The language of war in the post-Vietnam era is all about clinical precision: as in “surgical strike,” “smart bombs,” or “friendly fire.” Designed to communicate the idea that brutality, risk, senseless killing, and torture are qualities of the past, this language promotes the belief that war has somehow become clean and non-lethal. The 2004 appearance of photographs from the Abu Ghraib prison, which showed in horrific detail U.S. soldiers violating the human rights of supposed Al-Qaeda terrorist and Iraqi insurgency suspects, came as a clear challenge to this perception. And yet, as Stephen Eisenman argues in his new book, The Abu Ghraib Effect, these pictures failed to instigate radical political change in the United States. George W. Bush was re-elected just months after their release; Secretary of Defense and key architect of the war in Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld, managed to keep his job; and Alberto Gonzalez, author of the so-called “torture memo,” which argued that the United States possessed the right to abuse detainees and violate the Geneva Convention Against Torture, was eventually appointed Attorney General. (Rumsfeld and Gonzalez both later resigned, though not directly due to any Abu Ghraib fallout.) Eisenman interprets this political status quo as evidence that...