I admit it. There is a certain delicate pleasure to be had by parsing the terms in which one-time supporters of–and even cheerleaders for–Bush’s quite optional invasion of Iraq have started to try to wriggle off the hook of their own prior positions.
I wrote here in mid-March about Michael Ignatieff’s attempt in that direction.
But at least I have a good deal of respect for most of Ignatieff’s public work and argumentation.
Today, we have the public writhings –on the New York Times Op-Ed page, no less–of a quite different fish, Fouad Ajami.
Ajami–just like Ahmad Chalabi, as it happens–is a Shi-ite Arab who left his homeland while still young and ended up in the United States as a strong supporter of Israel and a darling of the neo-cons. Beyond that, Ajami is blessed (cursed?) with a delusion that he is Joseph Conrad reincarnate, a condition that manifests itself through the generation of prose of a staggeringly self-aggrandizing, mock-heroic grandeur.
(Actually, I think Edward Said had that delusion, too. Don’t know what the cause of it is/was in either case?)
So today, here is Ajami, bloviating as follows:
Author: Helena
So, has the torture stopped yet?
Why does it seem that no-one is asking the right question yet:
Has the U.S. government definitively stopped all use of cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment against people in U.S.-run detention facilities in Iraq and everywhere else around the world?
And then: How can we be certain that that behavior has stopped?
I’m sorry, friends, I know I wrote here about this just two days ago. But until someone can reassure me on the above two points then– given the behavior of many organs of the U.S. government over the past 30-plus months–I am going to have to assume that the torture is continuing.
Maybe not (this week) in Abu Ghraib; but quite likely, in many other places. And maybe next week, back in Abu Ghraib again…
I am going to have to assume that all the “consternation” expressed by various spokesmen for the Bush administration is consternation over the fact that the abusive behavior of U.S. government employees and contractors has been revealed, rather than over the fact of the abusive behavior itself.
No-one in the administration has yet provided any clear-cut declarations at all to the effect that, “From now on the US government and all its employers and contractors will abide completely by the Geneva Conventions and all other relevant international and domestic regulations in its treatment of the detainees under its control.”
That’s the kind of declaration I would look for, as a first step.
Instead, we’ve just had flurries of declarations to the effect that, “Our own investigations into the abuses are thorough and are continuing… The perpetrators were only a few bad apples… But you can just trust us to deal with this whole thing… ”
That is, the same kinds of avowals of good intent, coupled with thinly veiled instructions that everyone else should just butt out of enquiring into this whole business, that you hear from serial abusers in just about any situation of chronic rights abuse.
By the way, yesterday Human Rights Watch put up on their website a good summary of all the “International and U.S. Law Prohibiting Torture and Other Ill-treatment of Persons in Custody”.
Kerry-Zinni?
Let’s face it, John Kerry has NOT come out with a clear position on the all-important Iraq question. He needs a running-mate who has.
So how about Marines Gen. Anthony C. Zinni (retd.)?
Zinni’s book only came out today. No time to read it yet! But he did a really good interview with CBS yesterday. (And here are the remarks he made at the Center for Defense Information on May 12th.)
Zinni was also the one who famously, before the fact of the Bushite invasion of Iraq, warned it would turn into a “Bay of Goats”.
Yesterday, to CBS’s Steve Kroft, he said:
- And to think that we are going to ‘stay the course,’ the course is headed over Niagara Falls. I think it’s time to change course a little bit, or at least hold somebody responsible for putting you on this course. Because it’s been a failure.
The only thing I’d fault there is to say it’s time to do both: to change course and to hold the present bunch of so-called ‘policymakers’ acountable.
Exactly who, in Zinni’s view, is it that should be held accountable?
- Well, it starts with at the top. If you’re the secretary of defense and you’re responsible for that. If you’re responsible for that planning and that execution on the ground. If you’ve assumed responsibility for the other elements, non-military, non-security, political, economic, social and everything else, then you bear responsibility…
Certainly those in your ranks that foisted this strategy on us that is flawed. Certainly they ought to be gone and replaced.
[Kroft comments coyly that, “Zinni is talking about a group of policymakers within the administration known as ‘the neo-conservatives’ who saw the invasion of Iraq as a way to stabilize American interests in the region and strengthen the position of Israel.” He names as members of this group Wolfie, Feith, Richard Perle, Eliot Abrams, and ‘Scooter’ Libby, and adds: “Zinni believes they are political ideologues who have hijacked American policy in Iraq.” Zinni responds as follows…]
I think it’s the worst kept secret in Washington. That everybody – everybody I talk to in Washington has known and fully knows what their agenda was and what they were trying to do…
And one article, because I mentioned the neo-conservatives who describe themselves as neo-conservatives, I was called anti-Semitic. I mean, you know, unbelievable that that’s the kind of personal attacks that are run when you criticize a strategy and those who propose it. I certainly didn’t criticize who they were. I certainly don’t know what their ethnic religious backgrounds are. And I’m not interested.
