BAGHDAD -- The national guardsman peering through the long-range scope of his rifle was startled by what he saw unfolding in the walled compound below. From his post several stories above ground level, he watched as men in plainclothes beat blindfolded and bound prisoners in the enclosed grounds of the Iraqi Interior Ministry.
He immediately radioed for help. Soon after, a team of Oregon Army National Guard soldiers swept into the yard and found dozens of Iraqi detainees who said they had been beaten, starved and deprived of water for three days.And the rest of the details are given in a substantial account that leaves little room for doubt about any of the facts. What remains to be determined is what it means for the future of Iraq, and the future of the US in the Mideast.In a nearby building, the soldiers counted dozens more prisoners and what appeared to be torture devices -- metal rods, rubber hoses, electrical wires and bottles of chemicals. Many of the Iraqis, including one identified as a 14-year-old boy, had fresh welts and bruises across their back and legs.
The soldiers disarmed the Iraqi jailers, moved the prisoners into the shade, released their handcuffs and administered first aid. Lt. Col. Daniel Hendrickson of Albany, Ore., the highest ranking American at the scene, radioed for instructions.
But in a move that frustrated and infuriated the guardsmen, Hendrickson's superior officers told him to return the prisoners to their abusers and immediately withdraw. It was June 29 -- Iraq's first official day as a sovereign country since the U.S.-led invasion.
The incident, the first known case of human rights abuses in newly sovereign Iraq, is at the heart of the American dilemma here.[...]
An Oregon guardsman who witnessed the day's events, Capt. Jarrell Southall, provided The Oregonian with a written account of the incident. Other guardsmen interviewed in Iraq corroborated Southall's account on the condition that their names not be used.
The U.S. Embassy in Iraq confirmed the incident occurred and disclosed for the first time that the United States raised questions about the June 29 "brutality" with Iraq's interior minister.
The embassy declined to say what response was received in the meeting between the minister and James Jeffrey, the second-ranking U.S. diplomat in Iraq, saying it would be "inappropriate" to discuss "details of those diplomatic and confidential conversations."
The embassy, in a written statement, said U.S. soldiers are "compelled by the law of land warfare and core values to stop willful and unnecessary use of physical violence on prisoners." The U.S. soldiers involved in the incident, it said, "acted professionally and calmly to ease tensions and defend prisoners who needed help."
The June 29 confrontation between U.S. troops and Iraqi officials at the Interior Ministry has been mentioned in news accounts in the United States and Britain. But details about the prisoners' injuries, the actions of the Oregon Guard and the high-level American decision to leave the injured detainees in the hands of Iraqis has not been previously reported.
Will we indeed wind up with a "Mubarak" in charge in Iraq? Or merely during a "transition period"? (Mubarak's "state of emergency" in Eqypt has been continuous for approximately twenty years, and nearly continuously since the passage of Law No. 162 of 1958; there's no democracy in Egypt, nor love of the U.S.) Or what?
Let no one be sure of their assertions, unless they have a crystal ball, but let no one avoid the historical importance of this question, nor look away.
Read The Rest Scale: 5 out of 5.
Gary Farber's home blog is Amygdala.
It means that no matter we wish to deny it Iraq is a new generation's Viet Nam, even more complex and dangerous. It means that internal battles will overwhelm us and there is no such thing as "the Iraqi people." We can't impose a simplified American solution on a fractious country that is motivated by deep, historic conflict.
Hello in there Pinky. They're Arabs. That's what they do. That's what they've always done. Did anyone seriously think we were going to fundamentally change their culture in less than a year? Gimme a break. I think Mark above is over-reacting, but ultimately, we'll be doing very well indeed to get a less brutal thug than Sadam to stabilize Iraq and kill most of the terrorists. The Mubarak solution is probably the only one that will work in Iraq. BTW, I still think the war in Iraq was the right thing to do.
There is an alternative to the Mubarak solution. 160 years of colonization. But we don't have the stomach for that or for the way Iraq would have to be managed during those 160 years. So Mubarak Lite is the only feasible solution.
I would say that Mubarak is a profound anti-solution. We can do better than that. And, this may sound cold, but as long as Allawi steers the Iraqi economy towards a bright future, we will be doing better. I'll take Lee Kuan Yew over Hosni Mubarak any day of the week.
The fundamental question is would "Mubarak Lite" further the grand strategy? As I understand the Administration's strategy, it is to remove support for terrorism and eliminate its root causes by promoting liberal democracy in the region. Do I misunderstand the grand strategy? How does "Mubarak Lite" promote liberal democracy? Has the grand strategy changed? What's the new one?
How many democracies began under martial law? Ours, for one. Anybody remember a place called Andersonville? Oliver Cromwell? The Terror? These things happen, and in this instance it is a public spectacal and will be watched for and corrected, which is more than can be said for certain other democracies such as Indonesia and the Philippeans, Mexico or Venezuela. These things take time, dont lose faith.
