"History starts today," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told Pakistan's Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi on September 11, 2001, just after the attack on the World Trade Centers.
And now we see the kind of history the Bush administration is writing.
The torture story exposes some of the same passions that came to the fore - or bubbled to the surface of the cesspool, pick your metaphor – during the Nixon Presidency. Events like the Winter Soldier Investigation, in which John Kerry famously participated, began to publicly display the ugliest face of the American war in Vietnam. The revelations n the My Lai massacre, and the Army’s prosecution conviction of William Calley for his directive role in the murders, did so as well.
The latter even in particular brought out admirers for Calley, who celebrated the war criminal as a hero or sympathizer with the murderer as a victim. That latter response was deliberately encouraged by the Nixon administration, who reduced the murderer’s prison sentence, which was grossly inadequate as it was, to a minimal amount.
I thought at the time that it was one of the very worst things about the Nixon administration that he did that. After I learned much more about the experiences of the Second World War, the Nuremberg trials and the principles of law that applied to those situations, my opinion in that regard was only strengthened. And I was appalled to see statements like this, which showed how distorted the public sense of these issues had become. It's from the famous psychiatrist Karl Menninger, a liberal and an opponent of the Vietnam War, in his 1973 book Whatever Became of Sin?
Lt. Calley was one of those millions of marching men equipped with killing machines and told by us to use them. He did. He herded men and women and children and old men into a group and mowed them down - then pushed them into a ditch. ... Not distinguished for his intelligence, good judgment, culture, kindness, or social concern, Calley was nevertheless a "good soldier," i.e., a killer who obeyed orders...
What appalled me about seeing that comment was that it was a backhanded justification of Calley's action. Calley was most certainly not obeying orders in murdering those unarmed civilians. He was the one giving the orders, and in doing so and killing all those villagers, he was doing something that was the worst kind of violation of his duty as a soldier. As brutal as combat in Vietnam often was, most American soldiers did not become murderers like Calley.
But Calley's murders at My Lai are not an exact parallel to torture in the gulag today. The toruturers, some of whom did kill their victims, were following orders in this case. And apparently the orders originated from high in the chain of command. As Robert Kuttner points out in the column linked below, one of the practical problems of torture is that it's hard to keep this kind of systematic sadism under control, and lower-level implementers often come up with their own variations of cruelty. But those who committed torture were breaking the law and failing to do their duty as soldiers, just as Calley was. And those who gave the orders were guilty of the same, just as Calley was when he ordered his men to murder the villagers of My Lai.
Sentimentalizing soldiers
It’s worth stressing again, given the endless posturing of the “Patriotically Correct” who imagine that the measure of patriotism is spewing hatred for their political enemies at home, that these revelations were the product of American GIs coming forward, who wanted to expose the wrong things that were being done, things in violation of the law and things that brought shame and discredit on the services and the country. The My Lai massacre was publicly exposed by the aggressive reporting of Seymour Hersh, who was a New York Times reporter but one who did not play by the informal rules of reporters who wanted to become celebrities by pandering to those in power. It’s one of the gruesome ironies of the Iraq War that Hersh has been a key player in exposing current abuses in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
And, ironically, some of the problems in the Army that involved a failure of discipline that led to war crimes and such action as the assassination of unpopular American officers (known as “fragging” in those days), were publicized by the Marine Corps in particular in pursuit of the endless interservice rivalry.
Now that more and more material is coming to light about the extent of torture, and the extent to which it has become a policy widely practiced by the US military and US intelligence, it’s definitely time to start de-mystifying some of the sentimentalizing of the military that has taken hold of the American public over the past years. Gen. Wesley Clark talked about this phenomenon in his interview with Duncan Murrell for Murrell's article on him in the Oxford American (May/June 2003).
The irony, as [Clark] see it, is that while the relationship between the military and the general public has improved since the Vietnam, the experience of actually serving in the military has become less common. The result is a perception of soldiers as the embodiments of ideals - duty, honor, country - reinforced by a sentimentality unsullied by first-hand knowledge of soldiering. Such admiration for the military is powerful, but not quite powerful enough to drive the sons and daughters of the middle and upper classes into recruiting offices. "We've been the beneficiaries of that lack of familiarity," Clark says, which has allowed the leaderhsip of the United States to use the military as a symbol, sending soldiers off to wars that don't affect most American families directly by putting their children in harm's way. ...