I know what strategy they promoted. And openly. And for a number of years. And what they have convinced the president and the secretary to do. And I don’t believe there is any serious political leader, military leader, diplomat in Washington that doesn’t know where it came from.
So anyway, what state does Zinni come from? Could he balance the ticket geographically? Who knows?
But quite aside from any musing about Kerry putting him on the ticket, I think it is great that this accomplished, well-informed, and insightful person has gotten his views so well out there in the public discourse–and just before the Prez finally goes on the air tonight to “reassure” us that he has a policy on Iraq.
(As my son said: If the only thing the President has been able to say during the past four important days is that he will “shortly be making a speech designed to reassure us”– then how reassuring is that?)
Helping the torture victims heal
How many people have been victim to the practice of torture inside the
United States’ global gulag, and what do they need in order to heal?
Answer to that first question: an assessment urgently needs to be carried
out.
Answer to the second question: let’s start with–
Definition of torture given in Article 1 of the UN’s 1985 Convention Against
Torture, which was ratified by the US Congress in 1994:
-
For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which
severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted
on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information
or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed
or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or
a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when
such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with
the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting
in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only
from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
Okay, what do victims/survivors of torture need, if they and the communities
of which they are a part are to heal the many wounds inflicted through this
experience?
The veterans in the western world in terms of working with victims/survivors
of torture at rehabilitation are undoubtedly the good people at the Copenhagen-based
International Rehabilitation
Council for Torture Victims
(IRCT), who have been doing this work since 1974 and has been running
a specialized Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims (
RCT
) was in Copenhagen since 1982. (Check out their very impressive
English-language website for more details of their work.)
Has the torture actually stopped?
I have been thinking intensively about the effects the widespread pattern
of tortures in Abu Ghraib and othe parts of the United States’ global gulag
has had on two distinct groups of people: the survivors of those acts, and
the U.S. Army.
But first, a very important but seemingly innocent question to which I have
seen as yet, no clear answer:
Has the practice of administering torture at many locations inside the
U.S. gulag actually been definitively brought to a halt yet?
How would we know that it has? What kind of evidence would it take
for us to convince ourselves and the rest of the world that it has?
I know one thing. The fact that Gen. Geoffrey Miller is still in
charge of the Abu Ghraib branch of the gulag is distinctly not reassuring.
Miller is the Marines General and former commander of the Gitmo branch
of the gulag who was the one who institutionalized the “conditioning”, i.e.
torture, of suspects over at the Abu Ghraib branch back last October.
… And now we’re supposed to believe that this old fox can successfully
be the one to “clean up” the abuses in that hen-house? What do they take
us for– dummies?
Indeed, given (1) the distinct possibility that permission for the “conditioning”
to occur was given at the very highest levels of both the military command
in Iraq the civilian leadership of the Pentagon, and (2) the lengthy record
of these leaderships in trying to sweep all the evidence about the tortures
under the rug for many months till Sy Hersh and Dan Rather forced it into
the open, there is almost nothing that those leaderships by themselves could
do at this point that would provide me with the necessary level of reassurance
that the torture has actually stopped.
Which brings me back to a suggestion I made
here
last June, to the effect that in the case of our earlier, very lively concerns
about Saddam Hussein’s terrible record of rights abuses, people in
the global human rights movements should– in the years before the war–
have been aggreessively promoting the idea of the UN forming a robust, intrusive
‘Human Rights Monitoring, Verification , and Inspection Commission’ to investigate
all the suspected abuses inside the country. You know, a sort of ‘Human
Rights UNMOVIC’ analogous to the WMDs UNMOVIC that governments that had concerns/allegations
about Saddam’s WMDs program were able to form back in the fall of 2002…
Who’s in charge here?
More, from whichever of the Keystone Cops is making decisions regarding the management of the US occupation this week…
Or, are there any adults in the house?
This, just in from Reuters:
- The two leaders of the U.S. military unit at the center of the Iraqi prison scandal could still face sanctions even though they have recently returned to their work duties, an official said on Friday.
The U.S. military suspended Capt. Donald Reese, commander of the 372nd Military Police Company, and his top noncommissioned officer, First Sgt. Brian Lipinski, in January after revelations of abuse from soldiers in the unit.
A military spokesman confirmed for the first time on Friday that the two men had quietly regained their leadership positions three weeks ago just as pictures of abuses in Abu Ghraib began to circulate in worldwide media.
“Captain Donald Reese and First Sgt. Brian Lipinski were suspended from their duties with the 372nd Military Police Company on January 18, 2003 and returned to their duties on April 30, 2003,” Major Scott Bleichwehl, a U.S. military spokesman, said in an e-mail.
“The return of these individuals to their positions does not equate to them being fully exonerated. The final disposition of their reprimands has not yet been completed.”
Not even the United Nations can be as hamhanded as this lot.
Beware of chaos–and the wounded neocon tiger
Just how deeply has the U.S. national-security establishment
(and therefore, its ability to make rational decisions on national-security
issues) been damaged by the accelerating confusion marking the conduct
of its policy in Iraq and elsewhere?
