The War's Lost Weekend

"Emmanuel Gustin" wrote in message
...
"Kevin Brooks" wrote in message
...

Great. So now you agree he is not guilty. As to political
responsibility,
we
have a way of handling that over here--it is called an *election*.

(1) In democracies, ministers who make major blunders,
are responsible for catastrophes (or, in Britain, go to
bed with their secretary) are expected to resign or to
be fired by parliament.

Why don't you let us worry about what is "expected" of our own leadership,
OK?


(2) The situation in Iraq is in deep crisis. The USA (and
the world) need a competent and untarnished secretary
of defense to be in place ASAP if anything is to be
salvaged.

No, it is not in "deep crisis", and the sky is not falling down, either.


(3) I did not "agree that it is not guilty" except in the sense
of "not guilty until convicted." I hope that the question
of his guilt will be subject of due investigation and, if
justified, trial.

"Not his legal responsibility" were the words you used. Your whole discourse
regarding this matter has pointed to the fact that you have already
convicted him, but when pressed on the matter you back off from any "leagal
responsibility...then just as quickly, you are now back to "the question of
his guilt". In reality, there is no question--he is not guilty.


Then you should be quite happy that the 15-6 investigation executive
summary
has been produced. Though I must have missed your laudatory comments
regarding those soldiers and that one sailor who were singled out in it
for
having taken actions to prevent/stop abuse (why, one would almost
suspect
you are only interested in the negative aspects of the situation--but
that
could not be the case, now could it? LOL!).

As you might have noticed if you had actually bothered to try to
understand any of my earlier posts, I am neither claiming that all
US soldiers behaved badly, not am I out to harshly condemn those
who did, considering the circumstances. My concern is that the
US DoD has some policies in place that stimulate bad behaviour,
and that these need to be changed, and that those who put these
policies in place have to be identified and held responsible for
them. Today's decision to ban the use of "special interrogation
techniques" in Iraq illustrates, IMHO, that the US army shares
this concern; although this decision does not yet go far enough.

What "goes far enough" for you?


You are already
getting your CID investigation results, though--in the form of the
courts
martial proceedings against those found to be criminally liable.

Your talent for missing the point is truly formidable. To investigate
only the criminal liability would be a dereliction of duty.

Which is why they did the 15-6.


The steely determination of American conservatives to focus
exclusively on the criminal liability is highly significant in itself.
It reveals that they understand only too well that the Bush
administration is morally and politically responsible.

There is no focus "exclusively on criminal liability"--see the 15-6.

Brooks


To make the point, Belgian had *besides* the criminal investigations,
a commission of inquiry, a study of problems in the army that might
have contributed to the events in Somalia, and (following on the
conclusions of that review) an investigation in the occurrence of
racism in the army.

your armed forces) seem to be a bit lacking--not to mention the fact
that
unlike the US in this case, your own investigations did not even begin
until
forced upon you by the international media--are you real proud of that?

The claim that the investigation was "forced upon" military
justice by the international media is for your responsibility.
AFAIK the original investigation was prompted by reports
from human rights groups and Belgian (Flemish) state
television. Of course investigators will look into allegations
of criminal abuse that are reported in the media -- to fail to
do so would be unacceptable. To conclude from this that
they would not do so if the reports had not been in the media
is dishonest. That the media had to story first did indicate a
problem: the reporting of abuse in the Belgian army was
deficient. This problem had to be identified and corrected
by a policy review, separate from criminal investigation.


--
Emmanuel Gustin
Emmanuel dot Gustin @t skynet dot be
Flying Guns Books and Site: http://users.skynet.be/Emmanuel.Gustin/

On 15 May 2004 09:44:39 -0700, (Emmanuel
Gustin) wrote:

That's not my point, either. I am not seeking to excuse the undoubted
abuses and crimes that have been committed. What I do doubt is the
accuracy of your characterisations of US policy: you cannot make
accurate or proportionate judgements about US policy as a whole by
ignoring the evidence of the majority of cases of the implementation
of that policy. Can you understand that point?

I can understand the point, but I cannot not understand why you are
arguing it. It is an established fact, admitted even by Rumsfeld
himself, that the US DoD has adopted a policy of harsh treatment
of some prisoners to "facilitate" their interrogation. How does the
fact that this policy appears not to extend to all prisoners, render
it non-existent?

It doesn't. Now, how does the point that this was not extended to all
prisoners render them non-existent? I'm not selectively airbrushing
any group out of the equation when it comes to making a substantive
judgement on US policy towards detainees. You are. The question
remains, why? My assumption, which I have yet to see disproved, is
that this selectivity is driven by prejudice on your part. This would
be entirely consistent with the level of binary polarisation,
sometimes amounting to shrill hysteria, which passes for criticism of
American policy and behaviour in Iraq. However, I'm prepared to admit
this might be a mistaken assumption on my part if you prove me wrong.

fact that any law-enforcement agency or armed force experiences cases
of physical abuse would render every armed force and every police
force in the entire world guilty of *bad policy*.