...[A]mbilalence toward leaders, Clark says, is common in any organization, including the military. But such healthy, educated skepticism is missing when Americans make soldiers into symbols, or when political parties make generals into saviors. This naivete is symptomatic of something very dangerous, in Clark's view. "The paradox is, or the danger is, that when everybody doesn't have an obligation to serve, the costs of service can become diconnected from the rhetoric of governments."
What is the alternative to this kind of unrealistic sentimentality? Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow has described the problem with the sentimental viewpoint well at his blog.
You know, this isn't about "supporting the troops" or "hating America" or any of the usual right-wing canards. You put a man in uniform and give him a gun, but underneath, he's still the same man he was before. There are conscientious servicepeople who would never take part in something like this, and there are sadistic sons of bitches who gleefully join in. It's foolish to deny the existence of either. What's supposed to keep the latter from running amuck is discipline and leadership. Right now, leadership is being provided by people who consult with lawyers to see how far they can bend the law before they're prosecuted for war crimes. The fish rots from the head down.
And, as we know from the experience in Abu Ghuraib, the genderized language he uses shouldn’t obscure the fact that female soldiers are subject to the same problems.
No one should forget that soldiers are responsible, legally and morally, for their conduct in situations like this. The law requires soldiers to decline to obey orders that are illegal, which orders to torture prisoners certainly are. “I was just following orders” will not be considered a valid defense at court-martial, nor for any “security consultants” (mercenaries and semi-mercs) who might be prosecuted. (So far as I know, the pro-torture Justice Department of the devout Christian John Ashcroft has made no attempt to do the latter.)
So, when torture advocates like the junkie bigot Rush Limbaugh – who is broadcast daily on Armed Forces Radio – encourage people to condone torture, they are encouraging soldiers to do something that is not only illegal and wrong, but can get them into a lot of trouble. The same is true with those who support torture with the tiniest touch of hypocritical criticism of it by being “more outraged by the outrage” over it than about the crimes themselves. Legitimate questions have been raised about the prominence Limbaugh is given on the Pentagon funded Armed Forces Radio when he’s openly promoting actions that are serious war crimes under American law.
I’m certainly no admirer of Ollie North. But a good friend of mine served briefly under North when he was in the service. And North impressed himself as being someone who seemed genuinely interested in the well-being of those serving in his command.
I recalled that when I heard North speak at the old Circle Star Theater in Redwood City, CA, years ago. It must have been around 1989; it was after North had been convicted in his Iran-Contra trial but before he was sentenced. (The conviction was eventually overturned on a legal technicality.) The audience was primarily people who admired North. Several audience members identified themselves as currently in the service. And it was obvious that some of the younger members of the audience saw North as a role model. One young man even asked, “How can I get to be where you are today?” North paused and said, “I’m in big trouble today!”
One questioner made a comment to the effect that North should not have been prosecuted even for doing something illegal, because the President (Reagan) had ordered him to do it. Notice that his is exactly the same kind of authoritarian notion, that the President can set aside the laws, that Rummy’s Pentagon lawyers were using in the report that the Wall Street Journal exposed this week.
North response (quoting from memory here) was, “First, let me make it clear that I am not saying that anyone should follow an illegal order. Of course, no one should obey an illegal order. My argument always has been that I was never given an illegal order.”
Now, that may have been a bit disingenuous on North’s part, because that was clearly a line of argument that some of his defenders were using. But I didn’t think he was making the point just to be consistent with his defense at trial either. Remembering what my friend had said and seeing the emphasis he put on the point, I had the impression that he was aware that some of his audience were serving soldiers who admired him greatly. And he wanted them to understand that the idea that obeying illegal orders was okay was one that could get them into trouble, and he didn’t want to leave anyone with the impression that he was encouraging that. As I said, I’m no admirer of Ollie North. But that particular thing about him impressed me very much.
Blowback from the torture policy
I’ve written before about the dishonest claim repeated endlessly among conservative Republicans that antiwar protesters during the Vietnam War spat on soldiers, or called them “baby killers,” or such things. In fact, then as now, anyone over the age of, say, 15, would not assume upon meeting a particular veteran that they had been involved in some atrocity. On the contrary. Just as today we see veterans and serving military personnel exposing the criminal conduct at Abu Ghuraib and Guantanamo,so in the Vietnamdays everyone was aware that Vietnam veterans and serving soldiers were often the ones exposing major problems and “abuses.”
