Why Abu Ghraib was worse than useless

[dreamer_easy]

I read a little of Mark Danner's Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror - the articles Danner had written for the New York Review of Books. It only underlined the fact that the torture at Abu Ghraib (and elsewhere) was no aberration, but firmly based on post-9/11 US policy; and that it was worse than useless. Abu Ghraib was stuffed with thousands of Iraqi civilians, including the old, the sick, and the disabled, almost none of whom had any connection to or information about the insurgency - making it incredibly difficult to get any real intelligence out of the place, and only stoking the fires of the insurgency and hatred of the US around the world. Military commentators are concerned about what US abandonment of the Geneva Conventions will mean for captured US soldiers.

I talked about the individuals in Iraq who bravely refused to participate in torture and tried to stop it. Danner mentions "a veritable flood" of leaks from military and Justice Department lawyers in the face of the cover-up of Abu Ghraib. This is also a form of heroism.

Comments

[sheramil.livejournal.com]

i may have quoted this before. still, it bears repeating.


"The authentic human being is one of us who instinctively knows what he should not do, and, in addition, he will balk at doing it. He will refuse to do it, even if this brings down dread consequences to him and to those whom he loves. This, to me, is the ultimately heroic trait of ordinary people; they say no to the tyrant and they calmly take the consequences of this resistance. Their deeds may be small, and almost always unnoticed, unmarked by history. Their names are not remembered, nor did these authentic humans expect their names to be remembered. I see their authenticity in an odd way: not in their willingness to perform great heroic deeds but in their quiet refusals. In essence, they cannot be compelled to be what they are not."
- philip k dick

[elbales]

Abu Ghraib made me ashamed to be American.

That man in the White House wipes himself with our Constitution on a daily basis. He does not represent me and my values in any way, shape, or form. But all Americans get tarred with the same brush because of what our Administration has done. It makes me angry.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

A remark by Seymour Hersh has stayed with me, about his sources, people who opposed the torture policy and wanted to expose it - he said they were from different parts of the political spectrum, but they were all "constitutionalists". Those, IMHO, are real Americans.

[hiraethin.livejournal.com]

Whatever its utility, it seems clear now that torture, or indeed any form of aggressive interrogation, is indefensible in the public arena, and is therefore counterproductive. Indeed, while arguments can be made that US policies on coercive interrogation stopped short of some abstract definition of torture, whether or not this is true is less important than whether it can reasonably be argued to be untrue; because then while it may or may not produce useful intel, it will certainly produce a negative public reaction. In a conflict which will ultimately be decided by public opinion, it is a liaibility as a policy, as well as ethically untenable.

WRT your remark about what US abandonment of the Geneva Conventions will mean for captured US soldiers, I don't think it really matters. The paradigm has changed. Any country in the world that goes to war with the US will lose, and that briefly, if they fight according to the rules. Consequently the US will only be engaged in war with countries or forces that do not obey the rules, and therefore any captured US soldiers will be without any legal protection. This has been the case for a considerable time. The last war, arguably, that the US fought where its captured soldiers were usually treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, was WW2. Abu Graib, and the US policy on torture, is a serious liability for the US in this conflict and continues to be a motivation for their opponents, but even had it never taken place I think it is fantasy to imagine that anti-Coalition forces in Iraq would treat captured US troops properly, even if they had the facilities to do so.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

That's a chilling idea. I remember that when the US rightly protested the parading of their captured troops by the Iraqis, there was a general rolling of eyes, but I thought that was specifically a response to the US's post-9/11 policies.