Moonbase

Looks like the ACLU’s FOIA request went through. Some people are upset about the ruling, but I think the judge probably ruled appropriately—the legal grounds to overrule the request are (so far as I can tell) pretty thin.

Thing is, I don’t think the request should have been made.

What does releasing more pictures accomplish? They were taken by the same people as the already released set. What new and critical information would there be for the public to have? What further justice would be achieved? Is this just a matter of principle?

Are we forgetting that principle isn’t an end in itself? Who is this principle for? Weigh your principle against the further public humiliation of the men in the photographs. Worse, what if some of these prisoners weren’t in in the first set? What if they could yet have been spared their traumas being exposed to the world like this?

What will they think about this?

Wasn’t the very nature of the evil comitted the privation of basic human dignity? And now we will absolutely ensure for each and every one of these human beings that this same privation is expanded? Made global, perpetual, and public?

Let’s be absolutely sure that not one of these men gets left out of the experience of having his stripped, humiliated body displayed on protest signs and posters, network television spots and homebrew propaganda. FOX News and Al Jazeera. The Internet. Is that it?

So a decade from now, an Iraqi man can find a picture of himself on a racist Internet message board: ten years before, naked, trembling, wanting to sink into the floor, die… something… as the threads below descend into leering, bigoted comments about the size of his arab penis?

Vile.