critical theory with slavoj zizek: Recall ‘A Few Good Men’… Tom Cruise…succeeds in proving that the defendants followed the so-called “Code Red,” the unwritten rule of a military community which authorizes the clandestine night-time beating of a fellow-soldier who has broken the ethical standards of the Marines. Such a code condones an act of transgression, it is “illegal,” yet at the same time it reaffirms the cohesion of the group. It has to remain under cover of the night, unacknowledged, unutterable – in public, everyone pretends to know nothing about it, or even actively denies its existence. While violating the explicit rules of community, such a code represents the “spirit of community” at its purest, exerting the strongest pressure on individuals to enact group identification. Are thus the Abu Ghraib tortures not part of the Code Red rules? Abu Ghraib was not simply a case of American arrogance towards a Third World people: in being submitted to the humiliating tortures, the Iraqi prisoners were effectively initiated into American culture, they got the taste of its obscene underside which forms the necessary supplement to the public values of personal dignity, democracy, and freedom. No wonder, then, that it is gradually becoming clear how the ritualistic humiliation of Iraqi prisoners was not a limited case, but part of a widespread practice.