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.)]

"Could I have my vente torture-ccino made with soymilk? kthx."

I ran across this article last night and thought I'd share it with you. In it, a former(?) Gitmo interrogator asserts that they don't torture detainees: they get to them to talk in much more contentional, less sexy ways: they chat with them. The interrogator says further that all of this torture business is a collection of myths spread by former detainees, trying to make the US look bad. He felt it was his responsibility to set the record straight and let it be known that the US doesn't need to torture, since conventional interview/interrogation tactics are so effective.

Hmm. I'm not quite sure what to make out of this. Some thoughts:

1) This is propaganda, full stop. The Administration finds someone with the knowledge and authority to speak on the matter, who goes to the press and says that Gitmo interviewers just need to chat with their subjects to find out very important things, and the subjects are just *bursting* to share. So Al-Qaeda is undone, piece by piece, with the help of some Folgers and Marlboros. The bad guys look like wimps and the US authorities are automatically off the hook, since they'd have no need to waterboard/"coerce"/torture anyone.

2) This is half truth, half propaganda. The Folgers-Marlboro method of interviewing probably does work nicely, sometimes. So these cases are made famous, in the hopes of sequelching the more infamous "difficult" cases, that require more "coercisve" methods.

3) This is all true. It wouldn't be unimaginable that these 2 former detainees have invented all sorts of things to make the US look bad on the international stage-- shame is shockingly effective and not just for dinky poor countries. Nor would it be unheard of that the detainees' counsel "enhance" certain elements of their clients' detention, both to win the sympathy of the world (and thereby for the clients) as well as to further their own careers once this Gitmo business is sorted. (Think about the things that defence attorneys say on the courthouse steps with regard to their clients during domestic proceedings.) And it's not unreasonable to think that certain peacenik NGOs have been using this Gitmo thing as a way of bashing the US, a pasttime for them.
But these doubts are a bit of a stretch, no? The stories coming from Gitmo, from a variety of governmental, non-governmental and private sources, are oddly similar. They tell of harsh treatment, limited and seemingly arbitrary processes and a number of other things that are not supposed to happen at the hands of Americans. (Did no one read the Declaration of Independence? That's a list of the sorts of injustices (as perceived by the Colonists) that are not supposed to happen in this 'country on a hill'.)

Am I convinced by this guy's sudden revelations? Not entirely. I do believe that the Gitmo administrators and staff probably don't break out the waterboarding kit staight away, perferring the coffee and cigarettes approach initially. That's common sense, and one hopes, good conscience. But do I believe that "coersion" with shocking similarities to torture occurs? More so than not.