The Dance of Civilizations: The West, the East, and Abu Ghraib

Millions of people throughout the world have now seen the Abu Ghraib images; surely they are among the most widely disseminated ever. And almost instantly, they became internationally recognized icons. They have appeared on the front pages of countless newspapers and magazines in East and West; on innumerable Web sites and television programs; on signs, leaflets, and posters. They have zipped through e-mails in the millions (billions?). They hang on walls all over the world, including four clean white ones in a New York museum and one of massive stone on a Tehran street, and on gravestones in Gaza City accompanied by the promise, "We Will Revenge." They can, like all photographs, be put to vastly disparate uses, and will surely be reproduced in both the recruiting videos of terrorist groups and the fundraising pamphlets of human-rights organizations. They have inspired a global conversation.