Some thoughts on "apples"

(sorry guys, I tried to fix the weird spacing and ended up deleting y'all's comments! I fail.)

In discussing the events at the Abu Ghraib prison, we've been dealing with the question of whether this was an isolated incident, propogated by a handful of errant, sick, cruel MPs (the "bad apples"), or if this was one incident in a string of many incidents that share the same basic fact pattern and environmental/cultural conditions (the "bad barrel"). Most of us have handled this division in our blogs, and I had a few thoughts on some of the related issues.

The Administration has said from the very beginning that the disgrace that was the AGP events esd the result of a few "bad apples" misbehaving and taking serious liberties with their positions. It was represented to the American people that these kind of things were not policy, were one-off abuses by a bunch of yahoos and that those involved would be severely punished, as well as the commanders who were responsible for their subordinates and should have maintained tighter discipline. Case closed.

At first, it would seem that the public believed this reasoning, for a number of reasons. We're taught to believe our leaders, to trust their judgement and wisedom. We're also more inclinded to believe what we're told by the people who are in charge, especially when it doesn't involve us directly. (Think the Stanley Milgram experiement on obdience to authority.)

I would argue also that we lay people, who are not military people or have no special expertise, really want to believe that the AGP events really are one-off abuses, that the whole system is not structured to encourage/condone/produce such monstrosities. We're Americans, after all, and we don't abuse, torture, humiliate, degrade or chew with our mouths open. This is what makes us better than those 'A-rab and Al-Qaeda heathens, an' don't you forgit it!'

However, the evidence suggests otherwise:

· *We have a number of public documents that indicate that harsh treatment (oddly similiar to practices the US has condemmed as torture when used by other nations) has been authorized for use "when appropriate."
· *We have a military fighting an insurgency, which historically does not bring out the solider's most kindly responses.
· *We have an atmosphere of 'do what needs to be done, at any cost."
· *We have a group of soldiers who are not trained for the job they've been told to do.
· *We have a group of soldiers who are quite young and inexperienced.
· *We have weak oversight from the General in charge of the area
· *We have a higher General with a reputation for setting up facilities that "get results" coming into the theatre and making sweeping administrative changes, namely putting Military Intelligence in effective (though not formal) control of AGP.
· *We have the influence of agents from "OGAs" ("Other Government Agencies") who don't seem to be bound to any sort of pesky rules and regulations on what they may or may not do to detainees.
· *We have a continued campaign from the highest levels that has branded all Iraqis who are suspected of misdeeds, often on little more than rumours or denounciations, as dangerous "terrorists" who are so wicked and evil that they're not really people.
· *We have a group of "bad apples" who, despite being vilified in the open, most of whom get relatively light punishments for minor offences. Only the supposed ring leader of the group gets a harsh punishment for a serious offence, and even that seems odd somehow.

Doesn't this sound much more like a "bad barrel," into which these otherwise good soliders were thrown? Who created these conditons for the perfect storm? Perhaps only Graner, the former prison guard, was really a bad apple, in that he enjoyed behaving cruelly towards his charges. But the others? How did they go along with something so disgraceful and un-American? Why did they participate, if only to laugh and point and take photos? Why did they not step up and say something?

(And when someone did speak out, the guy who reported the shameful photos, he was 'outed' by Rumsfeld as an example of valour... and was later afraid to leave his parents' house in Frederick, MD, for the death threats against him... why was he treated this way?)

These are not new questions. (Dr Nolan's course, "Ethics and National Security," addresses a lot of these questions about why people act/don't act for the public/moral good in an organziational context. I highly recommend it.)

[Hannah Arendt's book "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" looks at Adolf Eichmann's 1963 trial in Israel for crimes against humanity and the Jewish people for his role as the "organizer" of the Nazi death-machinery. She argues that people always have the ability to make a moral choice, even in totalitarian systems. (We read this in Dr. Nolan's class and it was one of the best books I've read in graduate school.)]