I've been thinking about why terrorism is such a hot topic these days. I mean, bombs aren't new; they've been around for centuries. Religious fanatics obviously aren't new; they've been around for millenia. Fear isn't new; it's been around since the Dawn of Mankind. People who are desperate or angry…
In November 2003 a major from the judge advocate general’s office working on establishing an Iraqi judicial process told me that there were at least 7,000 Iraqis detained by American forces. . . . A lieutenant colonel familiar with the process told me that there is no judicial process for the thousands of detainees. If the military were to try them, there would be a court-martial, which would imply that the U.S. was occupying Iraq, and lawyers working for the administration are still debating whether it is an occupation or liberation. Two years later, 50,000 Iraqis had been imprisoned by the Americans and only 2% had ever been found guilty of anything.
The above was reported by Nir Rosen. On his website, Rosen describes himself as follows:
Born in New York City in 1977, Nir Rosen is a freelance writer, photographer and film-maker who has worked in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and other popular tourist destinations.
Rosen, who speaks Arabic and who passes as Middle Eastern, recently wrote “The Occupation of Iraqi Hearts and Minds,” a piece that was published on Truthdig.com. In this disturbing piece, he sized up the American occupation of Iraq:
…In reality both Abu Ghraib and Haditha were merely more extreme versions of the day-to-day workings of the American occupation in Iraq, and what makes them unique is not so much how bad they were, or how embarrassing, but the fact that they made their way to the media and were publicized despite attempts to
Imagine that it is broad daylight and you are attending a large public festival. Now imagine that you suddenly realize that you are walking around in your underwear. Perhaps you are one of the many people who would find it disconcerting to suddenly find that so much of your skin, and most every crevice, curve and imperfection of your body was exposed to public view.
This thought occurred to me while I was at a municipal swimming pool with my children. I was surrounded by hundreds of people who were wearing swimming suits that covered no mo
re skin (and often less) than the underwear that many of these people likely wore. Yet these people strutted about and proudly spread out on their towels and lawn chairs without any apparent concern that they were flagrantly exposing so much of their “private” areas to total strangers.
What is it, then, that convinces people to expose so much of their bodies to strangers in one case but not in the other? It would seem that the context of being at a public swimming area constitutes a “frame.”
George Lakoff wrote of the great power of frames in his book, Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Framed the Debate (2004). Here is how Lakoff describes frames:
…Frames are mental structures that shape the way we see the world. As a result, they shape the goals we seek, the plans we make, the way we act, and what counts as a
Americans agree strongly that it was a mistake for the United States to invade Iraq: An Associated Press-Ipsos poll last month found that 59 percent of Americans say the United States erred in going to war in Iraq. Among Democrats, 84 percent said the war was a mistake, up from…
Brian Palmer reports on this statement of a USMC training officer, a captain: "Over the last 12 months or so we killed about 1000 Iraqis at blocking positions and checkpoints," the captain told the grunts. "About 60 -- six zero -- we could demonstrate that, yeah, he was a bad guy.…