Breakdown of U.S. Mideast policymaking

The abuse of prisoners that has started to be revealed in the U.S. detention center in Abu Ghraib is quite disgusting to contemplate. I have tried to imagine the broader context within which those half-dozen ill-supervised soldiers committed those foul acts– and in which, moreover, they felt quite “comfortable” taking those photos so they could brag and snicker about their actions later.
Clearly, what they did was not just a “one-off”, furtive set of abusive actions; but it must have been embedded in much broader patterns of systematic abuse and an expectation of the toleration or even encouragement of it.
I have been trying to imagine the dimension of the whole iceberg of which the disgusting acts recorded on those photographs were “just” the tip.
Is this iceberg as large as a systematic structure of abuse of prisoners by U.S. forces in Iraq and elsewhere? There are growing indications–from the illegal holding center in Guantanamo Bay, whose commander had travelled to Abu Ghraib last fall to help set up the detention system there; and from Afghanistan, and elsewhere– that it is. And perhaps even larger than this?

Is this iceberg as big as a broad breakdown in the command-and-control function of the thinly stretched but heavily armed network of U.S. forces operating in Iraq and elsewhere? There are growing indications that it is. The breakdown in military discipline in Abu Ghraib has been attributed by some U.S. commanders to the serious situation of overwork “suffered” by the half dozen (immediate) perpetrators of the abuses, as well as to the existence within the prison of two separate command-and-control systems– the Military Police system and the Military Intelligence system– with the MI system having a sizeable proportion of civilian contractors (mercenaries) on its staff.
These contractors, as is now starting to be noted, are not bound by military discipline, though many are quite heavily armed and are carrying out evidently military functions. And back last year sometime, the “Coalition” Provisional Authority enacted regulations that shielded contractors from being subject to Iraqi law, too. The contractors are thus able to act quite unconstrained by either the U.S. forces’ Law of Land Warfare or Iraqi civil law. The only system of law to which they might–possibly–be subject is that of their “home countries”, under an agreement reached a few years ago concerning the actions of private contractors working with the military in Kosovo.
Will we now see Steven Stephanowicz and John Israel, the two named private contractors in the Abu GHraib MI group whose abusive misdeeds were cited in General Taguba’s internal report back in February, being tried in the U.S. courts for their actions?
I sincerely hope so. But even holding those two individuals and any other private or truly military investigators accountable for their actions would not stem what clearly seems to be a widespread crisis of the U.S. forces’ over-reliance in many fields on private (mercenary) labor.
As I noted a few times here during April, including in this post and this one, the heavy reliance on these contract workers has seriously compromised the ability of the military to carry out its tasks in an organized way. Since the mercenaries are not under military discipline they cannot be forced to undertake dangerous tasks in the same way regular members of the forces can be. Beyond that, by running around the war-zone armed and dangerous and not subject to any unified military discipline they can cause provocations that seriously complicate the planning of the military commanders, as happened with the four mercenaries who wandered into Fallujah in late March and sparked that whole extremely damaging crisis there.
And given the over-burdening that the U.S. force structure is now undoubtedly “suffering” from worldwide, Iraq is certainly not the only place where the military has developed an unhealthy and potentially destabilizing reliance on private mercenary labor to carry out military tasks. The potential for a massive breakdown in command and control is therefore a phenomenon not limited to Iraq.
I think, however, that the “whole iceberg” is bigger even than this. The U.S.’s ability to engage rationally in the affairs of the ever-sensitive Middle East (certainly), and perhaps also other areas of the world has been seriously comprimised by reliance on another destabilizing form of out-sourcing, too: the out-sourcing of much of the top-level political decision-making power on Middle Eastern matters to the veto power of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
We saw, just three weeks ago, the disgusting sight of President Bush handing over control of Israeli-Palestinian “peacemaking” to Sharon, in the form of expressing warm U.S. support for Sharon’s plan for a quite unilateral Israeli disposition of power and control in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
Yesterday, I see, the Bush administration tried desperately to do bit of tactical back-pedaling on that act of ceding power to Sharon, by participating in a “Quartet” meeting that re-stated the need for negotiating the final outcomes in Israel/Palestine between Israelis and Palestinians.
Is U.S. diplomacy on this extremely sensitive issue in chaotic tatters, or what?
But beyond the issue of the Bushies’ apparent readiness to cede control over the Palestinian diplomacy to Sharon, I think it is also time to examine the whole question of the degree to which the whole Iraq-war imbroglio in which the U.S. now finds itself is also a result of the Bushies’ willingness to accede to the campaign that Sharon and previous Israeli premiers have long sustained, to persuade the U.S. government to undertake a military invasion of that (potentially) oil-rich and strategically weighty, mainly-Arab country.
The longstanding and well documented links between key Bush administration decisionmakers–primarily Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, and Paul Wolfowitz– and Sharon’s Likud Party, in particular, should be part of this investigation.
Some readers– Lewis, where are you??– may accuse me of being on anti-Israeli rant. Actually, I’m not. I don’t particularly blame Sharon and his predecessors for trying to entangle the U.S. in a hugely risky invasion of Iraq. For them to do so is unethical and beastly, sure. But that’s how many nations do business.
As a U.S. citizen, however, I do blame those of my country’s government officials who gave in to Israel’s long sustained urgings on this score, and put Israel’s interests above those of the United States. (Check out, in this regard, Phil Zelikow’s September 2002 confession about the “real” reason for invading Iraq.)
So here we have it. Highly placed officials inside the Bush administration (and I would say the responsibility certainly goes higher than those I’ve just mentioned) have voluntarily handed considerable and weighty power over our country’s policymaking regarding key issues in the strategically vital Middle East to a small but expansionist foreign power–and to a power, moreover, that already has its hand deep in the pocket of our foreign-aid budget.
The result has already been extremely damaging indeed to U.S. interests, and there is no telling yet how much worse it can get.
When will this situation be reversed? And when will all those responsible for these disastrous policies finally be held accountable? Voting them out of office this November is a start. But it is not nearly enough. We need to have a credible and powerfully-mandated truth commission that can get to the bottom of this issue of Israel’s quite undue influence over U.S. policymaking, and recommend criminal prosecutions against all U.S. officials who placed the interests of a foreign power above their sworn duty to protect the U.S. Constitution.