We've covered Abu Ghraib extensively at Winds of Change.NET, from regular briefing links, the Kurdistan Observer's perspective and Abu Ghraib's horrors under Saddam to:
- Armed Liberal's Abu Ghraib and Abu Graib != My Lai;
- Sensing on Abu Ghraib ("...there is no but"); and
- Trent Telenko's Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: A Contrarian's View.
- I'd also like to mention Chief Wiggles' recent post, written by an interrogation specialist who has served in Iraq. He is also the founder of the Operation Give toys for Iraq drive.
Time for a legal perspective. Bob Harmon is a former US Army Reserve Military Police officer, and current head of the Marin County California ACLU. As Trent Telenko noted in his recommendation: "Bob has a unique perspective of the problems there from both the military and international legal points of view." He has published one law review article on the Yamashita command-responsibility case, which is very much on point re: Abu Ghraib, and like Trent he has also covered sexual harassment in the military.
FUBAR: Reflections on the 15-6 Report
by Bob Harmon
The Army’s 15-6 report on the incidents in the Abu Ghraib prison, and at other holding facilities in Iraq, suggest much more than the abuses themselves.
The nature of the rear battle
It’s worth remembering that Army doctrine spoke of the forward, main, and rear battle.
The rear area, even in a conventional war, had its own demands and security problems. Unique to it was the dispersed nature of units in division, corps, theater army and COMMZ areas: combat-support and service-support units providing services. If a Colonel Flagg from MI wanders in wearing mirror sunglasses and orders the PFCs to help maltreat prisoners, who is going to disobey? Especially if the MP Company Commander is 20 miles away?
According to the report, the military knew that the Iraqi prisoners weren't "international terrorists," but were still lavishing Gitmo-type interrogations on them, via the MI and contractor people (the report’s reference to the camp at Gitmo Bay suggests possible storm signals there as well). Trouble is, the techniques seem to be mostly versions of the tormentum insomniae that require days and days to work, and that means corrections people were left to do it, since it was their cage. This is what the report calls "setting favorable conditions for subsequent interviews." The 95B/95C MP is supposed to contain prisoners; I don’t remember their M.O.S. including non-criminal-type interrogation.
(And the intelligence garnered may be worthless. Getting someone to confess he’s Osama bin Laden doesn’t mean he is Osama bin Laden.)
The New Yorker piece, May 15, 2004
Bad timing. (Seymour Hersh, of course, was the reporter who broke the My Lai story some time back). The Guantánamo prisoners, Hamdi and Padilla cases are all in deliberation in the Supreme Court right now; the cases were argued weeks ago. If the Supremes decide that the Abu Ghraib mess reflects on some dicey interrogation techniques pioneered at Gitmo, they may very well turn against the Administration and require some court oversight, either US District courts if they have jurisdiction in personam, or the US military court system.
This was the very worst time for this revelation to come out.
And certainly if we have arguable violations of III and IV Geneva Conventions, which incorporate into the Constitution under the Supremacy Clause in Art. VI, the Supreme Court may also open a channel for the prisoners' counsels to file charges of their own.
Oh, and another thing from the article, if our Iraqi prisoners were mostly "guys who had been given two or three hundred dollars to ‘pray and spray’"—that is, shoot randomly and hope for the best. ‘They weren’t really insurgents but down-and-outers who were paid by wealthy individuals sympathetic to the insurgency.’" ... then what possible intelligence value could you squeeze out of them? Would it be worth what the Administration was risking by transposing their al-Qaeda interrogation techniques to small-time hoods in Iraq? And having MPs who have no interrogation training -- probably not even criminal interrogation in the lower 95B series (street MP) and not certainly in 95C corrections -- take part in this interrogating?
Also, under international law, the military might have gotten away with borderline practices like sleep deprivation (tormentum insomniae), shaking, disruptions in routine, persistent but mild heat or cold discomfort (it builds up), maybe even psychotropic drugs in their food. (Though it would invalidate a criminal case under US law, 5th Amendment on self-incrimination &c.) But sexual degradation and rape are clear breaches of law -- and probably far less effective than the subtle stuff.
