Wolf is horrified at the idea that this treatment could be extended to even more troops through a draft.
Truth is, we have barely begun to address this downward spiral of dehumanization that is war. But maybe that is all that is needed for now. The details are not as important as the simple truth that we must break the cycle of dehumanization if we are to build a culture of peace and justice.
Our only response to the inhumanity of war is the reaffirmation of humanity. By affirming the dignity and worth of ourselves and all people, we take a step toward a world where war is not possible—where no distorted illusion of liberty can supplant the truth that there is no freedom in the killing, dying, and deranging of war.
As we daily face new images from Iraq, we must be about the work of reclaiming the humanity of those Iraqi prisoners. That starts by holding accountable all who contributed to their murder, rape, and torture—especially those who had the most power to establish this patterned course of systemic violence. But our work cannot end there.
There is no way for us to fight this war or any war without first proclaiming the basic humanity of all the people our government has deemed expendable, from Iraqis to U.S. troops and veterans, from the abused abroad to the neglected at home, from the endangered to the exploited to the disappeared to the dead.
Of course, this proclamation will mean nothing if it is not first engendered in our own movement. To close the gap between the world in which we live and the world we work toward, we must start by building bridges that affirm and dignify humanity—and we must learn to do so without building those bridges on the backs of others.
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© 2004 Women Against Military Madness. All rights reserved.
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Complete June 2004 Index - click here
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