Monday, October 20, 2008

Ghosts of Abu Ghraib

It has taken me almost a week to wrap my head around this movie. Immediately after the movie I had no idea what to think or what to say. Everyone noticed a change in me that night as I walked into my room not saying a word. Instead of speaking, I just put my things down silently and crawled into bed for about a half hour. I did have to get up to have dinner and meet with people but I wasn't very talkative.


With that being said, I havc not really gotten the movie out of my head as of yet. When a professor questioned how I liked the movie, I did not know how to respond. It was an interesting tale, was the first thing to come to mind, even though it barely touches the true impact it made upon me. I could not believe what I had seen or what I had heard. It was an insult to every Iraq person, actually it was an insult to any human being with emotions and some form of empathy. For the accused to try and justify their actions... it is beyond my comprehension to even begin to try to understand their motives. I just didn't understand, and that bothered me.


Sabrina Harmann: [holding a large photo of herself smiling with a "thumbs up" gesture in front of the face of a recently deceased prisoner in a body bag] We came to the prison and we were told that a prisoner just died. And he died of a heart attack in the shower and that was they weren't going to come pick him up right away because they didn't have any means and that he was in a body bag. So, of course, Sergeant Frederick and me, we like, OK, it's just a dead body right. He died of a heart attack. So we went in. I believe Corporal Grainer took the photo of me. It was just a dead guy. It was suppose to be just a dead guy. We didn't realize until after these photos that he was bleeding in places that you wouldn't bleed from getting a heart attack. Well - the thumbs up I got that from the little kids. The smile I always smile for the camera. It's the natural thing you do in front of a camera. It really wasn't anything negative towards this guy. Like I didn't know he was just murdered. I thought its just war - another dead guy. No big deal.

This was obnoxious. I cannot even vocalize how angry this made me feel. Maybe it is watching someone you love die that angers me so, but it was horrible. I wanted to scream and cry at the same time. I wished that the family of the man would feel justice by their punishments. I do not feel justice from their punishments. I do not think that anything was solved. The problem still exists. I wanted for the longest time to be a JAG in the Air Force. While I may not because of physical limitations, I was saddened that things like this happen but it made my resolve stronger. I just do not understand.

1 comment:

Donne said...

I'm guessing that, in a time of war, one becomes numb to a stranger's individual death. A sad thing to happen, but it might be necessary to maintain mental health- if you thought of every soldier as a man/woman with friends and family and likes and loves, perhaps many would not go through with it. In some cases that would be bad, but in others (like fighting against, say, Hitler), it would be needed- and the two're not always easily distinguishable from each other in the present. As they say, retrospection is 20/20.

Sad, this violent world we live in.