Humiliation and Humility

Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl in a Taliban-made video. July 14, 2009

Nearly three weeks after his capture in eastern Afghanistan's Paktika province, a 23-year-old American soldier from Idaho named Bowe Bergdahl has the extreme misfortune of explaining himself and U.S. foreign policy before a video camera operated by his captors.

Given the circumstances under which the video was made, what Bergdahl says is not surprising - he wants to go home, the U.S. should not be in Afghanistan, American soldiers are told Afghani civilian deaths "don't matter", and so on.

In the 28-minute video (on Youtube here), Bergdahl, who worked as a barista in a coffee shop in Hailey, Idaho and was active as a ballet dancer, is seen seated cross-legged answering questions and, at the end of the video, eating rice, bread and what looks like green tea.

In response to the video, a U.S. military spokesman said, "We condemn the use of this video and the public humiliation of prisoners. It is against international law."

Unfortunately, these words ring hollow when one considers American treatment of its own prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba and so-called "black sites" around the world. Recalling ugly images and descriptions of prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib, Bagram Air Base, Gitmo, as well as Charleston, South Carolina (see; Padilla, Jose).

Prisoners held by the U.S. military in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.

Bowe Bergdahl, it seems, is now a pawn in a war of images. He knows, as everyone else does, that footage of him being questioned in a civil manner, looking well-taken care of, dressed in clean, local garb, indeed eating a meal, are in stark contrast with the vile display of naked prisoners, hooded and stacked in pyramids, or orange-jump suit-clad hooded detainees kneeling against fences, or any one of hundreds of other painful images of those captured and held by the American military.

Images of detainee abuse from Abu Ghraib prison won't fade any time soon.

For the U.S. military to bark about "international law" and "humiliation of prisoners" now is only cruel irony. Thanks to the policies and precedents established under George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and others, America has no legs on which to stand when it comes to talking about issues of "international law" and humane treatment of prisoners.

This glaring irony must, in itself, be a form of torture (at least mentally) that haunts young Bowe Bergdahl the ballet dancer and his own family and friends as they ponder his fate.