What was the Administration thinking of?
Where was the training?
The primary mission of the 800th MP Bde was Internment and Resettlement (I/R) operations; in a war like this that would be a major job. Turned out we had to hire Iraqi guards to watch all these people and, according to the report, some of them facilitated escapes. Apparently they didn't get around doing training in military detainment operations at Camp Bucca until February 2004, if this is a fair sample. Camp Bucca had had escapes in May 2003.
If we’re conducting the occupation of a country, the capture of its armed forces en masse, etc., we would want I/R to be a major part of our planning, would we not? The training annex of the J3 plan, the operations planning by J1, J3, J4 and J5 would all incorporate this. Yet the unit, according to the report, was neither trained, task organized, nor large enough for its mission.
Where’s the staff planning?
Plenty of symptoms. No training at the soldier level, no SOPs at the lower unit level, no METL at the bde level and up. None of the DA or DD forms I would expect at an MP desk, let alone a prison where accounting for prisoners is their main job. No cooperation whatsoever from Civil Affairs Command. No corrective measures after prisoner escapes in May 2003. AR 15-6 and Serious Incident Reports made and disregarded after escapes.
I was taught that an SIR was a serious business, something to go straight to the Pentagon, if only because a serious incident could become a public scandal and DA wanted to know about it. This Command knew about the training, discipline, escape and logistics problems but apparently never sought help from the US Disciplinary Barracks at Ft. Leavenworth, nor the MP School, nor the Provost Marshal General. Did any staff officer or NCO even think about liaison, especially in this day and age when they all have e-mail?
Even if the Reserve staff at the 800th MP Bde wasn’t up to the job of monitoring the lower echelons, the J1 and J3 (or G1/3, or C1/3, whatever) at command level should have been. METLs and monitoring is the job of an RA staff officer, and anybody who had looked at the units tasked for the invasion and occupation should have planned to train and deploy the Reserve and Guard units coming in – they had a year before the invasion to plan this, they had a year after the invasion to do this.
The legal implications I.
One of the more alarming aspects of the report was the ease with which non-MP personnel – assorted MI and civilian contractor types – wandered in and out of the holding facilities-- amazing that the enemy didn't take advantage of this and put on the mother of all Trojan Horse entries. People do break into prisons and military installations, &c.
It’s worth remembering that contractors in theater are subject to military law under Art. 2 of the UCMJ (10 USC § 802(a)(10)). Whether their contracts absolve them of military prosecution is immaterial; any first-year law student learns that in Contracts law, illegalities in the contract are void on their face.
The legal implications II.
None of what went on in the 15-6 report resembles what the MP is trained to do. As long as they have custody of prisoners they are culpable under the UCMJ, and as long as this country is a signatory to the III and IV Geneva Conventions then they needed to know exactly what they had to do to comply. They weren’t trained and they didn’t comply.
This isn't just a few abuses. It's lack of training across several branches, and failures up and down the chain of command. If this is how Rummy thought he could fight a war, he needs to reassess. We prosecuted Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita in 1945 under the doctrine that a field commander is responsible for everything that happens under his (or her) command, whether s/he ordered it or not, or simply neglected it. That precedent stands to this day. Under the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, the President and the Secretary of Defense are the National Command Authority, in direct control over CENTCOM.
Rummy could be in a lot of trouble under US law, never mind what in international tribunal might think, especially if it was transposed from practices in Guantánamo (which suggests more than a few SP4s running amok).
We also have an Alien Tort Claims Act from 1789 and a Torture Victims’ Protection Act (28 USC § 1350) that could also trigger US tort claims, i.e., suits for damages. Maybe the US military is somewhat immune from torts, but the civilian contractors wandering in and out might not be, nor the US Government that signed their cheques.
Conclusion: March of Folly, Next 3 Exits
I don’t think these abuses were inevitable, any more than defeat is inevitable. Obviously our combat-arms soldiers and Marines knew exactly what they were doing, what they were trained to do, who led them, what their missions were. They succeeded.
Little of this seems to be true in our combat support and service support echelons. At this point the Army looks like T. Rex: all jaws and legs, but not much else.
