GEORGIE ANNE GEYER Abu Ghraib -- 'That is just not who we are'

WASHINGTON -- For the first time since the war in Iraq began, the breathtakingly Orwellian qualities of the American "war effort" there are coming into depressingly sharp focus.
Last week, those of us who used to cover the Soviet Union almost imagined we were back in Moscow in the 1960s, listening to the proclamations of the old Bolsheviks, where "peace" meant Soviet hegemony and where "evil" meant good. In reality, we were hearing from our own leaders that the occupation of a country meant its "freedom" and that returning Saddam's men to power was part of our "liberation" of Iraq.
Is this really the America we know and love?
Meanwhile, here in Washington, the incessant rhetorical food fight of the American political campaign continued.
Orchestrated particularly by the White House and the Republican neocon "establishment," this line of thought would have us believe that John Kerry, who fought valiantly in Vietnam, is the lesser hero to George W. Bush. The Bush/Cheney/neocon tactic has been to drape Kerry's heroism with the irrelevant picture of his angrily throwing away his medals.
I was there
But let me add a point of reference here. I was in Vietnam as a correspondent for short periods in the late 1960s. Even by 1967, most GIs in Vietnam were totally disillusioned with the war. In fact, Kerry's attitude when he returned, far from being bizarrely out-front of his generation, was rather typical -- his position only marks him as a highly honorable man.
But the attacks on Kerry -- waged incredibly by the deferment mavens of this administration -- were not the most important news of the week, if only because they were so transparent. Bush strategist Karl Rove was merely trying to force the attention of the country away from reality by presenting a constant stream of trivia that he puts forward and controls.
(Unfortunately, much of the press, deep into its own food-fight mentality, then responds -- and we have multiple absurdities.)
Far more important, but related, is what is happening on the ground in Iraq, and the attitudes of some of the American officers and troops there.
In case you didn't notice, the United States was finally caught between the deadly dual hooks of uprisings in Fallujah and Najaf and the application of the Vietnam War adage of "destroying the village to save it." First, out of desperation, we announced that Baathists would be welcome in a new Iraqi government after all; then, that we would deal with Fallujah by bringing back some of Saddam's generals to pacify the city; then, that we would/will be able to go back into Fallujah and build schools and distribute toys to the children and make the Iraqis into happy democrats, just as we said we would.
The television news shows said there were "smiles all around" when the Iraqi generals pulled up to meet and greet the Americans outside the city, and one American general said, obviously pleased, "They want to cooperate with us."
Meanwhile, the line in Washington continued: We are bringing "freedom" and "liberty" to Iraq.
Ah, but just at this moment of dissimulation, when words no longer meant what they had always meant because their function had been so debased, and when decent people went along with the debasement because they lacked courage and heart, another picture twisted into focus.
American atrocities
From the way the American occupation began and proceeded, it had always been clear not only that the Iraqi people would swiftly come to hate the occupation and their occupiers, but that the occupiers would become corrupted and debased as the mission, impossible to begin with, naturally deteriorated. Once our people, never attendant to cultural realities, moved in as the new owners of Saddam's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, for instance, American atrocities were inevitable.
We hold, at this moment, 13,000 Iraqi prisoners, and there is almost no media access to them or outside American oversight. Americans have no idea what their representatives there are doing in their name. The pictures of American soldiers, men and women, posing in sexual triumph over piles of humiliated nude Iraqi prisoners is more a Marquis de Sade of the innocents than it is the common torture of debased states. The pictures will play great in Iraq and in the Arab world, of course, but that is not what should be haunting us.
The American story has always been one of innocence. That was, indeed, the story of Vietnam -- remember the last line in "The Quiet American," when the British journalist says of the good, but innocently destructive, American that he has never seen a good man who could do so much harm?
But the problem with innocence in the real world is that it always creates its own hangman. When you are engaged in wars such as Vietnam or Iraq, where you didn't have to be and you don't know the cultural realities, innocence soon turns to a very special kind of rage. ("Why don't they appreciate our good intentions?") Then the rage turns to the cruelty that Kerry and many of us saw in Vietnam and, very often, transforms the decent combatant into a mirror image of the enemy. ("We'll show them.")
Inevitably, the innocent but bloodied invader leaves. ("We tried -- they weren't worthy of our goodness.")
America is a great country, and it is a tribute to our core goodness that these kinds of wars play only to our weaknesses. There is only one rather simple answer to what happened last week: Don't get into these wars.
But by the end of the week, all a confused Pentagon spokesman could say about the little American Marquis de Sades at the Abu Ghraib prison was, "That is just not who we are." And no one knew exactly how to answer.
Universal Press Syndicate