Can the Stain Be Removed?
Though the tendency here at TPMCafe seems to be mega-posting (the danger of dragging New Yorker-habituated writers into on-line book clubs, I guess), I'm going to keep this brief, and mostly interrogatory, though I'd first like to commend Rory Stewart for noticing something vitally important about the origins of prison catastrophes. He wrote about what might be, in this book, and in this discussion, and in the broad debate about how to prevent other Abu Ghraibs, an over-emphasis on the importance of "well-drafted and well-disseminated regulations," and a concurrent slighting of the importance of employing prison directors who actually walk the prison and have their eyes open to the sort of activities that sensible regulations ban anyway. In my own personal prison, Ketziot, in Israel, the lieutenant colonel in command of my bloc left for home everyday at five p.m., leaving us in the charge of his lunatic deputy, whose behavior was actually constrained by his underlings, including yours truly, on those occasions when I mustered up the guts to call him out for his various idiocies. But this doesn't always happen, and so the most important variable in these sorts of prisons is the quality of the commander, not the stringency of the regulations.
In any case, an answer to one of Philip's questions, and then a question of my own. Philip asked, "Is my crime really lesser, is it somehow mitigated and is your outrage somehow mollified, if I appear to take no pleasure in it?"
No. The crime is the crime, and the level of enjoyment experienced by the criminal shouldn't matter when the crime is adjudicated. A dour rapist and a cackling rapist are both rapists. But it is also true that a jury would be more apt to sentence the cackler harshly; outrage would only be heightened if the criminal seemed to take special pleasure from the crime. It would be emotionally satisfying to punish the smiling sadist more harshly than the by-the-numbers criminal, of course, but these emotions might mask the cold truths of the crimes. Abu Ghraib provides the perfect example: Who provokes our disgust more? The military policeman who forced Iraqi prisoners to make a human pyramid with their naked bodies, and then, smiling, took their picture, or the soldier from military intelligence who actually tortured these Iraqis in order to extract information? The answer is the military policeman, of course, though what he did isn't torture. It's humiliation, not torture, and it obviously shouldn't happen, but, as we see in the story of Abu Ghraib, the serious, grim-faced torturers, the trained torturers, the men whose actual job it was to torture, got away with their crimes.
In any case, my actual question for Philip has to do with the following eloquent claim that is the heart of your book: You write that, "The stain is ours, because whatever else the Iraq war was about, it was always, above all, about America - about the projection of America's force and America's image into the world. Iraq was the stage, and Iraqis would suffer for that, enduring some fifty deaths for every American life lost: in this, and by every other measure of devastation, it was very much their war."
The question is this: Can the consequences of Abu Ghraib ever be mitigated by positive American behavior? Would a successful transition, over the next ten or twenty years, to a peaceful, semi-democratic Iraq, one that even imperfectly respects the rule of law, a transition made possible only because America removed by force the country's grotesque dictator, cancel out in some way the evil of Abu Ghraib? I'm not suggesting, by the way, that I'm overly-optimistic about this, though my last trip there convinced me that, after four disastrous years, things are moving in the right direction. But the question is important, and I don't know the answer: Can the stain be removed? You write only about American failure in Iraq, but I know many Iraqis who also speak about American success, and not only Kurds, for whom the Americans obviously brought not suffering, but redemption. To me, this is one of the most complicated questions of all.
Would a successful transition . . . to a peaceful, semi-democratic Iraq . . . cancel out in some way the evil of Abu Ghraib?
Hey; if you wanna make an omelet . . . .
Well, you know the rest.
June 27, 2008 2:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Humiliation is torture, don't you know that? You can claim there are degrees of torture, but it is all torture.
June 27, 2008 2:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
no the stain cannot be removed.
it is what it is.
hopefully, we can atone for what we've done, admit our mistakes and hold our leaders accountable for their actions.
i'm not holding my breath.
as for the difference between a smiling and dour torturer, for recruiting purposes i don't think it really makes a difference, nor for criminal liability purposes.
the most horrific crimes were those committed by the bush administration in designing and implementing these unamerican and illegal policies.
June 27, 2008 2:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Can the Stain Be Removed? Can the consequences of Abu Ghraib ever be mitigated by positive American behavior?
can. have. will. but should? or does?
does utopian promise "mitigate" dystopic mayhem? should clean water, safer streets, bavarain engineering or german lager mitigate auschwitz, treblinka, belzec or majdanek?
trails of tears? my lai? killing fields? rwanda? darfur? fallujah? haditha?
malthusian chimps yay; maynard smith bonobos, nay.
meanwhile, taguba:
1. (S) Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees;
jumping on their naked feet;
2. (S) Videotaping and photographing naked male and
female detainees;
3. (S) Forcibly arranging detainees in various
sexually explicit positions for photographing;
4. (S) Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and
keeping them naked for several days at a time;
5. (S) Forcing naked male detainees to wear women's
underwear;
6. (S) Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate
themselves while being photographed and videotaped;
7. (S) Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and
then jumping on them;
8. (S) Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box,
with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his
sfingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture;
9. (S) Writing "I am a Rapest" (sic) on the leg of a
detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old
fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked;
10. (S) Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked
detainee's neck and having a female Soldier pose for a
picture;
11. (S) A male MP guard having sex with a female
detainee;
12. (S) Using military working dogs (without muzzles)
to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least
one case biting and severely injuring a detainee;
13. (S) Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.