The years of cutbacks in combat-support and service-support units are now costing us dearly. If we are ever again to invade a country and expect to occupy and administer it, that has to change.
Bob Harmon,
Thanks for your extremely valuable perspective on the unfolding prisoner abuse scandal. Phil Carter and Ralph Peters are two prominent ex-military commenters who have been critical of Rumsfeld's vision for a streamlined Army. The specifics you describe about Abu Ghraib have that same ring: short of boots on the ground, with soldiers thrust into high-stress roles with insufficient training.
Our Army and Marine Corps had an amazingly successful campaign to Baghdad, even with the major SNAFU of the 4th ID sitting out the initial fighting rather than coming down from Turkey. But starting with the spasms of looting, it's been a series of problems since Firdis Square. "B" (enough soldiers for the Occupation) didn't follow from "A" (enough soldiers for the invasion).
I hope you are able to write a follow-on piece, explaining what you see are the changes that the Army could make from this point forward.
In soldiers' e-mails from Iraq that have been circulated on the web, one common type of episode has been where civilian cars are searched, either for cause or at a checkpoint. Arms, say IED components, are found in the trunk, and the young men in the car are taken into custody. The e-mails describe how the sergeant or lieutenant in charge would document the arrest, often with a set of digital camera images, write and sign a statement, flexi-cuff the young men, and send them on.
Presumably many of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib arrived in this or a similar fashion.
Are these young men POWs? Detainees? Illegal combatants? Accused criminals? How are the cases adjudicated, if they are? Does each prisoner have a jacket in which these arrests are, or are supposed to be held? What about when the arresting unit rotates out of Iraq--does it matter that the "accused" have no redress? Is there a set sentence for a set act? Who decides when an individual is to be released, and on what basis?
Are the blocks at Abu Ghraib segregated, such that detainees held for a certain type of violation are held together, or are arguably innocent people ('caught up in neighborhood sweeps'; 'acting suspiciously') housed together with those who were 'caught red-handed?'
Your account brings up the sinking feeling that, more than a year into the Occupation, some or many of these policy-and-procedurre questions are still not answered. Not at the Pentagon, and not at the level of the MP and MI commands in charge of places like Abu Ghraib.
Hi, AMac,
Given the scenario you pose, the young men arrested at a checkpoint, whether it was a combat-arms Army or Marine unit staffing the checkpoint, the prisoners would (I would hope) go into the MP system at some point, whether the arresting unit hands them to a Brigade or Division PW cage or to an MP patrol. (Prisoners -- US military, enemy PWs, civilian internees -- are an MP responsibility). The rear area at division and above should have its own MP prisoner facilities -- hell, the division and above should have a provost-marshal in charge of all MP units, holding facilities and movement-control arrangements.
Whether the arrestees are PWs, criminal suspects, illegal combatants is something that can be established after they're in custody, but you're on to something: every suspect we hold needs to be labeled either as undetermined or as one of the above. Every one needs to be tracked, and the 15-6 report makes it clear that a lot of them weren't. And, yes, that requires plenty of personnel to contain, classify, investigate and interrogate them. That means 95B-series standard MPs, 95C-series MP corrections personnel, CID detachments, and attached medical, linguist and Civil Affairs personnel -- and that's even before MI gets into the act.
Only then do you decide, to answer your question, whether a suspect can be turned loose and no longer burden us, or be held for criminal or intelligence questioning, or be classed as a PW (which means holding them for the duration, since a PW isn't a criminal but needs to be in the appropriate facility). And in any event you probably want to segregate them for obvious reasons (don't want the real bad elements turning your camp into their basic training school, do we).
Criminal sanctions will depend entirely on the offense, against whose law they offended (spy? ordinary crime under local law? illegal combatant? war criminal?), and whose jurisdiction they would ultimately be tried by.
That in turn suggests we would be arranging either for Iraqi courts, or US military commissions, or extradition to, say, an international court. And even given a fast trial before a military commission (e.g., as happened with enemy spies in WWII quite often) you either have to arrange for prison facilities for them to serve their sentence, or if it's a capital sentence it has to go to the White House for approval (under Pres. Bush's Nov. '01 military-commissions order and AR 190-55). All of that takes a lot of pre-planning and staff work.
