Boys Will Be Boys - Torture in Iraq

Yes, boys will be boys, but that doesn't make their actions right. If you give a bunch of twenty-something young men guns and ammo, then send them over to fight in a frustrating counter-insurgency war against an enemy that has been almost thoroughly dehumanized in their brainwashed minds...bad things are going to happen. However, the seeming inevitability of excesses and attrocities when employing the blunt instrument of war doesn't make them right. Armies are not armed mobs and America is supposedly a country that places a premium value on the rule-of-law and on basic human dignity as well...and please hold your laughter until you finish reading this entire posting.

Indeed, the failure of U.S. leadership to make the best possible effort to act morally and without brazen double-standards in its so-called "War on Terror" — which includes Iraq, from their perspective, in spite of a lack of connections to 9/11 — is ultimately going to be its undoing. Once you surrender the moral high-ground, it's just a matter of time. Indeed, any people who oppress and abuse other people — especially when they're self-righteous, arrogant and doing it on a world-wide scale — are on their way down. Almighty God makes this abundantly clear in the Qur'an, and for those of you who don't believe in this Last Testament to all of mankind, well then just read some history since it will certainly validate my assertion that arrogant empires fall...

What got me started on this ramble is an article entitled Torture in Iraq, by Human Rights Watch, which I recently read on the New York Review of Books website. It's a harrowing article that should disgust everyone, but should surprise no one. I guess "should" is the operative word here, since I'm well aware that there are many people out there who will be surprised by it or who simply won't believe it. That's partly because conservative radio talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, both chickenhawks who have never even been in the military — much less a war, regularly put forward an idealized (and highly naive) view of the U.S. military which portrays them as a bunch of clean-cut "baseball and apple pie" Christian soldiers who regularly go out of their way to avoid hurting Iraqis. However, anyone with experience in the U.S. military, or who has read personal accounts of how U.S. soldiers (or any soldiers for that matter) have generally behaved during counter-insurgency operations in the 20th century, should be able to see right through this thinly veiled propaganda.

In short, we should be disgusted by what's going on in Iraq, but we shouldn't be surprised by any of it. The sad thing is that many Americans, with their radios and televisions tuned to FauxNews and other sources of misinformation, will either just go into denial about all of this (i.e. "it's all lies from the liberal media that hates America...") or will never hear about it in the first place. On that note, here (again) is the link to the article under discussion followed by some excerpts:

Torture in Iraq
by Human Rights Watch

"One officer and two noncommissioned officers (NCOs) of the 82nd Airborne who witnessed abuse, speaking on condition of anonymity, described in multiple interviews with Human Rights Watch how their battalion in 2003–2004 routinely used physical and mental torture as a means of intelligence gathering and for stress relief...According to their accounts, the torture and other mistreatment of Iraqis in detention was systematic and was known at varying levels of command."

"All three soldiers expressed confusion on the proper application of the Geneva Conventions on the laws of armed conflict in the treatment of prisoners. All had served in Afghanistan prior to Iraq and said that contradictory statements by US officials regarding the applicability of the Geneva Conventions in Afghanistan and Iraq (see Conclusion) contributed to their confusion, and ultimately to how they treated prisoners."

"The military has made no effort to conduct a broader criminal investigation focusing on how military command might have been involved in reported abuse, and the administration continues to insist that reported abuse had nothing to do with the administration's decisions on the applicability of the Geneva Conventions or with any approved interrogation techniques."

"The officer who spoke to Human Rights Watch made persistent efforts to raise concerns he had with superior officers up the chain of command and to obtain clearer rules on the proper treatment of prisoners. When he raised the issue with superiors, he was consistently told to keep his mouth shut, turn a blind eye, or consider his career. When he sought clearer procedures from general officers, he was told merely to use his judgment."

"On February 7, 2002, President George W. Bush announced that the Geneva Conventions concerning the treatment of prisoners did not apply at all to al-Qaeda members or to Taliban soldiers because they did not qualify as members of the armed forces. He insisted that detainees would nonetheless be treated "humanely." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told journalists that day: "The reality is the set of facts that exist today with the al-Qaeda and the Taliban were not necessarily the set of facts that were considered when the Geneva Convention was fashioned."

"The abuses alleged in this report can be traced to the Bush administration's decision to disregard the Geneva Conventions in the armed conflict in Afghanistan."

"The accounts presented in this report are further evidence that this decision by the Bush administration was to have a profound influence on the treatment of detained persons in military operations in Iraq as well as in the 'global war on terror'...coercive interrogation methods approved by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld for use on prisoners at Guantánamo—including the use of guard dogs to induce fear in prisoners, stress techniques such as forced standing and shackling in painful positions, and removing their clothes for long periods...contributed to the widespread and systematic torture and abuse at US detention centers."