Torture Facts and American Greatness

National Greatness was the motto adopted by William Kristol and his band of neoconservates to point America away from its presumably wild pursuit of individualist hedonism toward a grand collectivist destiny. Pleasure seeking was undermining public morality, they claimed, which required a noble project to divert attention to higher ends. While an aggressive foreign policy was their means to greatness from the beginning, 9/11 allowed the mission to be stated clearly as the pursuit of an American empire.

The opposing conservative position was best put by John Q. Adams: "America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all; she is the champion and vindicator only of her own." Traditional conservatives, therefore, have opposed empire as unconservative from the beginning (Foreign Policy, www.acuf.org/principles/additional.asp) and even Mr. Kristol called his pro-empire policy neoconservative rather than conservative when he appeared on C-SPAN's Washington Journal on May 10, 2004 to explain the matter of Abu Ghraib.

Making empire the goal of foreign policy has enormous consequences. As George F. Will stated in regard to the prison scandal, with his usual no-nonsense moral clarity: "Americans must not flinch from absorbing the photographs of what some Americans did in that prison. And they should not flinch from this fact: That pornography is, almost inevitably, part of what empire looks like. It does not always look like that, and it does not only look like that. But empire is always about domination. Domination for self defense, perhaps. Domination for the good of the dominated, arguably. But domination."

Thanks to Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM), a former military officer, and follow up investigations by a Washington Post investigative team, we now know the immediate sequence of events that led to the American military police abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison. A military investigation in late Summer 2003 of the 800th Military Police Brigade under Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller found a breakdown in discipline at the prison. Gen. Karpinski did not even visit many elements of the prisons under her supervision because of concern with the political instability and violence beyond her immediate headquarters. When told that her troops were not saluting, she refused to order them to begin doing so.

Central Command, concerned about the breakdown but apparently worried about disciplining one of the highest ranking female Army officers in Iraq -- called by the military public relations people for her MP role "the first woman to lead American 'combat' troops"--devised a compromise bureaucratic solution to hand operational control of the critical central interrogation prison at Abu Ghraib to the military intelligence unit questioning the prisoners. The critical memorandum was issued October 12, 2003 by the Iraq commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, and translated into a formal order on November 19, 2003. Wittingly or unwittingly, the memorandum gave the interrogators the authority they needed to take charge and was the precipitating event for what investigating Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba later characterized as sadistic criminal abuses, the first one of which apparently took place on October 17, 2003.

Army policy is to make MP's responsible for order within the prisons and for the physical safety of the community and the prisoners. In order to prevent abuse, interrogators are limited to a staff role so that the simple existence of the MP's becomes a restraint upon what they are able to do. Interrogators seek information that may save the lives of their comrades and have a tremendous incentive to take intimidation right up to the boundary of acceptable use. Once the interrogators were placed in charge, even if ambiguously, the limits were removed and they directed the MP's, unfamiliar with the limits and undisciplined by previous experience, to soften up the prisoners -- which, together with broader powers ceded to interrogators in 2003--led to the horrific acts and the damning photographs.

To a personnel officer, the worm in the apple was a simple bureaucratic decision, the equal opportunity assignment to unit command without consideration of sex. The worse and less likely interpretation would be that the decision to give command was made as a public relations statement. While Congress has insisted upon restricting women from direct combat roles in the military, the male officers have been unwilling or unable to stop the steady spread of women into close support positions, as the casualty figures in Iraq demonstrate. They would have to take on the whole liberal culture of the American media and social establishment, including many Republicans, to do so. A movement lead by Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness only to separate men and women in basic training has met a stone wall in the Pentagon and White House.

Given the sensitivity of these issues, caution was certainly understandable. In some ways, getting around replacing Gen. Karpinski by shifting responsibility was a brilliant bureaucratic maneuver. But, as we see now in twenty-twenty hindsight, when mixed with a dose of juvenile American hedonism and broader standards, this led to actual torture and severe cultural humiliation. No values are higher in the Arab world than male honor and female purity. Placing a woman in charge of Iraq prisons when the U.S. was trying to win the hearts and minds of the population was an affront to this culture. But the cultural belief that sex is meaningless in deciding opportunity for jobs blinded all to any possible problems. Yet, it was to get much, much worse.

When The Washington Post first published the picture of the female U.S. MP smirking and obscenely pointing to the private parts of a naked Iraqi prisoner, the caption did not identify her as a woman but only as a "soldier." The picture was blurry enough that sex was not obvious. The accompanying several thousand-word story did not reveal the soldier's sex either (she is now four months pregnant). Indeed, Gen Karpinski was not identified as a woman, and in these days of sex-neutral first names, who could be sure? While it was refreshing to find the Post so demure, the Arab world was not fooled and erupted into an anger that has set the U.S. mission on its heels. Even when Gen. Karpinski was finally disciplined, the liberal cultural niceties remained so powerful that she was merely given a letter of admonishment that would keep her from being promoted, when she had already decided to retire.

So a little bureaucratic rule based upon progressive utopianism and political correctness collided with a foreign culture based upon male honor. The resulting pictures will fill al Qaeda's ranks with terrorists for generations to come. One can reject this culture while still understanding that is how the Arab world operates. If one is to direct its destinies, one must at least be aware of its cultural myths. Such is the danger of flirting with an American empire-a little cultural blindness on the part of the imperial power and its natural bureaucratic opaqueness has the potential to bring the whole enterprise down.