Little of this was apparent in the 15-6 report, which is surprising given that we expected to occupy Iraq entire -- which suggests that most of their armed forces and many civilians would go into the bag. Instead we saddled too few soldiers with too little training with too many prisoners. The Bataan death march (mind you, far worse an atrocity) started with similar deficiencies.
Bob,
Your lengthy and thoughtful response is appreciated. One phrase jumped out at me:
sanctions will depend entirely on the offense, against whose law they offended (spy? ordinary crime under local law? illegal combatant? war criminal?), and whose jurisdiction they would ultimately be tried by. That in turn suggests we would be arranging either for Iraqi courts, or US military commissions, or extradition to, say, an international court.
Closing in on a year-and-a-half since the start of the war, I am unaware of any Coalition procedures for subjecting Iraqi detainees to adjudication. This would necessarily have three components:
(1) Status (PW/illegal combatant/criminal/etc.).
(2) Determination of guilt/innocence (or the appropriate term-of-art) and sentence.
(3) Carrying out the sentence (detention/fine/execution).
Do these procedures exist on paper? Has the Coalition instituted them?
Do any of the 'regular' WoC posters or commenters know?
To the extent adjudication (et al) hasn't been happening, a detainee scandal of one sort or another would seem inevitable. X detainees added to the balance after a month, X more after another month, and so on. Whatever the prisons' initial capacity in terms of cots/bunks and supervisory personnel, it would be fated to be stretched past the point of failure by these circumstances.
And, as many of us can sadly attest from our personal experiences, there is nothing so conducive to demoralization and cynicism and poor performance as working within a failing system.
I don't buy the lack of training excuse for two reasons. As a network/systems administrator, I have known the legal implications of my actions far better than 90% of my bosses. It's my profession, so I read up on the relevant issues. The first time illegal orders are covered in our military is in basic training so there is no excuse. But second of all, there were people in those units who refused illegal orders. They did what was right with the exact same training as the abusers. I don't find that heroic, merely competent and admirable.
This entire mess will be dissected ad nauseam from multiple perspectives by multiple agencies. I don't think that we know all the facts yet and am willing to give SecDef Rumsfeld a little bit of slack until there's more evidence of higher up involvement than a thinly sourced piece by Sy Hersh who has hit journalistic highs (My Lai) and lows (read his stuff about the OIF combat phase) and should have a reputation based on both.
Oh, the lack of training is no excuse. The offenses in Abu Ghraib are quite definitely breaches of several Articles in the UCMJ, as well as the III and IV Geneva Conventions, which the US is still a party to. And commanders up the chain of command are still culpable, under the Yamashita precedent, for anything that goes on in their domain. Even if Seymour Hersh proves to be wrong, even if there was no order, this is already the kind of command failure that got Gen. Yamashita hanged. (Upheld by the US Supreme Court, 327 US 1 (1946) for any legal scholars out there).
The MPs in particular were supposed to know how to keep people in custody, and what their precise responsibilities were, more than basic trainees. It's one thing to tell people in BCT not to obey an illegal order, something else again for them actually to know what orders are illegal. Obviously some people knew their jobs -- the 15-6 report mentions them, the ones who refused and then started blowing whistles.
I don't know all the facts, yet, but the 15-6 report is a pretty good start, and it did first raise the Gitmo angle, suggesting design, not indiscipline. And I know how I was trained. The whole point is to remember that training when things get chaotic. And an MP is supposed to enforce the law even in a theater of war, not break it.
Training or the lack thereof has nothing to do with it—common decency does!
What these soldiers did, apparently with glee and sanctioned from the top, was just plain wrong.
A decent person knows better.
The "orders" excuse did not fly for the Nazis and it won't fly for the U.S. either!
TM Lutas (3:40pm), I don't want to talk past your point on training; I think you hit that nail on the head.
My concern is that US citizens can't be shocked, shocked! if our government implements a system for detaining hostile Iraqis that is bound to fail because of design flaws--and then it fails.
