Many people who opposed pre-emptively attacking Iraq to prevent its use of Weapons of Mass Destruction against the U.S. insisted that such an attack would be an ugly, drawn out process which could not possibly worth the inevitably high cost in human life.
After Bush declared the end of major combat and cut all the soldiers' combat pay accordingly, much of the press announced that the peaceniks were wrong, that the war was a cakewalk, that the war's (ever-changing) goals would all be shortly accomplished, and that the lovefest between the Iraqi people and democracy would begin immediately.
Apparently, some of the people doing the announcing had enjoyed their 5-martini lunches a little too early. Every day the news of more death, more anger, and less hope for order and peace gets worse. Bombing the way to peace as a strategy is exposed daily as a delusion. Those who prematurely predicted the cakewalk, not being the type prone to retrospective strategic analyses, have decided that the same approach that got us into our current situation is the best one to using moving forward: more force, 'staying the course," and odd rhetoric about how we can't stop what we're doing now.
Nothing has been learned.
And we can't announce that the peaceniks were right, can we?
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Punishment and Amusement: Documents Indicate 3 Photos Were Not Staged for Interrogation, by Scott Higham and Joe Stephens (washingtonpost.com, 05/22/04) reveal additional details of the darkest side of occupation. Most hair-raising quote from a soldier at the prison:
"The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself.' "This Post article observes that documents about the prison abuses reveal that horrors were committed against Iraqis for interrogation purposes, and others were committed solely for the entertainment of the jailers. It also provides additional details about how soldier Joseph Darby acquired the photos and acted to try to stop the abuse.
This brings us to When Joseph Comes Marching Home, by Hanna Rosin (washingtonpost.com, 05/17/04), what may be the creepiest article about how one man's effort to stop the war crimes has cost a soldier's family their peace (and possibly their safety). The unguarded commentary from Darby's small home town reveals some of the biases which have complicated the American people's reaction to the revelations of torture and murder at Abu Ghraib. The most interesting suggestion to me is the idea that REPORTING a year of abuse is causing Iraqis to hate us, not the abuse itself . That's a disconnect I can't fathom -- the Iraqis who have been released have been telling their peers for a long time.
It is also deeply disturbing that one resident believes that reporting the atrocities was 'turning against your fellow man' -- yet somehow, committing atrocities isn't. I had to reread it to absorb that the speaker doesn't believe that Iraqis are 'fellow men.'
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Those of our 'fellow men' who happen to have been caught committing atrocities are being tried for their crimes -- and are getting off with very light punishments. Within the military world, which has a unique perspective, losing your military career for killing someone is a big deal. Outside the military world, it looks more like a cover up. In Military Justice Is Put On Trial In Iraq Abuse Scandal by Vanessa Blum (law.com, 05/18/04, subscription required), the Pentagon's effort to make a show of their orderly justice system suggests that they'll have a hard time understanding what outside expectations would lead to.
Just before reading this, I had pointed out that Americans who had murdered civilians for sport in Vietnam and had been caught on film managed to avoid punishment despite national outcry, so it is difficult to point to a model of military justice which isn't an oxymoron. This article points to the sorry statistics associated with the perpetrators of the My Lai massacre, which does not provide hope for actual justice in the current situation.
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It's amazing to me that the press has only recently taken to observing that American soldiers aren't infallible. Reuters' reporters are among those captured and abused at US-run prisons (bbc.com, 05/18/04). The deaths of several reporters at the hands of the US military have resulted in formal complaints by the media to the military, but no acknowledgement that the 'code of conduct' - the rules under which U.S. soldiers can shoot just about anyone for any reason - can result in murder.
Even as the bodies of more than 40 members of a wedding party killed by the US are being laid to rest, the US insists that it has 'intelligence' that proves it bombed the right house. (bbc.com, 05/20/04) No number of bodies or witnesses can bring the military to look at the evidence before it, to acknowledge that such evidence exists, OR (perhaps most importantly) to revise its approach of bombing large areas to kill suspects whose whereabouts are not known. Not even when there is video of the aftermath, and witnesses who happen to be Iraqi officials:
Video gathered in the western town of Ramadi by Associated Press Television News showed bloody bodies piled into a truck. The bodies included children, one of whom was decapitated, AP reported. Iraqi witnesses interviewed in the video said revelers at a wedding had been celebrating by shooting guns in the air before they came under fire.The Red Cross has plainly stated that "The excessive use of force violates international human rights." Yet, the US is using its unmatched brute force to argue for the rule of law, while violating the rule of law.
The military presented a sharply different account of events, with a news release from U.S. Central Command and a Defense Department official in Washington saying "coalition forces" had attacked a suspected location of foreign fighters.[italics mine]
...Lt. Col. Ziyad Jbouri, a deputy police chief in Ramadi, told the AP that Wednesday's assault killed between 42 and 45 people, including 15 children and 10 women. Salah Ani, a doctor who works at a hospital in Ramadi, told the news service that the death toll was 45. --- from 40 Reported Killed in U.S. Attack in Western Iraq: American Officials Dispute Iraqi Claims That Aircraft Hit Wedding Party, by Thomas E. Ricks and Mark Stencel (washingtonpost.com, 05/19/04)
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"50-100 Iraqis died in U.S. custody last year" (Torturing Hearts and Minds, by Marjorie Cohn, truthout.org, 05/04/04).
By the way: when was the last time you heard about the state of the Guantanamo Bay detainees?
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New images of soldiers posing happily with the bodies of dead Iraqis (cnn.com) aren't generating the level of outrage one might expect in US papers who condemned the showing of live US POWs on TV. (fair.org). Meanwhile, in an unfortunate error of timing:
[General Ricardo Sanchez] warned senators that "this awful episode at Abu Ghraib must not allow us to get distracted" from the war against insurgents in Iraq.(More at CIA investigates death of three detainees, CNN, 05/20/04.)
"The honor and value systems of our armed forces are solid and the bedrock of what makes us the best in the world," Sanchez said. "There has been no catastrophic failure, and America's armed forces will never compromise their honor." -- General: No pattern of abuse at prisons [but] New Abu Ghraib images involve body, CNN, 05/20/04
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Last thought for the day, from a title of an article that says it all: US demands war crimes immunity: The US believes 'malicious cases' could be brought against its soldiers. (bbc.com, 05/21/04).
Timing is everything.
