Elements of Hope
Philip Gourevitch's book and Errol Morris's film Standard Operating Procedure are elements of hope in a very bad time. Moral catastrophe has never been, in my experience, examined with such thoroughness of insight. The writer and filmmaker, each in his own way, subject Abu Ghraib and the perception of it to the most sophisticated scrutiny. Their resistance to moral, political ad even photographic obviousness is downright revivifying. The sheer urgency and energy of their work gives us a measure of relief from the numbing shame we have brought on ourselves. The passion for truth--nothing less--that we find in both the book and the documentary allows us to hope that somehow we can work our way out of the pit we've jumped or fallen or been pushed into.
What do their reflections on Abu Ghraib tell us? For one, in case we haven't noticed it, that the Bush-Cheney operation ought never to have been trusted to supervise the deployment of armed troops. This is not the first time we've seen a FUBAR situation grow out of folly, ignorance and antinomian immorality at the top. The history of the Grenada invasion is worth recalling. Thee are a lot of narratives to choose from in Abu Ghraib. The story of troops terrorizing civilians is eternal. Military organizations are dangerous to everyone, as any veteran will testify. Controlling them responsibly requires common sense and thoughtfulness, insistent decency, rigorous adherence to regulations that are in a humane tradition. Requires everything, in other words, that the Bush people so conspicuously lack.
It's not often we can see such a seamless garment of vapid ineptitude and meanness at every level. Is it excusable to tell your MP's they are to "soften up" unarmed prisoners of whom they know nothing? "Soften up?" As the Bush-Cheney thing seems not to know or care, badly-led, untrained, part-time troops directed into dangerous confusion with a vague sense of license lose all respect for themselves. We are not dealing with Sparta here. Are sexually overactive amateur troops with no self-respect dangerous to an ethnically defined "enemy" population over whom they have complete power? You don't have to be Clausewitz to work it out.
The great thing about SOP though is it's questioning of conventional anti-military, anti-"Amerika" moralizing. Without a doubt Abu Ghraib reflects the worst (though not quite) of the military and the worst of America which unfortunately gets pretty bad. We all fervently hope that Bush-Cheney is as bad as it gets but can we be sure? Not by a long shot; the melancholy fact is it gets a lot worse, which surely we all know. But need we reflect at any length as commentators have, that Hollywood glorifies violence, that Japan and Germany have somehow learned their lessons and are peaceful and America hasn't and isn't and is arrogant? This is all sort of true to the extent that semi-metaphorical things are sometimes true . Is it useful? If we learn anything from moral ruin we have to look at it in many dimensions, as Gourevitch and Morris have. It's not naive to insist, as Gourevitch does, that American soldiers comport themselves in a manner consistent with their best traditions. It may be asking more than what we can always deliver. But as a friend of mine once said, we have to ask more than we can deliver to deliver what we do.
To add observations: As far as the existence of "far worse" pictures held secret goes, this sounds a little folkloric. The sale of top secret "far worse" photographs would be so lucrative it's hard to believe it could be prevented in a country where nothing is more important at the moment than money.
Mr. Stone -- Thanks for contributing to this discussion. I was hoping you'd say a word about Vietnam in particular. You have a line in Dog Soldiers that's just devastating -- sorry, I don't have a copy nearby, but one of your characters says something along the lines of: "You can't really blame us -- we didn't know who we were until we got here." I'm sure the Abu Ghraib MPs would relate to that sentiment. But it even more trenchantly describes the folly of the people who sent them there, the moral certainty that was (or should have been) demolished in the figure of a hooded prisoner on a box. My concern is that in seeing this kind of brutality as inevitable -- and in rightly assigning the greater share of blame to the architects of this calamity -- we cease to regard the MPs fully as moral actors. Surely Dick Cheny belongs in prison. But so does Charles Graner. To respond to your character: yes, we can blame you, and we must.
June 27, 2008 6:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the thoughts, Mr. Stone.
One question: Didn't Kesey's statement/confession go like this?
"I have to promise more than I can deliver to deliver what I do."
June 27, 2008 6:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Robert Stone,
Good post. Glad we're (at long last) getting to real issues, late Friday night.
That's being rather generous actually.
Facts worth considering:
1) we know the Bush Administration was actively pursuing every means possible to circumvent the law and practice torture. Yoo doctrine, Guantanamo, Extraordinary Rendition to torturing nations, etc.