Do we know the failure modes? The photos tell part of the story, but I still am still unsure of what they signify, and in what proportions. Rogue MPs? MPs following illegal orders? Desparation due to short-staffing and overcrowding? Unacknowledged and ugly but necessary harsh interrogation methods gone wrong? I simply don't know, and I'm suspicious of those who think they do. This is the occasion for the "civilian audit" function that Victor Davis Hanson discusses.
My particular concern is that inadequate adjudication and disposition of cases would guarantee a backup, and almost guarantee a system failure of one kind or another, even with decent MPs trained to a high level.
Is this, then, a correct description of the situation as it has existed on the ground? Again, I don't know.
Even now, it's not at all clear to me that "illegal combatants" should be granted Geneva-convention and criminal-defendant rights that are not required by treaties that the US has acceded to. Mark Bowden ("Black Hawk Down") wrote an Atlantic Monthly on the related subject of torture (linked via ParaPundit). Nelson Ascher also has some worthwhile thoughts on this affair.
"Even now, it's not at all clear to me that "illegal combatants" should be granted Geneva-convention and criminal-defendant rights that are not required by treaties that the US has acceded to".
Why talk about rights at all? I thought Rights were designed for human beings.
Call me a neanderthal, but all this sounds to me like legalistic fiddling while Iraq burns. If shoving a broomstick up some terrorist's ass or taking pictures of him naked saves one American life, I'm all for it.
To Lili, you're right, it is just plain wrong. Trouble is, if higher-ups created the conditions for it to go wrong, and they had a year to plan the invasion and another year since then to make things right, then they're just as liable. I really should do a piece on this site on the Yamashita precedent.
Plus the 15-6 report pointed out that if you have time to plan an invasion, and task-organize the units, then any staff officer at, say, the J3 level should be asking if that unit is mission-ready. The 800th MP Bde had a major I/R mission and nobody trained them.
To AMac, I should add that the basic Geneva convention does require due process of law even given an illegal combatant or just plain crook (e.g., looters &c.). And if the mission included leaving a functioning Iraqi government, which implies an Iraqi court system, then we would need considerable prep. (The 15-6 report mentions no presence of Staff Judge Advocate and does say that Civil Affairs didn't help. That suggests more deficiencies.)
All of this is stuff that may have been over the heads of the 800th MP Bde, but the Command, JTF and CENTCOM staff are presumably professional staff officers, Command & General Staff school grads and all that. This is all stuff that the J1, J3, J4 and J5, staff judge advocate, and provost marshal sections all should have been doing?
In any event, we do have to provide some due process. There's considerable case law about military commissions (drumhead) not necessarily having to apply the 5th Amendment but we still have obligations under Geneva and other treaties we are parties to.
A comment on a "track-back" to a site Flit™, by TM Lutas, one thing I noted in the 15-6 report was that nobody sought advice from the MP School, the US Disciplinary Barracks at Ft. Leavenworth, or the Provost Marshal General. I know that, even before e-mail and cell phones, that if I had a staff question on, say, planning for a toxic incident, I had no hesitation about picking up the phone and asking someone at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Even NCOs have good lateral methods of finding out stuff.
Problem is, if an MI guy or civilian contractor wanders in late at night and orders an MP PFC/SP4 to do bad stuff, that PFC might not have the sophistication to check with someone. The report makes clear they had little or no SOP guidance to look at. The report doesn't say where the uplink to the provost marshal -- the MP really in higher command -- would be, if there was one. And the PFC may not have had the training even where to report abuse, after the fact. To the IG? the staff judge advocate? the chaplain? an e-mail to his mother?
That's what you have SOPs for, even sketchy ones.
Fred1: I'm not going to argue for or against the morality of your point, but rather address the practicality; alot of broomsticks are getting shoved up alot of asses, and it looks a great deal like that's costing American lives, not saving them.
In any event, rape is a crime under the UCMJ. The maximum punishment is death. Further, the US is a participatory to tribunals on the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda that have found that rape as a state policy is also a cognizable crime. And even the US Senate reservations to the international convention on torture have said that the 5th, 8th and 14th Amendment interpretations of torture still apply.
