After Abu Ghraib, is the war still winnable?
In conversation last week, a friend mentioned that he wasn’t particularly upset about the recently uncovered instances of torture and humiliation at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq. I was surprised, but this was a sentiment I would hear echoed by others over the next few days. “What about what they did to us?” he asked. An eye for an eye is the implication; they’re getting theirs.
Speaking at the Senate hearing at which Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld apologized to prisoners last Friday, Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) was quick to note, “[T]hose who were responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on September 11th, 2001, never apologized. Those who have killed hundreds of Americans in uniform in Iraq working to liberate Iraq and protect our security have never apologized. And those who murdered and burned and humiliated four Americans in Fallujah a while ago never received an apology from anybody.”
But the problem with this non-argument is that it masses together the entire Iraqi–if not Arab–people into one sweeping “they.” We know for a fact that those responsible for the murders of American military contractors in Fallujah were not the men depicted being tortured in the photographs we have all seen. Those pictures were taken last year. We can’t even be sure that the tortured men were guilty of any wrongdoing. The Army’s internal investigation carried out by General Antonio Taguba found that more than sixty per cent of the civilian inmates at Abu Ghraib were deemed not to be a threat to society, and that they should have been released.
Still, even assuming that those photographed were the very persons responsible for the killings in Fallujah, would that justify torture without a trial? After all, the United States has made it its mission to modernize Iraq and turn it into a liberal beacon in the Middle East. If there is any way to accomplish that lofty goal, it is to lead by example and deliver the justice that Saddam Hussein always denied. Any culture can understand a moral high ground, and if that high ground is lost, so is the war.
Looking back, the different rationales offered in support of the war show a slippery descent from this high ground. The first mutterings in support of “regime change” tried to link Hussein to 9/11, but no credible evidence of such a connection ever surfaced. Then, to try to garner some international support for an invasion, the weapons of mass destruction rationale was proffered, and we know how that has turned out. Today you don’t hear the administration mention WMD very often if at all. The watchword now is liberation.
According to the president, “America’s objective in Iraq is limited, and it is firm: We seek an independent, free and secure Iraq.” But when he declares to the world that thanks to the U.S., “Iraq is free of rape rooms and torture chambers,” and this turns out not to be the case, the moral high ground, the “hearts and minds,” and, indeed, the war might be lost. If the invading coalition was ever considered an army of liberation in the Arab world, it will have a hard time hanging on to that title now.
President Bush understands this, noting in one speech that if the Iraqi transfer of sovereignty does not go ahead as planned, “those in Iraq who trade in hatred and conspiracy theories would find a larger audience and gain a stronger hand.” Casting aside any ascriptions to race, the fact of the matter is that the Middle East is not a very educated part of the world. The Arab media are neither fair nor balanced nor even always accurate. Even if the abuse at Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident, and even if those responsible are fully prosecuted, the damage has been done. If one last nail was needed to shut the coffin on America’s reputation in the Middle East, this scandal, in all its photographic clarity, was it. For many Arabs, the last plausible rationale for the war is gone.
If this war is a war of liberation and nation building, then, as clichéd as it might sound, the hearts, minds, and cooperation of the liberated are indispensable. Without them, the war is hardly winnable. We have just lost a lot of hearts and minds.
Jerry Brito is editor of Brainwash and a student at George Mason University School of Law. His Web site is jerrybrito.com.
9 Comments - add your own
Nikos A. Leverenz — May 10, 2004 at 1:42 pm
The United States is not at “war” in Iraq. There was no express Congressional declaration of such, only a resolution that authorized the President to enforce UN resolutions — a perilous precedent of Congress shirking its constitutional obligations when thousands of soldiers are to be put in harm’s way.
That said, the images in from the Iraqi prisons are hardly surprising. Who really expects the United States military to be avatars of moral turpitude, unless it pertains to the cleansing of gay servicemembers from its ranks in order not to undermine “unit cohesion”? The smiles on the soldiers’ faces as they forced Iraqi combatants to make naked human pyramids or sodomize one another must be a testament to such cohesion. And one can only nod with approval that female soldiers were part of the hijinx. Feminine thuggery is clearly the lodestar of gender equity in the military.
The use of dogs to harangue the Iraqi prisoners is not an unusual government practice. Drug sniffing dogs are used routinely in schools across the nation. Having a police dog bark at you and sniff around is part of the glory of being a young American citizen. Also witness the splendor of our democracy when federal agents had hundreds of North Carolina high school students splayed at gunpoint in a general sweep for illicit substances.
If this nation genuinely endeavors to bring democracy to Iraq, it must not fail to include the little niceties of modern life within a welfare-warfare state. For example, if you are are an imprisoned felon today, it is not wholly unforeseen that you will be stripped naked, bound, and prodded with a needle to submit a blood sample to the “Combined DNA Index System.”
Who will have the temerity to look into our domestic prisons for incidents of abuse, especially when the media has scant access to them (or in the case of California prisons, zero access)?
