Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma today raises a different point of view on the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Speaking of those appearing in the recent spate of photos showing abuse of prisoners by U.S. guards, Inhofe says: "...they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands. And here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals."
It would be nice to know what evidence Inhofe has to support this viewpoint. The only so-far identified object of abuse, according to a story in the May 5 West County Times, is one Hayder Sabbar Abd, who apparently was neither a murderer, a terrorist, nor an insurgent, but -- like 70 to 90% of the other inhabitants of Abu Ghraib, according to an International Red Cross report -- was arrested for no good reason. In Hayder's case, it would appear that the vile crime for which he was arrested and held at Abu Ghraib for about three quarters of a year was being in a car whose driver couldn't produce proper papers at a checkpoint. In the U.S., under those conditions, the driver would be given a fix-it ticket; the police would pay no attention to the passenger. In U.S.-occupied Iraq, it would appear that even the passenger is subject to detention without charge, for a significant part of a human life span, and -- in at least some cases -- torture. (Hayder's punishment included not only sexual humiliation but also a broken jaw.)
His compensation for this treatment is to be referred to by a United States senator as a "murderer, terrorist, insurgent" who probably has American blood on his hands. Well, likely he quite literally had blood on his hands -- his own.
Inhofe's comments -- which, hopefully, the people of Oklahoma will take into consideration if he ever again has the chutzpah to run for re-election -- were, luckily, disavowed by other senators, including some members of his own party -- for example, Senator McCain of Arizona, the only member of that august chamber who has been on the receiving end of abuse of prisoners by military guards. (Though, as McCain recently commented, while the North Vietnamese tortured him, they never subjected him to humiliation. Apparently they were half-civilized, unlike some others ...)
Someone in my local paper complained, a couple of days ago, about the amount of space (very little, actually) devoted to the concentration camp at Manzanar being turned into a park. Apparently this is a page of American history that he would rather have forgotten (and, given yet another generation, it probably will be).
Japanese-Americans, he assures us, were sent to concentration camps to protect them from potential zealots among the American people. I wrote a letter to the editor and concentrated largely on that aspect of his letter.
He also told us: "The Japanese who were readily identifiable by their appearance ought to be very glad they were not Jews in German-held lands. Six million of them were murdered."
Right. I am walking down the street, minding my own business, when somebody hits me over the head and steals five hundred dollars from my wallet. I wake up in hospital with a concussion and some lawyer, who represents the mugger, sitting beside my bed and telling me that I should be grateful that his client was not a serial butcher.
Well, yes, I guess I can be grateful for that. Which will not in the least prevent me from doing my utmost to make sure that his client suffers for the deed he did do ...
In an article in today's Washington Post, staff writers Robin Wright and Bradley Graham tell us that
Bush was particularly bothered at not having been told that the photos of the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison were in circulation
Is the man mad? Or are Wright and Graham simply wrong? I can see three reactions here, in decreasing order of importance:
(1) Anger that the abuses happened;
(2) Anger that the photographs exist;
(3) Anger that the photographs were in circulation.
As Wright and Graham put it, it would seem that Bush was: (1) aware that such abuses had occurred and were occurring, and considered them either justified or unimportant; and (2) was aware that the photographs existed, but considered the matter unimportant as long as the general public was not exposed to them. No, his anger was for the fact that I (and several hundred million others) could see them. Which, presumably, was why the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Myers, was given the task of going out and doing the White House's dirty work for it, trying to prevent CBS from ever airing those photos.
(I saw General Myers on Meet the Press Sunday morning. This distinguished-looking officer's presentation was pathetic. The best he could say, in answer to Tim Russert's questions about General Taguba's damning report -- which had already been available within military channels for almost two months -- was that he "hadn't read it yet". I have to confess that I felt more sorrow than anger for the man; but when I think about it, there's nothing the man holding the position Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff can stand less than pity.)
There have now been calls for Bush to fire Rumsfeld (see Thomas L. Friedman's column in today's New York Times). More to the point, I've seen -- generally before the Abu Ghraib affair become public -- calls to impeach Bush. My own attitude has been: the impeachment process, properly carried out (and assuming that a Republican-dominated Congress would be willing to carry it out), would take more than the half year or so remaining before We, the People, can undertake our own housecleaning. But the question now arises: in that half year or so, how many more catastrophes are going to occur -- or, worse, simply come to light, as Abu Ghraib? And how many of those are going to be irredeemable?
To Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski for referring to her as "he" in "Responsibility". Trouble is that, while "Janice" is a perfectly good woman's name in English, "Janis" is, I believe, a man's name in Latvian. Sorry to let myself be confused, Janis ...
I see today that photos of mistreatment by American military guards of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq have angered President Bush, who assures us that any soldier found to be at fault will be punished. The articles were apparently first shown to an American audience on CBS program "60 Minutes II", and were re-shown on the Al-Jazira and Al-Arabiya networks. (Al-Jazira, which has been accused by the Bush administration of showing "deliberately inciteful material", has publicly wondered whether the Bush administration would come down on CBS, as well.)
Elsewhere in the New York Times article by Thom Shanker and Jacques Steinberg, I find the following passage: "... inquiries are under way into whether any commanders should be held responsible for the actions of their subordinates ..."
My, how the world has changed! Forty years ago I went through Air Force Officer Training School at Lackland Air Force Base, in Texas, and one of the first things we were taught in that long-ago era is that (putting it in terms that make sense today) if it happens on your watch, and people under your command are at fault, it's your responsibility. No "inquiries" need apply.
Of course, at this distance it seems that the era in question was not all that long after Harry Truman made his famous comment: "The buck stops here!"
At the very least it is part of the job of the individual at the top of the food chain to establish a standard of behavior that those below him will try to live up to. Obviously, no one, including General Karpinski, could be expected to personally guard every prisoner in the prison; but he should at least have proactively made himself aware of what was going on below him, and taken steps to ensure that any hanky-panky was stopped immediately. Apparently, he did not.
This seems to be a general mindset these days -- if I didn't do it, it wasn't my fault (which is likely true) nor my responsibility (which is not). Some people seem to know the difference (Richard Clarke, apologizing to the victims of 9/11 for whatever role he may passively have played in the failure to prevent that atrocity) and some people apparently do not (administration excoriation of Clarke for that act on the grounds that he "had no right" to make such an apology). President Bush, so far, has refused to admit any fault in 9/11, and in this he is probably (at least for the most part) right; he has also, it seems, refused to take any responsibility for what happens, and, as the man at the very top of the intelligence food chain in this country, in this he is unequivocally wrong, as he should have learned in his Air Guard training, but apparently did not.
Shall we pick on Bush for this? Probably not. President Clinton, on his watch, was not tested in the same way, but I admit that I have a hard time imagining him figuring out how to take responsibility for something as catastrophic. It would be interesting to know how Senator John Kerry would react as president in the face of similar problems. Since he had his military ethical training in the same era I did, I like to imagine that President Kerry would understand that, for the commander-in-chief, there are no limitations on his responsibility.