And in any event it is not in the MOS standards for the 95B and 95C MP MOS series.
Bob (3:10am),
That you can connect the subject under discussion with MOS standards without pedantry or offense shows that you can write. But we knew that.
Monty (1:49am),
Consider that they're everywhere you want to be.
In today's (5/18) LA Times, "Death of Prisoner Detailed in Testimony," This stood out at me like a 96-point headline:
"She [Pfc. Lynndie England] said there were many other abuses, but "I can't remember all of them." She said she didn't think guards should be punished because "we did what we were told."
That is at the heart of the defense of the seven accused guards."
I used to work in BCT units and we used to tell trainees in their first weeks in the Army to disobey illegal orders. Did we discontinue that? Because the standard case law for "I was only following orders" is still "tell it to the hangman."
Even the right answer to this sort of "order" seems to suggest a gap in training. "If an MI [officer] told me to make detainees masturbate together, I would cut off his air supply," said [Sgt. Hydrue S.] Joyner [of 372d MP Co]. "This is not acceptable instruction to me. There is no special training to know this behavior is wrong, except 'life.' "
That's nice, but the drill used to be, "disobey orders if they're illegal."
Full story at http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-prison18may18,1,1463305.story.
I understand Rumsfeld's excuse for the torture will be "But I was only giving orders."
[Thanks, Mr Harmon, for a great post & thread]
PS. If "the heart of the defense" -- we were only following orders -- is being posed by military lawyers, then I'm really alarmed.
I would not be alarmed if we simply came clean and told the truth of what we are doing.
"These guys don't play be the rules, so we won't either." That could/should perhaps be announced in the U.N.
That would put the Islamofascists and the whole world on notice. But, pretending that we are wearing the white hat is utter hypocrisy!
Lili, Trouble is, one of the reasons Pres. Bush stated for going into Iraq was that we were wearing the white hats, i.e., that we were, among other things, seeking to bring democracy, justice, &c. &c. &c. to the region. There's military strategy, there's national strategy -- the former is based on the latter -- and in any event our dear leader planted his colors on Doing Good.
Worse, the relevant treaties on civilians and PWs are mostly of our devising. The whole body of international law on the subject originated in post-WWII, Nuremberg Charter, Geneva Conventions, Universal Declaration of Human Rights et al in a framework of treaties the US mostly orchestrated.
The comment about military lawyers was in this context: that they should at least remember past case law. We hanged a number of war criminals who had "we were only following orders" as their excuse.
And in any event, rape, murder, maltreatment and the rest are breaches of US military law. The name of the MP 95B job series is "Law Enforcement", last time I looked, not "Law Breakers".
We went to war over our differences with Saddam. If we start becoming our enemies, the point of the war is rather lost, isn't it? And it is somewhat unpatriotic to go further and say that we are no different, and no better, than the rest of the planet. I really can't say that the US is founded on hypocrisy.
". . . one of the reasons Pres. Bush stated for going into Iraq was that we were wearing the white hats, i.e., that we were, among other things, seeking to bring democracy, justice, &c. &c. &c. to the region. . . "
Now, for anyone who believes this— there is some wonderful swamp land in Saudia. . . ;-)
Sure, Bob, I agree that we should hold to our self proclaimed higher standard. Trouble is we have not always done that and are certainly not doing it now. So, we have lots of "egg" on our face.
The point I have been trying to make is that either—we behave as properly and morally as we claim we are or—we say "all bets are off for the terrorists" and use their very own tactics to fight them. Which in the end, may be the only thing that works. But, I would prefer trying other methods first like international cooperation, surveillance, sanctions, deportations, prison, executions, etc.
I simply want honesty—one way or another. I don't have much objection to terrorizing Islamofascist-terrorists. I do have a problem with innocent civilians—and there's the rub.
Lilith,
We actually did a different strategy in Afghanistan; we were quite candid about doing unto others before they did unto us. It worked.
Our problem is maybe that we made different representations in our attack on Iraq.
