I assume you recognize this image. It's become such an icon, a short-hand for referring to what we have perpetuated in our name in our "War on Terror." (Always be suspicious when you're going to war against abstract nouns or emotions--it makes for messy foreign policy.)

The iconography seemed especially relevant for me, who, when I was a graduate student was studying the iconography of Jews and "witches" in the early modern period. For people who couldn't read, images were dispersed for the "Sake of Simple Folk" (a magisterial book by Robert Scribner). I became quite proficient at reading images, and the images that came out of Abu Ghraib, I thought, would become as seared on our consciousness as the images of lynchings that are documented in Without Sanctuary should have been. After all, folks used to send those images as post cards--"Having a great time. Wish you were here," as what was left of human beings dangled as the strange fruit in the trees. 

 I am teaching a course on race and memoir this semester, and my students do a lot of writing exercises. Yesterday, I took them to the newest exhibition at the gallery on campus, Paper Politics, which features a variety of art, some of it "guerrilla" art. I wanted the students to find a piece of art that spoke to them--regardless of whether they agreed with it or it pissed them off or made them cry--something that got to them, and to write about it. 

So, the director of the gallery was talking to my students--my bright, seemingly intellectually curious students, and he pointed to a piece of art that started with the image above and changed it somewhat. And he asked them, "Can anyone tell me what this piece of art refers to?" And the room was silent. It wasn't silent in my head. I was screaming at them that one of them must know about Abu Ghraib, about the pictures. Yes, it was 2003, but they weren't infants then; most of them were in high school. They were college students now. He asked if any of them knew about Abu Ghraib. Again, the silence. The silence was killing me. 

Both of us spoke briefly, factually, about the events at Abu Ghraib. I tried to remember that the average age of my students is 20. Cannon fodder age. The same age as some of the men we rounded up indiscriminately and threw in a prison to mock, and torture, and leave to rot. 

Tomorrow, I teach again. We are finishing up a discussion of a book we've been reading. I've asked them for feedback on yesterday's writing exercise. But all I can hear in my head is the unalterable silence of a classroom of students who did not recognize what for many around the word, has become the symbol of what we are capable of.