I watched Rumsfeld’s live press conference on CNN and it was really scary. He has totally discarded the prison abuse scandal and is eviscerating the press for focusing on it, as if it were untrue, and the media were making a big deal out of nothing, and in doing so, worsening the situation in Iraq. He was going on about how now, because of our takeover of Afghanistan, women are now able to vote, when before they couldn’t. They can even wear ‘gray’ shoes. What? Like he has a “This Is What A Feminist Looks Like” shirt under his suit.
He completely glossed over the issue at hand, which was over the prisoner being hidden from the Red Cross AND an indictment of a civilian guilty of prisoner abuse! I didn’t know you could detain people without letting anyone know about it and since when did contractors do the dirty work of high ranking officials?
His technique is “indignant and ignant,” and he uses it with a lot of flair. Rumsfeld takes the podium like he is already put out by the fact that people dare to have him explain his actions, then he just expounds on his indignity and then he says he doesn’t know. He makes a lot of quotable indignations about how there were no high ranking officers involved with endangering lives of prisoners and a mad owl face that says “Give a hoot! Don’t pollute!” Then he just leaves the room of hotly simmering journalists to percolate with questions about the 9/11 tapes, brushing them off with a wave of his hand, like they don’t have the right to ask him about that, like they are crawling bugs or something.
When do we get to ask those questions? Is there going to have to be another investigation? Yet another panel, or series of panels to identify once again what went wrong? It is a depressing week. The hope dries up in this first summer heat and evaporates along with patience and good grooming. Everyone’s hair is frizzy or flat and we have no idea what a nation does in our name. I do not want to be anyone’s captor, nor anyone’s torturer.
It is unacceptable to me as an American and a human. I wish I could be ignantly indignant, but I actually care too much about life. When I see people, I know that they are real, that they are people, that there is someone behind their eyes, that they are Dads and Grads, and mothers and sisters and scapegoats, both Iraqi and American, military and civilian, and they feel just like I would feel. It sounds simplistic and yet it is incredibly complex. Like that R.E.M. song “Everybody Hurts.” The fact is poignant and difficult to bear if you actually held that in your heart and surveyed all the crimes committed on our behalf in the War on Terror.
To what extent are we accountable for these detestable acts as Americans? I don’t know. I feel 100% responsible, even though nothing I could do would have prevented it. What good is my guilt if it is not felt by those supposedly in charge? How do I spread my guilt around so that it will negatively affect those who are actually guilty and therefore threaten their sanity as opposed to mine?