I'm not sure we need to adopt our enemy's tactics in toto. Do you want to order some of our troops to hack someone's head off on camera? And if so, will we pay the VA benefits for the psychiatric casualties from those servicemembers we assign to the Special Action Groups that carry out this "terroring"?
Trouble is, every servicemember from E1 recruits up through the President swears an oath to uphold the Constitution, with its provision for treaties as supreme law of the land, with the Art. I provision for Congress to enact laws like the UCMJ. Telling them that all bets are off is to say, the United States no exists as a constitutional state.
How we treat the guilty, not just the innocent, is how we do business. Hunt them down in battle, sure. Pick up the survivors and try them as we tried the war criminals at Nuremberg, certainly. That's honesty.
“Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe
its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence. …
Our decision, founded on reason and truth, gives to the individual no more
than that which the Constitution guarantees him, to the police officer no
less than that to which honest law enforcement is entitled … ”
—Justice Tom Clark, Mapp v. Ohio, 1961
Lilith,
We actually did a different strategy in Afghanistan; we were quite candid about doing unto others before they did unto us. It worked.
Our problem is maybe that we made different representations in our attack on Iraq.
I'm not sure we need to adopt our enemy's tactics in toto. Do you want to order some of our troops to hack someone's head off on camera? And if so, will we pay the VA benefits for the psychiatric casualties from those servicemembers we assign to the Special Action Groups that carry out this "terroring"?
Trouble is, every servicemember from E1 recruits up through the President swears an oath to uphold the Constitution, with its provision for treaties as supreme law of the land, with the Art. I provision for Congress to enact laws like the UCMJ. Telling them that all bets are off is to say, the United States no exists as a constitutional state.
How we treat the guilty, not just the innocent, is how we do business. Hunt them down in battle, sure. Pick up the survivors and try them as we tried the war criminals at Nuremberg, certainly. That's honesty.
“Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe
its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence. …
Our decision, founded on reason and truth, gives to the individual no more
than that which the Constitution guarantees him, to the police officer no
less than that to which honest law enforcement is entitled … ”
—Justice Tom Clark, Mapp v. Ohio, 1961
"We actually did a different strategy in Afghanistan; we were quite candid about doing unto others before they did unto us. It worked."
The Arab world does not seem to recognize that. They screech all the time about both attacks and put them into the same category forgetting why we went to Afghanistan and why they agreed it was the right thing to do at the time.
Additionally, now as part of the prisoner abuse investigations Afghanistan is in the mix. There have been prisoner deaths there as well. The investigations are growing by the day.
"I'm not sure we need to adopt our enemy's tactics in toto. Do you want to order some of our troops to hack someone's head off on camera? "
Certainly not. And I believe I specified that. However, either we make them believe that we would or we don't. There's always Hollywood. ;-)
You are misunderstanding Bob. What I am saying is EITHER we are a nation of law that lives up to these or we are not. In which case we cannot lord it over the rest of the world. The U.S. has a bad habit of claiming that we are "better" than others, when indeed we need to clean our own house.
While we have lots of good qualities, the exponentially expanding prisoner abuse scandal shows that no human is free from sinking into depravity.
I have always said about the holocaust and other horrors of the 20th century—that ANY human being, given the right circumstances could commit atrocities—even Americans.
Unfortunately, I am correct. While the prison abuses and the atrocities of war don't compare with the holocaust or Pol Pot, a little crime can become a greater one as people are desensitized to the pain of others.
The Iraq war, its excesses and daily disasters are our first shame in the 21st century.
Translation service:
If America isn't perfect then it is Evil.
Abu Ghraib proves that America is just like the Nazis. This is just the first step to genocide.
We are a nation of laws. Full stop. We enforce them and show that the abuses were the work of rogues and not a matter of national identity. That means enforcing it all the way up the chain of culpability. That means those who gave orders, not just those who obeyed them.
That was the whole point of the Nuremberg charter and the trials that followed. We submitted the accused to a trial with due process and demonstrated, if nothing else, that we had a standard of objective justice.
Until we put on something like the Wannsee Conference I don't see that we're Nazis, although some of the abuses suggest we're somewhere on the road between My Lai and Bataan. We can do better than that.