Shame

I am so ashamed. For the past several days, the pictures of American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners have been everywhere. They scream out from newspaper pages and television screens. Last night it was while on the Precor at the gym that I was subjected to them. All I can feel when I think about that smug female soldier gamely posing for pictures that are now helping to cement her country's position as the enemy of the world is how ashamed I am to be an American.

It's not often that I allow myself to get swept up in nationalism or national sentiment. I don't usually feel anything as "an American". I feel things as Jodi, an individual who lives in the U.S. In fact, I am more apt to identify with being a New Mexican than and American. After the September 11 attacks, I was completely embarrassed when I found myself compelled to stop at Wal-Mart in the middle of the night to purchase an American flag...I had no idea that there was latent patriotism within me.

This doesn't mean that I don't love my country. I do. This also doesn't mean that I don't want to make my country better. I do. I follow politics avidly and vote regularly...I just don't often get sentimental about my nationality.

But right now, I feel ashamed and outraged as an American. It was bad enough that we were fighting a war that we started needlessly. It was bad enough that Americans and Iraqis were dying daily. But for stupid Americans to be committing war crimes and abusing prisoners while fighting an unjust war... and they took pictures!

How can we possibly expect to make friends with the Arab world if we behave like this? How can the president get on TV and preach about how inhumane terrorists are when some blond American chick is being shown on televisions across the world mocking naked prisoners of war? If we are also monsters, why should they cease to hate us?

Maybe those soldiers somehow believed that the prisoners represented all of the September 11 hijackers... maybe they thought that Arab men deserved to suffer humiliation because of what America has suffered. Maybe they're really nice people who got caught up in the ugliness of war. It is all possible, but I think that everyone responsible for the terrible acts in that prison should be held accountable not only for the acts themselves, but also for the severe damage those acts have done to the nation.

We went to Iraq with the "intention" of benevolently giving them a democracy and removing their evil leader. Yet, more than a year later, we are still in Iraq. We are killing people and, apparently, torturing prisoners. Some Iraqi citizens describe the American occupation as worse than living under Saddam. If this is how it's going to be, they say, they don't want democracy at all. (Did we even ask them if they wanted a democracy in the first place?)

Selfishly, I worry about what those torture pictures mean for me, an American and a Jew. Have I unwittingly become one of the most hated people in the world? Quite possibly. Should I pay for billboards in Arab countries to try to tell them that most of us don't hate them at all? (Americans and Jews) I want to tell them not to let a few bad apples shape their view of us. "Give us another chance," I want to say. But why should they?

We are in a dangerous time. We were already in a public relations quagmire just by being in this war. Now we are in quicksand and sinking rapidly. And as is so often the case, there is nothing I can do about it. But I can feel ashamed. And I do.