But this torture scandal currently unfolding does show us the way in which problems like this do damage the image of the services. Other countries that do observe the Geneva Conventions, including our NATO allies, are going to be even more reluctant to get involved in joint actions with the US if they think torture or other war crimes are routinely tolerated or even encouraged. During the Kosovo War, there was a scandal in Germany when a few Bundeswehr soldiers were found to have made a video in which they were pantomiming war crimes. Those involved were disciplined and the Defense Minister at the time clearly and publicly condemned the conduct.
Imagine how it looks today to other democratic nations when they hear that Rumsfeld’s and Ashcroft’s attorneys at their respective departments, and even the White House counsel, are crafting justifications for violating American and international law against torture. Today, we’re seeing photos of actual war crimes being committed on prisoners, not just fictional pantomimes.
And it’s one more problem for recruitment. People aspire to be soldiers for many different reasons, ranging from the idealistic to the pragmatic to the selfish, most of them presumably with some healthy mix of motivations. But not many people aspire to be an S&M bondage master or mistress in some godforsaken prison in a desert somewhere among prisoners that don’t even speak the language while they are being tortured. And the prospect that they might be ordered to do such a thing and face defying orders or breaking the law and exposing themselves to long-term legal trouble is a real one, given the current operating practices exposed in Abu Ghuraib, Guantanamo and Afghanistan.
Public comments against torture
A number of people have been speaking their pieces on the torture issue, of course. I'm not familiar with the details of the debates inside France during their colonial war in Algeria in the 1950s. But I do know that revelations of systematic torture by French troops became a major issue, a topic of big controversy there. It's good to see the issue getting more attention here. And goodto see that there is more and more recognition of what a serious and far-reaching problem it is.
The Los Angeles Times editorializes against Twisting American Values 06/09/08.
"Everything changed after 9/11" became, in 2001, the slogan that justified new approaches to national security, including curtailment of civil liberties. Nearly three years later, we learn that even the use of torture was being justified when it came to terror suspects. The Bush administration's Justice Department turned the Constitution on its head by telling the White House in an August 2002 memo — written nearly a year after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon — not only that torture "may be justified" but that laws against torture "may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations" in the U.S. war on terror.
Those are the words of out-of-control government servants willing to discard the most fundamental values of this nation. But the declaration became the basis for a secret draft report in March 2003 by Pentagon lawyers to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. That report said the president's "inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign" meant prohibitions on torture did not apply.
Jonathan Tepperman, editor of Foreign Affairs, gives some of the background on the laws of war crimes and observes (An American in the Hague? New York Times 06/10/04):
... [T]he abuses seem to have been more than isolated actions. Instead, they now appear to be part of an explicit policy of coercive interrogations conducted around the globe and supported by Justice Department and White House lawyers, who argued in 2002 and 2003 that the Geneva Conventions and other domestic and international bans on torture did not apply in these cases.
Of course, despite all the incriminating evidence, there is little possibility that any foreign or domestic judge will ever haul top members of the current administration into court. The question of guilt or innocence will most likely remain a political one.
Nonetheless, legal principles can affect politics. If voters begin to believe that George W. Bush or Donald Rumsfeld is legally responsible for the torture, it could affect the president's chances in November. Yet if American officials are not held legally accountable, the damage abroad could be even more severe. Part of the terrible legacy of Abu Ghraib may be that the United States will find it difficult to prosecute foreign war criminals if it refuses to accept for itself the legal standards it accuses them of breaking.
Robert Kuttner writes (The torturers among us Boston Globe 06/09/04):
US officials darkly mention war crimes prosecutions whenever there are hints that American captives have been abused. Yet the US government, in every official forum, tries to negotiate special exemptions so that US personnel abroad are exempt from any such prosecutions. By definition, we are the good guys; so by definition, Americans cannot be guilty of war crimes.
After Abu Ghraib, even America's allies are no longer willing to grant Washington special exemptions. Major human rights groups have scheduled a national conference for June 21 on the question of how international human rights standards must be applied to the United States. This is overdue, but how shameful that America has fallen to a state where we need international constraints to protect our own liberties and rule of law.
It is appalling that a few grunts are taking the fall for torture that was official government policy. Donald Rumsfeld should not just be impeached. He should be tried as a war criminal. As for Bush, he can be dispatched by the electorate while we are still a democracy.
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