Abu Ghraib took place in a context. On January 25, 2002 White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales wrote a memo to the president saying that 9/11 made "obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions." While the president initially accepted the recommendation not to apply the conventions to either the Taliban government or al-Oeada prisoners, former military officer Colin Powell convinced him to re-apply the protections to the Taliban. In April 2003, the Pentagon and the White House counsel's office approved sleep deprivation through reverse sleeping patterns, standing shackled for long periods of time, exposure of inmates to extremes of hot and cold cell conditions, nudity at least in cells, the use of women to interrogate male prisoners in cells, placement of hoods over the face, the use of snarling dogs to intimidate the prisoners, threats of violence and the use of extremely bright lights and loud music for Iraq when approved by proper authority. While these appear to conflict with the Geneva conventions, when questioned before a recent Congressional hearing, Sec. Donald H. Rumsfeld replied that the U.S. does support the conventions and that all techniques were approved by the lawyers as being in compliance.

There were two categories of new methods to be used in interrogation and the more stressful ones were supposed to be approved higher up the chain of command. It does not appear that higher permission was sought at Abu Ghraib although there were mitigating circumstances There were frequent prisoner riots, throwing of materials at guards and abuse of other prisoners (reportedly a male rape of a 14 year old boy). And we know what the terrorists are capable of, including the gruesome beheading of Nicholas Berg. In cases of imminent danger, extreme measures may be called for. But there appeared to be no immediate danger to the guards or interrogators. The conventions are clear, "no physical or moral coercion shall be exercised against protected persons, in particular to obtain information from them or from third parties."

The Bush Administration claims that it has been abiding by the Geneva conventions, even saying the treatment of those detained as al-Qaeda terrorists is "consistent with" the conventions. But some have questioned the necessity of abiding by them. The Wall Street Journal editors oppose applying the conventions to "illegal combatants," calling applying it to them an "extreme" position (5/14/04A12). They claim that adhering to the conventions "would severely compromise the U.S. counterinsurgency effort" and that if Americans were aware that all prisoners are required to give is their name, rank and serial number they would oppose adhering to the Geneva conventions too. Newt Gingrich even placed an op-ed in the same publication complaining about a "double standard" used against the U.S. and warning against "appearing overly contrite or overly apologetic."

These neoconservatives at least are facing the moral issues raised by Mr. Will. They support empire and are willing to use the means necessary to accomplish it, including at least partial abandonment of the long-standing commitment to the Geneva conventions. The editors of the Journal might be surprised that past generations of Americans were very aware of the requirement only to give name, rank and serial number. Back in the World War II days of a patriotic Hollywood, Japanese use of standing for long periods to induce extreme fatigue against American prisoners caused outrage in theaters but national pride in our refusal (except perhaps in extreme battlefield conditions) to do the same. In several cold war motion pictures, North Koreans kept American prisoners awake through sleep deprivation methods they invented, while brave Americans resisted by only chanting name, rank and serial number. One famous scene showed an American prisoner painfully denied sleep, painting eyeballs on his eyelids to fool the interrogators and catch a wink of rest. Americans were not supposed to meet world standards, double or not, they were expected to personify the Geneva conventions and mostly did and were proud they did.

To its credit, the Bush Administration continues to support them. Yet, contrary to the pretended media and partisan outrage, American torture of prisoners is not a recent revelation. I have a Washington Post story dated December 15, 2003 (p. A9) that I cut at the time. It reads in part: Saddam and al Qaeda prisoners will be handled "under the same guidance approved by the White House council's office" that allows "handlers to subject captives to limited pain and discomfort. In some cases, they have deprived captives of sleep, restroom facilities and comfortable seating positions. In at least one case, they have denied pain medication." Your editor remembers, traveling in an airplane with a major conservative leader that day, showing him the story and asking him did everyone know about us using torture but me? He said everyone knew and approved of it, including him. More likely, most people were like me and simply pretended it would all go away. I hate liberal group guilt but we are all guilty here, at least the informed.

It is impossible to know how this will turn out but, as Will says, at least we should be able to face the truth. It is likely that only the six enlisted personnel committed crimes. Yet, policy decisions did inadvertently influence them. When I was in Iraq at about this time, as a former artilleryman, I asked where they all were stationed now that set battles were over. I was told they were turned into MPs and, when I responded they were not trained for this, I was told they would learn on the job. The Abu Ghraib MPs, in turn, were taken off patrols and entered prison management with no greater training. This lack of preparation triggered the Miller report and his recommendations were informed by how he ran Guantanamo under the April 2003 and Gonzales rules, which led to the Sanchez memo and the increased authority for the interrogators in Abu Ghraib

In any event, the U.S. does have a rule of law and the facts will come out. But great damage has been done. A poll even before the prison scandal found 80 percent of the Iraqi people oppose our Coalition Provisional Authority and 82 percent oppose our military. Even former optimist David Ignatius, after his most recent visit, believes that it will be almost impossible to unite what he now recognizes as the three distinct peoples and worldviews of Iraq. Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, according to State Department data, the number of significant terrorist attacks has increased from 124 in 2001 to 169 in 2003, a 36 percent increase.

At this point in time, there seems to be no rational alternative to sticking to the Bush Administration schedule to turn power to Iraqis on June 30, 2004, to hold preliminary constitutional elections in January 2005, to run final elections with U.S. withdrawal to a few defensible forts, and departure in December 2005. Then we can concentrate on terrorism. The scandal might be a blessing in disguise if we can once again recognize that there is a worldwide double standard but that the United States holds to higher values likethe Geneva Convention. America is great because we support those values and, while we will protect ourselves from the malevolence of others, we do not seek empire or the terrible means necessary to sustain it.

Donald Devine, editor.