Mark Rose, I'm not certain that Iraq = Vietnam. Please explain for those of us without telepathy.
Well said, Mark Buehner. Imo, allowing Iraq to devolve into yet another shabby ME dictatorship would be profoundly disingenuous, vitiate the moral force of the war, and invalidate one of the most persuasive arguments for liberation.
Suggests to me that we turned over control at least 5-10 years too soon. But that isn't a welcome message in many parts.
Well, I don't think this is even close to "our generation's Vietnam", mainly because if things don't work out in the ME, eventually the war will follow our troops home. No comfy withdrawal on this one.
Mark B and Mark,
I would agree with you if I thought the Iraqis capable of democracy. Call me racist, but I don't. Mubarak lite, a relatively (by ME standards) benign dictator that brutally crushed religious fanatic organizations would work a helluva lot better (for our interests) in Iraq than a Saudi-style deal with the jihadi devil or an Iranian-style theocracy or a country in chaos where every terrorist and his Aunt Petunia feel free to set up. I stronly believe those are the major options. Will it make us look like hypocrits? Arguably. But arguably, it will make us look like idealistic naifs who got slapped in the face by reality and adjusted accordingly.
While I believe that the Iraqis are better off without Sadam, I never believed that liberating Iraq was a legitimate reason for the war. Nor did I believe necessarily in WMD (actually I did believe there were WMD in Iraq but I really didn't and don't care). Iraq was the direct result of 911. And, no, I'm not claiming SH had anything to do with 911. What I'm claiming is that 911 didn't happen in a vacuum. OBL didn't attack us because he hated us. He did, but that's not why he attacked us. He attacked us because he wasn't afraid of us. And he wasn't afraid of us because we didn't turn Tehran into a parking lot in 1979; we let Hezbollah chase us out of Lebanon in '83; we didn't take the Achille Lauro highjackers away from the Italians and kill them when we had the chance in '85; we got one guy for the first WTC bombing and we didn't even kill him; we let a bunch of tribesmen with sticks drive us out of Somalia in '93; after the African embassy bombings in '98 as our president put it, "we shot a $3 million missile into a $10 tent and hit a camel in the butt," and we didn't even do that much after the Cole bombing. We had to show the Arabs, Iranians, etc. that we would hit them hard if we felt we had to and we would keep after it in the face of casualties. Afghanistan did not demonstrate that because we fought by proxy and didn't take significant casualties. For me, the nonsense about democratizing the middle east and even the scare about WMD were window dressing to get the American public (about which HL Mencken said, "It is impossible to underestimate [its] intelligence") to support the war. And I believe the war was working. I know some of you believe it was all diplomacy and a mere coincidence that Gaddafy gave up his WMD a week after we dug Sadam out of his hidey-hole, but I don't. Unfortunately, I think subsequent events have taken the edge off the fear we inspired. That's why we can't leave Iraq until we've stabilized it, and that won't happen if we stick to the hallucination that it can be democratized.
"I would agree with you if I thought the Iraqis capable of democracy. Call me racist, but I don't. "
Very tempting ;) Lets just say we have a fundamentally different view on the allure of self determination. Do we really believe in Jefferson's words, are these truths self-evident? And if so, does that mean that Arabs are too dim-witted to see it? All i can say is, who would have thought a backwards, backwoods nation like South Korea that was Asia's wipping boy for whoever wanted it throughout history would go from a war ravaged agrarian society to one of the most advanced industrial democracies in the world? You could make similar arguments about half the worlds democracies, many of which are still going through the initial growing pains. In fact, that argument has been made, and with far greater volume, about places like India (far too great a population) and Turkey (too many ethnicities, too much Islam) that are pioneers in their regions. Look at the polls, hear what the average Iraqi has to say. The vast majority want democracy, but the violent minority can still prevent it without outside help.
Fred, I'm not clear about why Iraqis are not capable of democracy. Is this a matter of Iraqi genetics, or cultural deficiency? Please expand on your theory.
As I see it, the biggest problem for your assertion that Iraqis cannot practice democracy is the fact that (1) they disagree with you almost every time they are polled on the subject (google "Iraq, poll, democracy") and (2) they are, in fact, practicing democracy. Municipal elections have already been in many parts of the country (google "Iraq, municipal elections"). Iraqi Kurds elect many of their leaders. It does seem that these facts do tend to undermine your carefully crafted argument.
Re: Iraqi Human Rights abuses. These abuses should be raised with the provisional government, published in Iraqi and Western press, and monitored by governmental and NGOs. At the very least, they might hopefully provoke responses from the nascent Iraq civil society. After all, Iraq is one of the few ME nations in which discussion of governmental misconduct can occur without summary imprisonment and/or execution of the speaker. They provide all the more reason that democratic accountability should be implemented post-haste.
