THE WANDERER, MAY 20, 2004
JOSEPH SOBRAN'S
WASHINGTON WATCH
The Growing Scandal
As ugly details pour forth about the torture of
Iraqi prisoners, even Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld has been as nearly apologetic as he ever gets.
In an obvious sense, the scandal serves this arrogant
administration right. When you release the demons of war,
you can't disown them. Those demons are your babies.
I don't in the least want to make excuses for the
torturers. Rush Limbaugh doesn't need any help: He likens
the appalling pain and sexual humiliation to "college
fraternity pranks," excusable as an "emotional release"
for our brave fighting men and women who are being "shot
at every day"; while at the same time insisting that
these acts are totally atypical of our heroes and
heroines.
Nonsense. First of all, fraternity pranks, however
repellent, are excused because they are done to willing
participants; and many college students have too much
self-respect to submit to them. If they were done to
involuntary subjects and continued for months, they would
be crimes that would earn their perpetrators years in
prison.
Second, these "pranks" go far beyond campus high
jinks. Sigma Kappa Tau doesn't use fierce dogs on new
members, keep bags over their heads, and deprive them of
sleep, food, and water for long stretches.
Third, the interrogators aren't battle-stressed
soldiers; they are specialists, secluded from the
battlefield, who are in little danger. They seem to have
been having a good time at their work. Pfc. Lynndie
English, photographed holding a naked Arab man on a
leash, doesn't appear to have been in dire need of
emotional release. She also turns out to be pregnant by a
man she is no longer seeing. All in all, she's a rather
inconvenient exemplar of American heroism.
Finally, and most important, these practices do
appear to be widespread. The notion that they are the
work of a few "bad apples" forgets what the proverb says
a few bad apples do to the whole barrel.
True, such things happen in every war -- which is
another good argument against war in general. But they
also happen whenever some people have too much power over
others, and nobody is watching -- in domestic prisons,
mental hospitals, and other institutions haunted by
untold tales. The pressure against reporting abuses by
one's fellow workers can be extremely strong.
My son calls this the Serpico Syndrome, after the
New York cop who blew the whistle on police corruption,
only to learn just how bad the problem really was. He not
only had to quit the force; death threats from New York's
Finest caused him to go into hiding and eventually leave
the country. He'd broken the great rule: Never rat on
your comrades, even if what they're doing defeats the
whole purpose of the institution.
In Iraq, American interrogators have been defeating
the proclaimed purpose of the war itself. The revelations
have intensified the apoplectic anti-Americanism of the
Arab world, probably ruining any remaining hope of a
successful occupation and transition to democracy.
President Bush no doubt disapproves of American girls
smirking over naked Arab men on general principles, but
it's hard to imagine anything more utterly destructive of
his hope of pacifying Iraq than forcing Arab men to pose
in passive roles for S&M porn.
The story is so inflammatory, in fact, that only
one country on earth can profit by the release of these
obscene pictures. And it isn't the United States.
So the torture scandal isn't particularly Bush's or
Rumsfeld's fault, except in the sense that if you wage
war, you should realize that you are creating countless
situations in which, for example, prisoners are going to
be entirely at the mercy of their captors. Of course it's
another matter if, say, Rumsfeld knew what was going on
and tried to cover it up, in which case even supporters
of the war ought to agree that he should resign. But
soldiers who abuse prisoners are only doing what we
should expect unless the most careful precautions are
taken. And in any war, this is very hard to do.
Does this mean we should accept war itself as an
excuse? Some argue that because such things "always
happen" in wartime, we shouldn't be too shocked when they
do occur. On the contrary, it means we should include the
moral certainty of inevitable and unforeseeable horrors
in any calculation of the costs of a proposed war. Again,
this is a reason for opposing any war that isn't strictly
justified. The question "Shall we go to war?" is hard to
separate from the unasked question, "Shall we commit and
ensure terrible crimes against the innocent (though of
course we would prefer, if it were possible, only to kill
and maim those who mean us harm)?"
Nobody in his right mind can promise a war without
atrocities. They do indeed "always happen," though we
generally hear only about those of the enemy; our own
government and our own soldiers are unlikely to tell us
of those on our side. Journalists may, but they are apt
to be censored, or at least accused of lending treasonous
"aid and comfort" to the enemy, if they contradict
official propaganda. Hence Limbaugh's fury at the
amorphous "media" (as if he himself weren't the most
popular media figure in the country!) for publicizing
things he doesn't want mentioned. Hence, too, Rumsfeld's
anxiety to deflect worse scandal by showing even more
horrifying evidence to Congress, while keeping it from
the public.
Much more will no doubt come to light about this
revolting situation. However much of the blame may be due
to Bush's oversight, nobody can believe he intended it;
it has left his hope for progress in the Mideast in
rubble and undone everything the war was supposed to
achieve. It's as if someone was trying to sabotage his
policy. Who might want to do that? Cui bono?
Only one country is gaining by this scandal, and
it certainly isn't the United States. The tortures --
hooding the prisoners, the use of dogs, and sexual
defilement, for example -- are particularly horrifying to
Arabs, and they are methods long used on Palestinian
prisoners by Israel's Shin Bet, whose agents have been
coaching the American interrogators during the
occupation. Ariel Sharon doesn't want improved relations
between America and the Arabs; he wants polarization,
with America and Israel against the Arab nations.
The uproar over the Iraqi prisoners is achieving
exactly that result. It is hard even to imagine improved
Arab-American relations now. The weeks to come may tell
us more about the Israeli role in this story.
Bush, with his dogged slogans of democracy, is
loath to admit that American interests, as he conceives
them, are radically at odds with Israeli interests as
Sharon conceives them. Given domestic political
pressures, few American politicians can afford to admit
this. But it's the simple fact.
+ + +
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