Creating a New Picture of War, Pixel by Pixel
America may not have brought democracy to Iraq yet, but it has democratized Iraq's technology. Starting a website is now legal, and so is entering an online chat room. Nongovernmental Internet cafes have sprung up, and cellphones are spreading.
And don't forget digital cameras. One way to view technology's role in the Abu Ghraib scandal is as another example of digital democratization -- of technology decentralizing power, letting little people make big waves. During World War II, American prison guards didn't have the power to flood their government with bad publicity. And in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, abused prisoners had no chance of seeing their plight vividly brought to the world's attention.
Seen in this light, Abu Ghraib looms even larger than before. The revolution it is part of -- grass-roots digital empowerment -- will change the nature of war and the place of war in American foreign policy.
Some people who see the scandal as technologically driven are suggesting technological reforms: tightening troops' access to e-mail, for example, or banning digital cameras. But although these would cut down on digital blowback, they would hardly stop it. Even before the Abu Ghraib uproar, digital images were fueling anti-Americanism and complicating the occupation -- and the images weren't coming from American cameras. With camcorders increasingly common, Iraqis watching Al Jazeera have seen much more Iraqi suffering than American TV viewers realize.
Meanwhile, Iraqi insurgents have already put gruesome images from the war into recruiting videos, distributed on DVDs. And Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups are sure to splice the Abu Ghraib photos into their own videos, viewable on the Web. Some Americans want to release all the Abu Ghraib images in hopes of "getting this behind us," but those images will be turning Muslim minds toward terrorism for years to come.
Digital aid to the insurgency goes beyond public relations. Cellphones and e-mail are no doubt helping to coordinate attacks, and the Internet probably played a role in conveying recipes for those "improvised explosive devices." Even their detonation involves consumer electronics -- remote controls for toy cars.
At one level, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld grasps the power of digital technology. His famously lean attack force was loaded with microelectronics -- from night-vision goggles for infantrymen to data-rich displays for tank drivers, all tied together with wireless communication. It was because our troops were digitally empowered that we needed so few of them.