Of course it's not about Iraqi genetics. It's about Iraqi, and general Middle Eastern, culture and history. Americans have two very stupid ideas about democracy:
1. Democracy is like Kudzu; plant it anywhere and it will proliferate to the exclusion of local political plants.
2. Democracy sprang full blown like Minerva from the head of Zeus on these shores some 200-odd years ago.
About 1: In fact, democracy is much more like a delicate tropical flower that can only flourish in certain cultural, historical, and economic climates. I know the argument about the "spread of democracy" over the last twenty years, and I believe it's bogus. Most of the new "democracies" are, in fact, semi-authoritarian regimes, regimes that permit the forms of democracy (as long it doesn't threaten their authority) but have little of its substance, the Central and South American "democracies" fit this mode as well as many of the Eastern European and former Soviet state "democracies." Turkey has historically been a democracy until the politicians do something the army doesn't like. There is some evidence that's changing, but the jury's still out. India I'll concede, but it was a British colony for 200+ years. I for one don't believe occupying Iraq for the next 200+ years is feasable. South Korea was an American quasi-colony for 50+ years, a dictatorship for the first 30 of them, and is still in many ways a semi-authoritarian regime (my brother lived there for many years, married a Korean woman, and kept and keeps up with Korean politics).
About 2: Democracy has a history that goes back at least to ancient Athens and goes through the Roman Republic, certain medieval feudal institutions, a church-state split (Medieval Europe was much less theocratic than is popularly imagined. Dante was on the losing side of a civil war in Florence between the forces of the Pope and the state. In England, Beckett was murdered in a church-state dispute), the Magna Carta, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the American Revolution. Does Iraq have anything remotely resembling any of that? While our ancestors had a republic in Rome, the Iraqis' worshipped their kings as gods. While Europeans were developing what would become democratic institutions, the Middle East was under the heel of Islamic Caliphates. While the American Revolution was going on, the Ottoman empire was oppressing most of the middle east.
So no, it's not genetics.
Very Jeffersonian of you, Fred. The current Administration is (or is it used to be?) Wilsonian tending to believe that democracy is the heritage and preferred (if not natural) state of humanity.
All of that is belied by Andorra, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bolivia, Botswana, Canada, Cape Verde, Chile, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Czech, Denmark, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Grenada, Guyana, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, Italy, jamaica, Japan, Kiribati, South Korea, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Mali, Malta, Mashall Islands, Mauritus, Micronesia, Monoco, Mongolia, Namibia, Nauru, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Palau, Panama, Papua, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, St Kirrs, St Lucia, St Vincent, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome, Slovokia, Solomans, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad, Tukvalu, UK, USA, Urugua, and Vanuatu.
That doesnt even include developing democracies like Mexico, India, Turkey, Indonesia, the Ukraine, and Russia.
I'd like to hear what South Africa or Namibia have in common with Taiwan and Ecuador, much less Germany or Denmark.
Fred,
I'm afraid we're using different definitions of democracy. Since you've tried to argue that Iraqis lack the cultural affinity for democracy, I think you should probably define the term "democracy" as you understand it. (I was a little surprised to learn that nations I thought were democracies are not, in fact, democracies.)
As to the substance of your argument: You suggest that "Democracy can only be implemented if and only if a polity possesses or been has been exposed to certain Western intellectual traditions and practices". Thus, Western intellectual traditions and practices are both necessary and sufficient for democracy.
However, you don't justify or explain this assertion. What is it that makes these traditions and practices necessary and sufficient? It certainly can't be the mere idea of accountability; many other non-Western cultures contain this concept. You're also not clear on the amount of exposure to or possession of Western traditions or practices that will suffice. For instance, Japan tried, with reasonable success, to limit exposure to Western ideas upon first contact with Westerners, but later became a democracy. How does this affect your theory? Does the global nature of communications change your threshold?
Also, how does your theory fit with the uncomfortable fact that (1) Iraqis disagree with you (arguably countering your assertion that theirs is an intellectual failure to understand democracy as we do) and (2) in some parts of Iraq, Iraqis are practicing democracy as we speak.
Maybe that's next week's unpleasant surprise.
> Maybe that's next week's unpleasant surprise.
It began last week.
Iraq shuts al-Jazeera’s Baghdad office.
It seems like people around here are turning into "realists." ™
>
Aw, crud. Sorry about the missing quote.
Here's the missing link:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5630537/
I'm not that surprised. There were widespread reports that some Iraqis were frustrated by the Coalition's relatively gentle approach toward prisoners. Now that they have a chance to try more violent means of interrogation and punishment it's pretty much inevitable that some of them will do so.
Mark Buher's comments are right on the mark. These sorts of incidents (I'm sure there will be others) are not a death-knell for Iraqi rule-of-law or evidence that they're somehow undeserving or incapable of democracy. As others here have amply demonstrated in their replies, that sort of thinking is just silly.