No. Isolated cases are not necessarily indicative of bad policy.
But when abuse is widespread, and a policy is promulgated from
above that enouraged "special" treatment of prisoners during
interrogation, AND reports indicate a link between interrogation
and abuse, then it is safe to conclude that there is a link
between abuse and policy, and demand an investigation and review
of the policy.

I don't think that linkage has, in this case, been demonstrably
proven. Despite the attraction of it as a thesis in accordance with
existing ideological perspectives of the Bush administration and
Rumsfeld's role within it.

I prefer to see more relevant evidence before assuming links between
the factors involved. As, I suspect, would you, if the agencies
involved weren't American, and weren't involved in a specific
contentious policy such as the occupation of Iraq.

Again, I would like to ask you to address the points I have actually
made in this thread, rather than introducing straw men of your own.

You mean I have to allow you to restrict the debate to the ground
you chose, and ignore other aspects that are at least equally
relevant, but you choose not to discuss?

Then the legitimacy of the debate, at least as you see it, is entirely
contingent upon the relevancy, as you see it, of other "aspects".
Given the character of the discourse involved in this thread, and the
assumptive nature of your view of "relevancy", I don't hold out much
hope for any substantial agreement. You dislike Rumsfeld, and are
happy enough to see rumour, conjecture and assumption form the basis
of your opinion. I also dislike Rumsfeld, but I prefer to be more
alive to the dangers of my own prejudices when it comes to damning him
on limited or non-existant facts.

I was not born yesterday.

I didn't imply that. Perhaps you should take a more dispassionate
view of the manner in which your own pre-conceived ideas are informing
your opinions not only over the substance of the issues at hand, but
in the manner you characterise my opinions.

For your information, I am neither American,

I did say you were, only that you were behaving as one :-)

Actually, when it comes to the influence of national feeling informing
judgement, I think your approach is more influenced by stereotypical
"American" assumptions than mine.

However, what Rumsfeld has not done is specify or instruct the
suspect guards at Abu Ghraib in their crimes, and if you want to make
an argument about his institutional leadership and responsibility for
US behaviour towards detainees in military operations, that argument
must encompass the totality of the evidence for that, and no just
selective examples where individuals have manifestly exceeded DoD
policy.

I do not agree with that. If the DoD adopts a policy to achieve A,
but one that is at the same time likely and can be reasonably expected
to have a result B, and the DoD takes no effective steps to prevent
that, then the DoD is responsible for A and B, regardless of whether
B was the intended result.

I disagree. What matters is who was instructed to do what by whom,
who was aware of it, who wasn't, and who did what (if anything) to
stop it. From the evidence I've seen, Rumsfeld's personal
responsibility for this has not been proven, and the official response
of the US forces in Iraq has not been to cover this up. Frankly,
there is insufficient evidence to indict Rumsfeld. Yet. But I see
this doesn't agree with your opinion.

In this case the DoD pronounced a policy A of using physical and
mental "pressure", to put it euphemistically, to soften up prisoners
before interrogation; and in addition it put prisoners in hands of
a too small number of poorly trained guards who lacked supervision.
That this would result in abuse beyond the limits of what was intended
by the Pentagon was, given what is known of human psychology, entirely
predictable.

Why? You are assuming that the personnel allocated to administer the
detainees involved would automatically jump at the chance to
administer illegal abuse. That's an interesting lack of confidence in
the American soldiers concerned. It's justifiable with hindsight, but
not entirely when the result for the service personnel involved is a
court martial. That scarcely implies that they were successfully
administering DoD policy.

What the Rumsfeld has done is to put his soldiers on a steep slope,
drawn a line horizontally accross, poured on soap -- and then he
blamed them when they slid down.

Meanwhile, the majority of US servicemen and women seem to negotiate
this slippery slope without resorting to the sexual humiliation and
sadistic abuse of Iraqi prisoners. Of course, they won't factor into
your characterisations of US policy, for the simple reason that they
don't meet your pre-determined requirements for analytical selection.
Meanwhile, until the evidence emerges that indicates Rumsfeld's
personal role in specifiying the abuse of the Abu Ghraib prisoners, or
ignoring it when it was brought to his attention, I'll resist the
temptation to make assumptive judgements about his guilt in accordance
with my own ideological prejudices, which would put him somewhere in
the region of Dr Strangelove. I doubt you'll find many Americans
outside the anti-war movement who share that perspective, but don't
let that restrain you when you want to characterise my opinion as some
kind of redneck Bu****e apology.

Gavin Bailey




--

Now see message: "Boot sector corrupt. System halted. All data lost."
Spend thousands of dollar on top grade windows system. Result better
than expected. What your problem? - Bart Kwan En

On Mon, 17 May 2004 23:10:05 +0200, "Emmanuel Gustin"
wrote:

It doesn't. Now, how does the point that this was not extended to all
prisoners render them non-existent?

It doesn't, but crimes do not dilute by average.

I did not assert that they did. But if you're characterising
administration policy. you need to engage with the totality of that
policy, otherwise a selective reading of US behaviour in Iraq puts the
US forces and US administration on a par with the Waffen SS.

