Wednesday, May 05, 2004
Raze Abu Ghraib, or make it a museum
Something in my last post is worth discussing alone: we as liberators should not, absolutely not, be using Saddam's prisons as our prisons. Too much horror is associated with them. It's not quite as bad as was using Nazi or Japanese research on unwilling human beings, but there is a real taint that rubs off on us from using the dictator's prisons.
Either they need to be razed or turned into museums.
We have contractors and money. Clearly we'll need prisons, but what better way to mark the discontinuity of the new Iraq from the old Iraq than saying that the grounds occupied by the old prisons is too bloodstained to use as anything other than a memorial? Abu Ghraib may be an Iraqi Ground Zero (well that and Halabja). It's time we think about how the new Iraq is going to remember the national nightware it just exited.
Something in my last post is worth discussing alone: we as liberators should not, absolutely not, be using Saddam's prisons as our prisons. Too much horror is associated with them. It's not quite as bad as was using Nazi or Japanese research on unwilling human beings, but there is a real taint that rubs off on us from using the dictator's prisons.
Either they need to be razed or turned into museums.
We have contractors and money. Clearly we'll need prisons, but what better way to mark the discontinuity of the new Iraq from the old Iraq than saying that the grounds occupied by the old prisons is too bloodstained to use as anything other than a memorial? Abu Ghraib may be an Iraqi Ground Zero (well that and Halabja). It's time we think about how the new Iraq is going to remember the national nightware it just exited.
