Death and Renewal

Abu Ghraib continues to haunt me. What is to be done?

If there were no pictures, there would be no Abu Ghraib. How many other cells, and how much torture existed and continues to exist is beyond conceptualization. These guys got caught red handed just out of the stupidity of taking photos and leaking them to a friend that was trusted.

The military covered up the extent of the torture by offering an amnesty period to anyone that had photos, hinting they be destroyed. The administration covered their backs by giving the people that were caught in the photos low grade prison sentences and not charging the actual murders or anyone in the administration that actually signed off on these policies. No figures were released on deaths in Abu Ghraib, and it is still not clear how many people, who endured so much of these disgusting tortures, actually were innocent...

What scares me, what horrifies me, is that since then, the US government has not only signed off on documents that further erode the Geneva Conventions, but also peruse an active policy of sending prisoners to foreign jails where they can be abused to greater extents.

Who am I but some dumb shit kid that got lucky enough to be born to a family who can live comfortably and relatively detached? What better way to make use of this gift then to agitate, to remember, to seek knowledge, to condemn. I am lucky, to be born as such, then be one of many Iraqi woman raped by security forces, children tortured to test their fathers will or a random innocent forced into a cell, psychologically and physically abused, sodomized and murdered.

We are an abused generation, we all were tortured and humiliated together. We cannot take this back, or reverse our direction, rather only hope to divert it from further abuse; that our children can live without the horrors we or our fathers have committed, or suffer our rape. All we can hope for is to remember, and to learn, to seek knowledge, and then to teach through our actions; to offer a better tomorrow. Let us be a transistor to peace, then another manifestation of hatred.

Let us give our children a chance to dream again, then endure the nightmares we have been witness to.