President Obama wants to be bi-partisan. This must be what he means. Democratic Senator Lieberman and Republican Senator Graham wrote to him on May 9, urging him not to release photographs of detainees being tortured. “The release of these old photographs of past behavior that has now been clearly prohibited,” they said, “will serve no public good, but will empower al-Qaida propaganda operations, hurt our country’s image, and endanger our men and women in uniform.” The president seems to have agreed. But, let’s get to the point. What really endangers “our men and women in uniform” is sending them to Iraq and Afghanistan. Until the White House pulls out our troops, it is our foreign policy, not these photographs, that puts them in peril.
Eric B. Ross is a U.S.-trained anthropologist, who taught for 16 years at the Institute of Social Studies (The Hague), where he specialized in the political economy of agrarian change, health policy and equitable development and was Chair of the Institute's MA in Development Studies. He currently is Visiting Professor of Anthropology and of International Development Studies at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Among his books are Death, Sex and Fertility and The Malthus Factor: Poverty, Politics and Population in Capitalist Development. He is editor of The Porcupine.
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