It is good
news that most of American soldiers are entirely innocent
of such abuse,

The point is that it will never make the news, whether it is "good" or
otherwise: the context for media and public discourse has been set,
and nothing outside those set of axiomatic understandings will be
entertained.

but that does not diminish the responsibility
of those who are not so innocent.

No, and again, I did not say it did. What, however, I do say is that
guilt must be substantiated both individually and institutionally, and
not just asserted en masse in accordance with ideological suspicions.

My assumption, which I have yet to see disproved, is
that this selectivity is driven by prejudice on your part.

So now I am guilty until proven innocent?

I wasn't aware you saw yourself as appearing in a court of law. I
have judged the basis for your opinion as you have posted it in this
thread.

I do not even
consider my position to be that heavily critical of the USA
or even of the US government.

I'm sure you don't. We all like to see ourselves as dispassionate
observers, unclouded by issues of personal subjectivity.

Comparing with what most
media here are printing, or American media such as the
New Yorker, this is at most lukewarm criticism. Over here
even faithful "Atlantists" such as Mark Eyskens (former
prime minister and almost irrationally pro-American)
advocate replacing Rumsfeld by Powell (not the most
realistic suggestion, IMHO.)

I'm well aware of the intellectual bankruptcy of most popular European
perspectives of US policy. I read the Guardian.

I disagree. What matters is who was instructed to do what by whom,
who was aware of it, who wasn't, and who did what (if anything) to
stop it.

No. Governments have (morally and politically) to be
judged on the consequences of their actions, not just on
their intentions.

The problem is the huge range of actions you are eliminating from
consideration of their institutional policy to deliver a verdict on
their institutional policy be means of a selective examples.

Why? You are assuming that the personnel allocated to administer the
detainees involved would automatically jump at the chance to
administer illegal abuse. That's an interesting lack of confidence in
the American soldiers concerned.

Call it a lack of confidence in humanity. There have been
interesting studies in the psychology of guards etc., most
famously be a pschychologist named Milgram. The indications
are, both from science and from history, is that the majority
of people will perhaps not "jump at the chance to administer
illegal abuse", but will be willing to perform torture, if they
feel that such behaviour is tolerated and perhaps expected
of them. And this was a situation where a government
was, to put it mildly, giving the impression that it supported
'softening' prisoners by physical and mental pressure, local
commanders failed to give sufficiently clear indications to
the contrary, and military intelligence officers may even have
stimulated such behaviour.

Frankly, the only agencies that matter are the local commanders the
troops involved were in contact with. They were their point of
contact with the American "government", as you describe it, and they
had the primary responsibility for the discipline and behaviour of the
troops under their command. If Hersch actually manages to produce
some documentary evidence that Rumsfeld was behind it all as a matter
of personal agency, rather than vague institutional rumour-mongering,
then I'll be happy to reconsider that approach. Until then, the only
defensible approach is to follow the evidence and act on it, rather
than selectively use evidence to jump to conclusions that agree with
pre-existing opinions.

Add to that the stress of a being in
a hostile environment, and it was entirely predictable that
some soldiers would commit acts of serious abuse.

Yes, but I think we both agree that we are not disputing acts (such as
the use of lethal force to re-establish order during prison riots)
which have been taken under a crisis of environmental pressure, we're
talking about essentially pre-meditated actions taken where there is
no evidence of any such threat to the soldiers concerned. This is a
distinctly different set of circumstances than troops using excessive
force on prisoners during or immediately after violent combat, which,
although unacceptable, is to my mind is far more easily understandable
in light of their immediate context.

That does
not render these people innocent, for they still had a choice,
but it is unjust to demonize the guards for flaws in human
nature that most of us have.

I disagree. This wasn't a difficult moral judgement to be made under
high-stress circumstances in the battlefield.

Much responsibility lies with
the people who created an environment that stimulated such
behaviour. Anyway, it was a serious failure for any
administration to overlook the dangers inherent in this
situation.

I think that's arguable, but not conclusively so. I think the real
failure was the fact that the individual soldiers did it, and then
nobody in their immediate chain of command stopped it until outside
investigation had begun.

Meanwhile, the majority of US servicemen and women seem to negotiate
this slippery slope without resorting to the sexual humiliation and
sadistic abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

The majority of US servicemen and woman are not on
the slope -- they are not being employed as guards of
prisoners that are regarded as potential "intelligence
sources." The indications from red cross reports and
oher sources are that among those who are, abuse is
frequent, but that it is rare among others.

The report lists abuse in a selected group and then ignores everything
else. That's entirely justifiable and to be expected in an ICRC
report, but that's not - by itself - a valid platform for generalised
assumptions to be indulged in, no matter how sympathetic they might be
to pre-existing believes about the American administration or American
policy.

Gavin Bailey

--

Now see message: "Boot sector corrupt. System halted. All data lost."
Spend thousands of dollar on top grade windows system. Result better
than expected. What your problem? - Bart Kwan En