(ANNEXES 26 and 26)
(U) In addition, several detainees also described the following acts of abuse, which under the circumstances, I find credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses (ANNEX 26):
1. (U) Breaking chemical lights and pouring the
phosphoric liquid on detainees;
2. (U) Threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol;
3. (U) Pouring cold water on naked detainees;
4. (U) Beating detainees with a broom handle and a
chair;
5. (U) Threatening male detainees with rape;
6. (U) Allowing a military police guard to stitch the
wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed
against the wall in his cell;
7. (U) Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and
perhaps a broom stick.
8. h. (U) Using military working dogs to frighten and
intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one
instance actually biting a detainee.
June 27, 2008 3:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jeffrey/TPM: You have to get Nathaniel Fick to comment here for an American perspective on "mustering up the courage" to oppose higher command. In his book, One Bullet Away, he also had to restrain and fight against higher command a number of times. During the invasion of Baghdad (off the top of my head), he stopped a hot head Captain (he was lower as a 1st or 2nd Lietenant) from abusing a prisoner, and he took a stand to get medical treatment for an Iraqi boy that was injured by his Marines (much to his career's peril). My reading as to why he wasn't busted down in rank was because he was such a stellar commander.
June 27, 2008 6:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry for the screwed up formatting...
June 27, 2008 6:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Handful of sick and perverted individuals worm their way into prison duty and abuse some prisoners.
OK, a terrible crime. For which a full panoply of criminal law penalties apply; and justice has been meted out.
But why is it an indictment of the United States, its military and its President?
Sometimes the criminal law is enough.
Prominent Democrats say, for example, you don't have to declare "war on terror" if the criminal law enables capture and punishment of the guilty, and deterrence of future acts.
Why condemn a country with procedures in place to punish the guilty, which operated well here. No, we didn't succeed with a "pre-emption" policy, but then there are so many things wrong with pre-emption, or so prominent Democrats say.
But prisoner abuse indicts the country, "stains" it?
June 27, 2008 6:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
"...justice has been meted out." Well, not quite yet. and it wasn't just a "handful of individuals on prison duty," either.
seems you haven't read about the "Principals' meetings" yet:
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/story?id=4583256&page=1
"the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft."
When asked on April 11, 2008, in an abc interview (go to abcnews.com for the video) if he approved the techniques, President Bush answered that of course he did.
There are a lot of reasons it's an indictment of the US and the president, not least of which is the president's own belligerent admission of it.
June 27, 2008 10:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's the followup article on Bush:
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/story?id=4635175&page=1
"And yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."
of course, the interviewer apparently was either too shocked or just not smart enough to follow up on her question...
June 27, 2008 10:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
To me, Mr. Gourevitch's choice of metaphor didn't so much suggest that we, the people, must now ask ourselves the kind of question we might ask at the dry-cleaner's, as it did something more along these lines:
Plus some reverberation with the word as used by Philip Roth in The Human Stain. But just sticking to the metaphorical implications of the quote above, for brevity's sake: We have known what we should not.
And that's a stain that cannot and should not be removed. In fact, it should be preserved thatit might be examined as thoroughly as possible, optimally in an international court of law as one among many exhibits in a larger and more comprehensive examination.
Subsequent to which, yes, of course, future acts of good will and good faith that provide compensatory benefits to those damaged by bad acts of the past have the potential to mitigate the ill will those bad acts provoked. And perhaps even to minimize the chance and/or volume of material ill consequences yet to come, if it must be looked at from the perspective of national self-interest. Which it must.
It doesn't help that process along to conflate what should be discrete procedural, moral, ethical, legal and political questions by yoking them together and harnessing them to a single borrowed metaphor, however.
And yes, I do realize the question wasn't addressed to me.
June 28, 2008 3:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
News of the day (more at McClatchydc):
What direction is the right one? I ask because I don't know.
June 28, 2008 4:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm pretty surprised by this because from what I'm reading, every positive development is paired with a negative one. Seems to me that there is no direction at all, at this point. Maybe your "right direction," is simply a cessation of all movement, which seems "right" in the same way as no longer hitting your head against a wall feels good.
BTW, my husband loved your book. (I bought it for him).
June 28, 2008 11:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Can the stain be removed? I doubt it.
The reason I doubt it is because so far in our history, not one other stain on us has been removed. Slavery? Nope. Genocide against the natives? Nope. I could on and on but I'll end it here: I'm from Dallas, Texas. Has the stain of Kennedy's assassination been removed?
Oh hell no!
This is by way of a practical answer to the question. Abu Ghraib is so obviously immoral, I don't see what any philosophical discussion furthers.
June 29, 2008 12:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
As a final note, I'd like to put this out here for everyone:
At some point I would dearly love it if as much attention that has been given to Abu Ghraib would be given to our prison system in the United States. I was a criminal defense lawyer on the appellate level when I still practiced and our prisons right here are, in almost every instance, nearly as bad, as brutal, as sadistic as Abu Ghraib.
That's where all of this comes from in the first place - it's been proven over and over that prisons change both the prisoners and the ones who guard the prisoners. The inherent psychology of the thing changes people and yet this is totally ignored or worse, it used as it was in Abu Ghraib and it is in our prisons right here every day.
On top of that, we are locking up known schizophrenics in maximum security prisons where many of them experience a complete and irrevocable psychotic break with reality. And that's just one of the things we are doing in our prisons here.
I'm not at all trying to belittle what has happened at Abu Ghraib and at the other prisons we are running in the ME, where prisoners have been treated the same way. I'm just trying to get people to open their eyes about what is happening right here, because what happens here ultimately dictates what happens when we are somewhere else.
June 29, 2008 12:31 PM | Reply | Permalink