2) we know from Vietnam and other wars exactly what happens in dehumanizing situations, the predictable breakdown of morale, the complete dehumanization of the enemy, etc. Some fraction of the population can always be counted on to act criminally given carte blanche, and even encouraged to do so.
3) we know a dehumanizing environment was knowingly created at Abu Ghraib, such as the placement in a combat zone, the lack of oversight, the breakdown of the CoC and CIA "coaching" of MPs etc.
4) we know the methods of the CIA have for many decades depended heavily on deception and provocation of third parties and proxies towards violence, often illegal, to achieve their goals.
Given we know this Admin wanted to torture and avoid culpability for war crimes and has done so in many ways, set up a "dysfunctional" system to encourage a dehumanizing environment historically prone to encouraging war crimes, placed CIA operatives who then encouraged torture and war crimes, and ultimately a great deal of torture and war crimes were committed, it seems blatantly clear it was a deliberate and carefully orchestrated chaos.
Military and civilian leadership counted on the existence of criminally minded psychopaths like Graner and England to do their bidding and created an environment to exploit it.
The outcome was known as a person unleashing a starved pack of abused dogs into a caged environment with captive victims knows the certain outcome.
June 27, 2008 9:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
btw, another way to put it:
Our gov't just did to our military what they've been doing to 3rd world countries and their police and paramilitaries for many decades.
The original plan was probably to install Chalabi and puppet him to commit these atrocities as we've done with so many other police state proxies, including Saddam Hussein. Does anyone doubt for a second Chalabi wouldn't have run a brutal police state and brutally put down revolt, imprisoned insurgents, and tortured them to make examples of them? Just the same as Hussein or dozens of other strong men we've backed over the decades to secure oil and play ME regions against each other?
When Chalabi failed, and when Iraqi troops refused to "stand up" to be our gov't puppets again, the job shifted to US troops.
***
The continued rise in war crimes concurrent with the decline in morale and erosion of our military is inevitable, and will only increase, so long as we pursue imperialistic policies forcing our troops into unsolvable moral dilemmas and abusing their service.
Just as it was inevitable British troops would eventually be forced into machine gunning independence activists in India, during the 1930's.
Imperialism seems to be the one job we're finding increasingly difficult to outsource.
June 27, 2008 9:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just so others can keep track, Mr. Stone wrote in his wonderful farewell essay to Mr. Kesey in the June 14, 2004 New Yorker magazine, "The Prince of Possibility":
(Kesey once composed an insightful bit of doggerel about his own promise to the seekers around him. "Of offering more than what I can deliver," it went, "I have a bad habit, it is true. But I have to offer more than I can deliver to be able to deliver what I do.")
June 27, 2008 10:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Moral catastrophe has never been, in my experience, examined with such thoroughness of insight.
What about Heart of Darkness? Gosh, what about A Flag For Sunrise. :)
In seriousness, Mr. Stone, you are a hero inasmuch as anyone who does what you do, and what I try to do, can be. I've been waiting for your novel about this godforsaken decade for what seems like forever. We need it now more than ever.
Enough said. The memoir was fine. Thanks.
Matt
June 27, 2008 10:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Folklore?" I could swear that Cheney or Rumsfeld alluded to "really bad" photos and/or videos in his testimony before Congress that weren't going to be released because they would inflame the situation. Anyone else remember that?
June 28, 2008 2:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
In Auden's "For the Time Being" he has Herod
reflecting on "The Slaughter of the Innocents"
and saying something like ' Oh dear, why in the end do we always have to call in the soldiers, those professional tidier-ups to whom it is all the same whether it's pythagoros of the village idiot whom they are called upon to execute'
Since it's difficult enough for us to maintain a semblance of civility at any time , we need to be very carefull about going to war, or better , about electing leaders who will lightly make that decision.
June 28, 2008 4:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't accept the idea that Abu Ghraib was some kind of cool , smoothly executed plan by clever villains fanatically carrying out their will, It ended as it had to , with the idiotically directed NG troops abusing thousands of randomly gathered locals few of whom had information to deliver. It accomplished little (what?) to further the cause of installing Chalabi (an Iranian agent) who was not who the the Americans thought he was
. It gained nothing and it never had a chance of. doing so. It was yet another example of Bush-Chaney lashing out in ignorance. The troops (non-professional part time troops remember ) wandered around getting deeper and deeper into the levels of human depravity , snapping each other merrily with their brownies . I hope nobody thinks that I believe identifying something as a pathetic fuckup automatically excuses it. AG was a crime against humanity -no hyperbole- and a fuckup as well. Does anyone believe that some clever plotters in DC succeeded at something?