Chuck Rose — May 10, 2004 at 3:59 pm
While our credibilty is completely shot around the world, one thing to keep in mind: the trial of Saddam Hussein is coming up.
Thus, how the US deals with this human rights scandal will either support or undermine our credibility in trying Hussein. I am not entirely convinced that we know everything and that this is the work of an “isolated few.” For our leaders and members of the press to come to that conclusion before a full investigation is either completed — or even undertaken — leads to concerns of a coverup and scapegoating.
If we are going to try Hussein for “torture” rooms” under his watch, we better make sure that
our house is in order all the way to the top — or else we will create quite a sideshow of hypocrisy for the world to see during Hussein’s trial. Thus the last thing we need to do is “get off Rumsfeld’s case” as Cheney suggests. This is the height of arrogance. Let’s use this as an opportunity to show the world we know how determine accountability. Let the chips fall where they may. And if it comes to some heads rolling, let’s remind ourselves — no one man or woman is indispensable. Surely there are other qualified people in this huge country to do the job right, with honor and with accountability.
Jerry Brito — May 11, 2004 at 12:01 am
Nikos, I just wanted to say that I agree that this is an unconstitutional war because the Congress has shamefully shirked its duty to check the executive by either declaring or rejecting war. However, I don’t think we can doubt that what we have is in fact a war. The families of over 700 dead and close to 5000 wounded American soldiers can attest to that. -JB
Gary Snyder — May 11, 2004 at 9:39 am
Hi Jerry,
On the prison abuse thing, of course the pro-war crowd is going to spin things one way and the anti-war crowd spin it another. However, one should not be surprised by the abuse. This is what big governments do to people, all the time. They abuse people, they hurt them, and they kill them. America is no stranger to abusing prisoners and refugees, as are all other countries. America has no moral trump card. Prisoner abuse? Please look in America’s own domestic prisons. People treated like dirt and killed? Look at America’s abortion business: 4,000 Americans killed every day—dismembered, poisoned/burned with saline injections, skulls crushed, brains sucked out with a hose. Who cares whether the war is winnable? We murder our own children every day. Iraq is a side show.
H.D. Price — May 12, 2004 at 1:52 am
Nikos A. Leverenz hit the nail on the head, especially about jail and prison abuse in America. What I find very interesting (but hardly surprising) about the abuse committed in the Abu Ghraib gulag is that the MP unit involved is made up of Army Reservists, and a great many of these reservists seem to cops and prison/jail guards in civilian life. They are doing in that Iraqi hell-hole (the most notorious prison in Saddams’ regime is now used by the occupiers and THIS stuff is done there too!?) is the same thing they do, and more to the point, the same attitudes they project, in their jobs in this country. I would also disagree with Jerry Brito’s contention that the Middle East is not an educated area (he says race aside, but it comes across as a racist statement). Do you think that America is an “educated” area Mr. Brito? If so, I’d say you missed hearing about declining SAT scores, students who can’t locate anything in America or the world in geography and the general “dumbing down” of the U.S. in general. The public has forgotten or doesn’t care that the whole rationale given by the Bush League for invading a sovereign nation that was at peace with the U.S. was that nebulous phrase “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, and that none have ever been found. The public has forgotten that, they’re now onto the latest rationale (which has continually changed as the ones before it have evaporated) that it is somehow Americas’ mission in life to install puppet regimes (”Regime changes” or “transforming the region”) subservient to the whims of fascists like George Bush and his handlers (Cheney, Wolfowitz, Pearle, et al) and those like him. The American know they have been lied to about the reason for this war, they’ve heard the chief warmongerer Paul Wolfowitz admit that WMD’s were the lied agreed upon, that the war was about oil (he said the reason Iraq was invaded but North Korea, which does have a NBC program, wasn’t is that “Iraq swims on a sea of oil and what business is the Bush family in? Oil.) and they don’t care. Wave a flag and they’ll believe, or allow, anything.
Kevin — May 19, 2004 at 6:08 am
How many more wars must America involve itself in before it is forced to admit that it cannot fight the whole world and that a better way might be to adopt a more compassionate foreign policy.
Dan — May 20, 2004 at 6:06 pm
A more compassionate foreign policy? What you really mean is “non-interventionist.” Keeping one’s hands clean by refusing to act is not necessarily moral or compassionate. Sins of omission are often worse than sins of comission, in terms of a nation deciding to go to war or not.
alena — July 6, 2004 at 7:38 pm
Nikos, I just wanted to say that I agree that this is an unconstitutional war because the Congress has shamefully shirked its duty to check the executive by either declaring or rejecting war. However, I don’t think we can doubt that what we have is in fact a war. The families of over 700 dead and close to 5000 wounded American soldiers can attest to that. -JB
buy tramadol — June 10, 2006 at 6:06 am
ranks in order not to undermine “unit cohesion”? The smiles on the soldiers’ faces as they forced Iraqi combatants to make naked human pyramids or sodomize one another must be a testament to such cohesion. And one can only nod with approval that female soldiers were part of the hijinx. Feminine thuggery is clearly the lodestar of gender equity in the military.