We make a huge mistake if we see the Abu Ghraib disgrace as an anomaly. It is as American as?as... the Iraq War. It emanates from a decision made by our national government and approved by congress and by a majority of the American people, a decision to move into a sovereign country, however benighted its leadership may have been, and subjugate its people, presumably for their own good. Like any other occupying colonial power in history, we ended up objectifying and dehumanizing the people we have overcome. The results have been photographed for posterity.

We could not have done to the Iraqi people what we have done, in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, without the moral numbing that allows us to ignore their humanity. War does that to people; it always has and always will. We have systematically wrecked the infrastructure of the country [to be profitably reconstructed by American companies, of course]. We have killed ten thousand or more Iraqi civilians, some thousands in the early, ?military? stages of the war, the remainder on an almost-daily basis as we attempt to control the nationalistic insurgency that has grown, little by little but inexorably, over the past months. (True, Saddam Hussein has been removed, but at the cost of the conditions and the horrors that we?re now experiencing, which include, of course, the deaths of hundreds of our own troops.) And we have done so in an atmosphere of steadfast denial or avoidance of the truth?that war is ugly, brutalizing, victimizes both sides, and rarely achieves its stated aims.

Our troops are fighting an ugly, irregular war against the people of Iraq. They have had no choice, given the circumstances. They are faced daily with repeated and deadly random attacks, originating from mysterious sources?the President himself persists in calling them ?terrorist? sources?and they respond, understandably, with a kind of reckless and fear-induced flailing about that only further alienates the people.

No wonder the troops, whether in Fallujah or in the prison at Al Ghraib, behave in such self-defeating and barbarous ways. They are scared, jumpy, and uncomprehending. So when the prison guards were instructed by their superiors to ?soften up? prisoners for interrogation, they did as they were told, and did so in a kind of mad, sadistic, carnival?they softened them up by engaging in various sexually perverse and deeply humiliating actions, even going so far as to record these actions with digital cameras. These were only modest departures from existing protocol.

There is every reason to believe that abusive interrogation tactics had become a regular and approved part of the government?s so-called ?war on terrorism.? There have been repeated reports from organizations such as Amnesty International and the International Red Cross, from Afghanistan, Iraq and from the notorious prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, of human rights abuses and violations of international law. Of course, this administration has shown nothing but contempt for international law since the day it took office. The fact that the new officer in charge of the Iraqi military prisons is the former commander at Guantanamo is further evidence of the low regard this administration holds for basic decency and human rights. ?That?s not the way we do things,? George Bush told the world. But it was and is the way we do things, and still would be if a courageous soldier had not squealed and made some of the pictures public.

Day by day the evidence piles up that conditions in Abu Ghraib have been known about for months?and ignored for months. The International Red Cross informed the United States government no later than January, and has done so repeatedly since, about severe prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and other military prisons in Iraq. These warnings were ignored. It was not until the notorious pictures of sadistic and humiliating abuses were made public that the administration responded at all. It was the photographs that caused the problem from the administration?s perspective, not the practices they depicted. These practices are being banned now that the word is out. There is no evidence that they would have been otherwise.

The Bush administration and most of the press have worked hard to make all of this appear to be an aberration. It won?t work because it isn?t true. The British commentator Martin Jacques wrote in The Guardian just last week:

President Bush claimed...: ?People seeing those pictures don?t understand the true nature and heart of America.? On the contrary, they are an integral part of its ?true nature and heart:? a society that was built on the destruction of the indigenous peoples; that practiced racial segregation until forty years ago; that still incarcerates many of its young black people; that killed hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese; that has a messianic belief in the applicability of its own values to the rest of the world; that is willing to impose its model by force; that believes itself to be above international law. These too are American values. In this light, the behavior of the U.S. forces, nurturing a deep sense of racial superiority, combined with a disdain for international law, is entirely predictable.

These are painful truths. The situation calls not so much for self-flagellation as for a fundamental change of perspective. Perhaps these awful events will turn out to have been a good thing for everyone except those who suffered from them. Perhaps it will help us to see, and come to terms with, what we have been doing in Iraq and elsewhere in the world abroad. Perhaps it will lead to regime change here at home and for a careful but definitive withdrawal from our arrogant colonial adventure. Perhaps.