Prime Directive

Self-reflection, it is what haunts us after we have done something we know we shouldn’t have, or it could be us looking back at something we have done with pride. Either way, we are forced to examine ourselves and reflect on what happened. In order for a person to self-reflect, they have had to something of significance or importance to themselves, something that has come back to their mind after the fact, for one reason or another. People usually self-reflect because they are ashamed of themselves for certain behaviors they wish they could go back in time and change. Such is the case with David Griffith.
At a Halloween party, Dave Griffith, after having a few beers, posed for a picture with a man who was dressed as Charles Graner, the man who posed for disgusting pictures with prisoners from the Abu Ghraib prison. The ironic part about this is that Griffith had thought about the incident at the prison earlier that same night. The morning after, he is horrified and utterly ashamed at what he has done. This self-reflection brings him to realize that he is essentially just like Charles Graner, a fact that startles and scares him immensely.
The fact that the story takes place on Halloween has so much significance in its self. Halloween is the one night a year that one can become someone else and it’s fine because everyone else is doing it too. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. There’s no judgment. Judgment is replaced with freedom. People do things on Halloween in character, things they wouldn’t do themselves. Throw some kegs into the mix and you have people loosening up and doing things as a Prozac pill or Cracker Jack kid, that they never would have done themselves. Griffith is no exception. In the heat of the moment, he made a decision he wasn’t thinking through, a decision he probably wouldn’t have made out of costume. At on of the parties, the discussion is opened that the situation in Iraq could benefit from the Prime Directive, the moral code from Star Trek, which basically says no one may “interfere with healthy development of alien life and culture.” (128). The partygoers discussed the fact that if George Bush had followed the rule, the problem in Iraq would never have come to fruition.
While the group discussed atrocities that have gone on in Iraq, Griffith is astounded when what happened at Abu Grahib is not mentioned. But while reading it, I was not astonished. I barely even remember hearing about it on the news. As my family is not a cable-subscribing one, we don’t have CNN or Fox News, which covered the incident more closely. But even using the word “incident” seems wrong to me when describing what happened there. What happened there was caused by Americans, they were the ones who tortured the prisoners and took pictures. And because they were Americans, the media didn’t expose the story in the way that it would have been if it were any other country that had done this to Americans.
After this thought crossing Griffith’s mind, he expresses his confusion and disappointment when he walks past “people playing drinking games” and “grinding to Outkast”. Honestly, I can see where he is coming from. I have been there before where you think of something so significant and then every detail around you seems unimportant and stupid. It causes you to judge yourself and others; something I’m not sure gets you anywhere. When he thought of the Chingy video with the voluptuous video girls and booty shaking, he stepped out of context for me. I understand that it reminded him of the naked bodies in the pictures of Abu Grahib, but videos are of themselves, they are not meant to offend anyone.
When Griffith sees the man dressed as Charles Graner, I felt as though he and I had the same reaction: how could he? It seemed so morbid to me. It made a mockery of what happened there and what Graner did and how horrible it was. But even as I find myself saying this, I realize that is not what Griffith wanted us to take away from his story, he wanted us to realize that, in the words of Dostoevsky, “we are no better”. Griffith learned that he was just as capable of doing something as atrocious as Graner as anybody else is. The fact’s truth horrified him, as it would anyone else who had any trace of a heart. As much as I hope that I will never do anything like what either Griffith or Graner did, I cannot promise it. Humans instinctively are influenced by their surroundings, whether they will admit it or not.
“Educated, metropolitan people could never do such things; we are too aware, too aware of the ways in which we must respect one another’s differences” (…) (135) This is the exact thought that I think to myself when I lie to myself by denying the fact that I could never bring myself to do something so horrible. That’s something only white trash, no moral possessing, no money having, no church going, no Holy Spirit having, gross people would do. But how many times have I let other my surrounding get the better of me and let myself make decisions I knew I would regret? How many times have I made a decision not thinking anyone would find out about? The answer is I do these things probably everyday. Maybe they are not on the same level of atrocious as the pictures of naked bodies being tortured, but who’s to say I will never do something equally disgusting?
“When we deny we have anything in common with Graner and the others who are pictured in the photos, we allow all that is most despicable and ugly in our nature to thrive.” (136).
It didn’t take much self-reflection for Griffith to know what he did was horribly wrong. In his words, “I posed with Graner, and by doing so, humiliated those victims all over again.” (136). He had become Graner himself, and he knew it. He humiliated the victims just as Graner did. They are no different just because one did it as a sick joke, which he didn’t think through; the point is he did it. One is not better than the other and never will be.