My first answer is that the damage goes far beyond the few Military
Police and Military Intelligence units at the epicenter fo the Abu Ghraib
torture scandal. (This, even on the day that the WaPo has published
some of what seem to be the shocking
photos and videos
of Abu Ghraib torture that were shown to lawmakers earlier this week, as
well as a collection of
sworn statements
from former detainees, collected as part of an internal military investigation
into the Abu Ghraib abuses as long ago as January 16-18.)
Policy on Iraq, in general, is in evident turmoil:
- The question of who–at the highest levels of the chain of command–
commanded and authorized the torture techniques at Abu Ghraib continues to
be both revealed and very revealing. Today’s WaPo has a good
story by Brad Graham
that spells out that Rumsfeld himself was the one, in late 2002, to explicitly
authorize the first use of abusive interrogation tactics in the Gitmo branch
of the Global Gulag (from where, many of them were later transferred by Gen.
Geoffrey Miller to the Abu Ghraib branch). The NYT has a good
story
about how interrogation techniques developed and used in the Afghanistan
branches of the Gulag were transferred to Abu Ghraib–along with a good,
short
timeline
showing some of the key decisions along the way there. - The President of the quasi-puppet Interim Governing Council got effortlessly
blown up near the gates of the US Imperial Compound in Baghdad earlier this
week. Meanwhile, the question of who commanded and authorized the raid
against the home and office of IGC member and close (until two days ago)
Pentagon ally Ahmad Chalabi remains shrouded in mystery. US-trained Iraqi
Police were directly involved, along with US agents not in uniform who were
identified as belonging to the FBI and CIA. But what about the US military,
which is supposed to be running the whole occupation? Where were they on
this? - There is zero evidence that the Bush administration has any plan at
all–let alone a workable one–for how Iraq will be governed after June 30th,
a date that is only 40 days away. (For a few really macabre
cheap laughs, go check out the
‘Countdown to Sovereignty’
website the CPA has put up.) - Meantime, Reuters is reporting that “U.S. troops pounded Shi’ite militia
in the holy city of Kerbala on Friday [i.e., today] in a bid to crush insurgents
whose demands for Americans to leave Iraq are gaining support among
Iraqis frustrated with the occupation.” (emphasis by HC there). This reporter,
Sami Jumaili, also noted that Moqtada al-Sadr was able to slip out of Najaf
to nearby Kufa to deliver his Friday sermon there. - The big question of who is currently making the decisions regarding
the use of US power in Iraq remains very mysterious. It was mysterious
back in early April, when someone– Bremer? Feith? Sanchez? Or even, as reported,
the President himself?– made the disastrous triple decisions to (1) force
an escalation in Fallujah, (2) force an escalation against Moqtada, and (3)
align strongly with Sharon on his unilateral plan for the Palestinians. It
is even more mysterious today, especially since Generals Sanchez and Abizaid
are nowhere near the theater of operations but rather, back in Washington
…
(Time to exit that bulleted list there, since I’m getting to the crux of
my argument.)
Continue reading “Beware of chaos–and the wounded neocon tiger”
Or now, do you understand ‘unilateral’?
Redemption, anyone?
Thank God for the checks-and-balances system of government here in the US. The US Congress may have been totally supine for far too long in 2001-2003 in the face of the administration’s intemperate rush toward war. But now, finally, the Abu Ghraib torture scandal seems to have forced many veteran leaders in the U.S. Senate to start questioning the Bushies’ assertions–and more importantly, their policies– regarding at least this one crucial aspect of the so-called “Global War on Terror”.
Who knows how far this process will go before it ends?
I’ve been cruising round the web a little bit this afternoon looking for transcripts of the many important hearingsthat have been held on Iraq in both houses of Congress. It would be kinda nice, since we taxpayers pay the huge salaries of both the congressional representatives and the administration personnel involved in these hearings, if the transcripts of the whole sessions could be made available in timely fashion, at no cost, and in a well-organized way to the US public…
But no. I looked at the websites for the Armed Services Committees at both the US Senate and the US House of Representatives websites. No luck. Then I went to “Defenselink”, the central website for the DOD. There, they had the texts of the prepared statements made by the various DOD luminaries who have been called to testify in recent weeks. But they notably didn’t have transcripts for the all-important Q&A period afterwards.
I did find one possibly fruitful source…
U.S. Congress getting ‘SMART’?
There is so much bad news from the US Congress– the long history of rolling over to the administration on the whole war-mobilization effort; trade barriers that hurt low-income nations; blanket support for the Israeli government; etc etc– that it’s great to be able to highlight a few really good things that seem to be happening there.
One is the new climate in which the Democrats and even some leading Republicans in the Senate are seeking to hold the administration accountable for the Abu Ghraib tortures and many other misdeeds in Iraq. Even our own senior Senator from here in Virginia, the generally hawkish and very powerful John Warner, seems to be acting sensibly on some of these issues.
Thanks, Senator! Keep it up!
But there’s more good news from Capitol Hill, too…