Psychopaths? Don't know about that. Graner was and he might have led the whole thing into truly Hitlerian dimension. As for the others- depends on what you expect from human nature. The responsibility is always partly with the individual but the leadership and placement of these troops , their lack of education, their status as throwaway people from a throwaway poverty belt (All imposed on them by our society and particularly Bush-Chaney) are extrenuating. Not exculpatory. Extrenuating.
I don't believe that "the worse pictures " exist or they would have been bought sold and printed by now. I honestly don't think Bush Chaney can keep a secret after nine in the morning try as they will, They rely on people 's complacency. The pictures we have are bad enough and these people were in the National Guard not the Totenkampf SS. If there is a difference . Yes there is a route between them but I honestly don't think we're there yet and we should assess the situation we're in rationally. Maybe I'm wrong maybe there are unimaginable pictures and we'll see some. I don't think so. I should add I think the Morris film is wonderful in its explication of these pix.
All the best
Bob. S.
June 28, 2008 11:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
A minor note ---
Chalabi was long gone by the time the "softening up" procedures at Abu Ghraib began.
Those procedures appear to have started after Gen. Miller's "inspection" visit (August 2003 after the UN mission bombing), a visit intended to offer suggestions about how to get information helpful in defending against the gathering insurgency by identifying it structure (its command and control).
And too, the military -- the JCS, Central Command, and Gen. Sanchez -- were just as gung-ho as Bush-Cheney.
June 28, 2008 2:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Again, 'twas Cheney or Rumsfeld, in testimony before Congress, who alluded to "worse pictures." I tend to doubt they are folklore.
June 28, 2008 6:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
See, it's the way you use "human nature" without defining it that give me a moment of pause.
Other than that, I've loved your involvement in this discussion.
June 29, 2008 3:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am a huge fan of TPM. To see Robert Stone posting, and even commenting is an incredible testimony to the site's strength and relevance. Stone is one of the most powerful writers in this country--I mean that in literary terms, but he also engages with the world, politics and all, in a way that is rare among our best writers. Wow. Robert Stone!
June 29, 2008 12:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Getting to read Robert Stone's thoughts, analysis, and feelings about this ancient/modern brouhaha we're involved with is pretty damned awesome!
Doing it in nearly real time is amazing.
Mr. Stone, please write more about this imperial dilemma thrust upon the world from the darkness of Texas oilmen and their supporting corporate cast. For instance, was it a straight or crooked line from Dallas 1963 to Baghdad 2003?
"There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures."
June 29, 2008 12:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Not to trivialize this admirable thread , but I find myself recalling that Bush and Cheney avoided
Vietnam and wondering what part that played in this sordid tragedy.
Obviously they lacked the sobering effect of personal experience that "War is Hell".
Beyond that ,did it leave them with some need to "prove themselves" ?
This is not to criticize any one for avoiding Vietnam. Just to speculate on the consequences of that for those two particular people.
June 29, 2008 5:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for a great blog Robert, and I want to thank you for all the incredible books you've written. My favorites are the first one I read...Hall of Mirrors, and Dog Soldiers. Both of them had such a psychological impact on me that I remember that impact still, 40 years later...Carl
You're right there up in my pantheon of greats!
June 29, 2008 12:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
In Mr. Stone's novel Jerusalem's Gate, there is a very disturbing scene describing the hanging deaths of two characters by Israeli agents. Given that this was the treatment meted out to high-level Nazi war criminals, and I personally see Cheney, Addington and Rumsfeld at that level, I wonder if Mr. Stone feels that level of punishment is still appropriate for waging war against innocent populations?
June 29, 2008 4:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
You once wrote about the catastrophe of Ronald Reagan. We have learned little, since few Republicans care about the bankrupting and looting of our country. Bush 1 and Bush 2 and McCain think the Gipper was just dandy and all indications are that half the voters will again vote for the dunce's policies.
June 30, 2008 6:43 AM | Reply | Permalink