Comments on: If you don’t violate someone’s human rights some of the time, you probably aren’t doing your job

By: msg

msg — Sat, 01 May 2004 23:56:48 +0000

Maybe we went through the wormhole. Maybe we’re going backwards through time now, so that Negroponte gets nominated, and then the atrocities are made public before he can authorize them, the blood starts to vanish from his manicured hands before it’s been spilled, and the public outrage gathers in advance of what would have been intolerable offenses against human decency and justice. Except they happened already, but still… maybe the good part, where these things don’t exist except in nightmare, is ahead of us now, instead of receding far behind.

By: meanregression

meanregression — Sat, 01 May 2004 18:48:33 +0000

educated people from the so-called top rungs of society are also torturers, but they do it supported by their entrenched privilegesystem . even in the good ole u s of a. case study: slavery in the southern u.s. while it’s true that poor white overseers and patrollers and just regular average working whites were responsible for the torture of slaves, so were the educated, moneyed masters. they didn’t just order torture, they did hands on torturing too. remember basic sociology, as in-group/outgroup divisions become more distinct, activities like torture become more likely. it’s very possible that the military’s institutional practice of othering and dehumanizing iraqis is at the bottom of this torture. and it’s quite probable that this is not an isolated case. and it’s almost certain that higher ups, at the very least, knew of this and did nothing and will not catch any of the blame.

By: bryan

bryan — Sat, 01 May 2004 17:20:36 +0000

tinfoil hat comes out: hey, maybe this was why Bush was so concerned about getting immunity for war crimes charges against U.S troops, it was already in the planning stages. oh, sorry if that sounds like I’m hating.

By: nick

nick — Sat, 01 May 2004 06:03:37 +0000

Takes some of the steam out of GW’s constant harking back to the bad old days of “rape rooms” and the like. Sadly not: he managed to express disgust at the reports while excusing his ‘Mission Accomplished’ speech by saying: A year ago, I did give the speech from the carrier, saying that we had achieved an important objective, that we’d accomplished a mission, which was the removal of Saddam Hussein. And as a result, there are no longer torture chambers or rape rooms or mass graves in Iraq. Indeed. [off-topic: the official White House account of the Bush-Martin press conference includes such detailed transcription as Martin’s ‘We also—(begins speaking in French)’ and ‘(Responding in French.)’, along with Bush’s hilarious ‘Some of these guys understand French. (Laughter.) Raise your hand, Gregory. (Laughter.)’ Just wonderful.]

By: msg

msg — Sat, 01 May 2004 05:09:53 +0000

Ted Barlow- Yeah. And lovely Stanley Milgram’s contribution to the inhuman progress of the race. The assumption is the experiment is a self-contained world in which the veneer of civility and decency is lost, while outside the laboratory context things continue to be morally sound. I still think there’s an important point in Mr. Benny’s original post. But it’s not about the isolated world of Abu Ghraib, or even the American military in Iraq; it’s about an us, not a them. We’re the ones, we have that absolute power. At the same time as individuals most of us feel powerless to affect much of anything, collectively we’re changing the entire world, massively, permanently. So that Acton’s corruption virus is at work, not so much on select powerful individuals, but on all of us collectively; though we’re mostly blind to it, and the power isn’t a direct expression of our will. I won’t accept responsibility for anything that’s happened in Iraq, but I can’t wash my hands of it either. And the idea that it’s only the lack of mature instruction and a detailed lesson plan that’s given us these latest images of inhuman brutality just doesn’t get it. The whole of American society’s in the midst of a grand Stanford Experiment, and it’s gotten ugly beyond bearing. Maybe this will be enough to wake the more complacent among us.

By: mitch

mitch — Sat, 01 May 2004 03:48:16 +0000

Is anyone else wondering if these prisoners were the guys who use to run Abu Ghraib?

By: halfway educated

halfway educated — Sat, 01 May 2004 03:27:11 +0000

I find it surprising that education is so easily dismissed in this case. If someone is to be educated to work in a nuclear plant, you will require good high school results. Because that would be a good predictor for the results of the on the job training. If someone is going to work in various jobs in the military, it would also be appropriate to require some amount of education. Just saying there are bad apples anywhere, regardless of education, is not an argument against the benefit of education. The Stanford prison experiment looks convincing, in that it shows that even Stanford students are capable of this kind of ugly behaviour. Yet these students hadn’t had any training regarding the handling of prisoners. To quote from the original rant from Mr. Benny: It’s what comes of recruiting the vast bulk of your soldiers from the bottom rung of society, doing nothing to further their education, and turning them loose in a country where people shoot at them, which they resent. It’s hardly counterintuitive that they would take out their resentment upon whatever prisoners come to hand. Were those soldier trained in proper procedure in handling prisoners, the chance of something going wrong would IMO definitely be less. But if you recruit high school dropouts, it won’t be easy to educate them, (otherwise they probably would have finished high school), and apparently the US army didn’t even try to educate them in these issues. But they were from the 372nd Military Police Company. And it can’t be totally unexpected for MP’s to handle prisoners. They should know about the Geneva stuff, about proper procedure. So the army left it to the good judgment of these soldiers how to treat those prisoners. And as the quote says, that is a sure way to make it go wrong. And to make things worse, according to the referenced Stanford experiment, even without any resentment, there would be a good chance of mistreatment. All the more reason for the military to supply these MP’s with good training and education to prevent these kind of things.

By: Tom T.

Tom T. — Sat, 01 May 2004 01:55:55 +0000

In any population of sufficient size, particularly a military predominantly of young men, there will be a certain number of crimes committed. Even if all of the American servicemen over there left the military and pursued graduate degrees in English Literature, a certain number of them would still commit violent crimes. The larger issue is the response from authority. So far, the military brass has generally said all the right things, although we still have yet to see how long this went on and who knew about it.

By: Gary Farber

Gary Farber — Sat, 01 May 2004 01:04:57 +0000

I e-mailed both Chris and Ted with links to the original CBS story, the Times and my own set of links and comments at 2:48 p.m. Mountain Time on April 29th, thinking CT might want to post on it. I guess they were busy.

By: John Isbell

John Isbell — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 23:40:02 +0000

Jeane d’Arc at Body and Soul posts and links to a new Amnesty International document reporting widespread allegations. The thread notes a year-old UK allegation and that the Brits are now investigating. People may find it offensive to note that the military recruits from the poorest and least educated ranks of society, but that won’t make it less true (and I have 6 immediate family members who served). I won’t defend Benny’s second claim.

By: BP

BP — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 22:11:35 +0000

The chances that this happened to be the only (or even merely the worst) incidence of human rights abuses by the US army in Iraq, coincidentally captured on film, seems to me to be exceedingly low.

By: Ted Barlow

Ted Barlow — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 21:53:24 +0000

Re: the “bottom rungs.”. When I saw these photos, I couldn’t help think of the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. It wasn’t even a week before students randomly selected as “guards” started to abuse the other students designated as “prisoners”. It didn’t go nearly as far as we see in these photos. However, the “guards” had no rational reason to be vengeful toward the “prisoners”, and the experiment was quickly stopped. The participants were far from the bottom rung- most of them went to Stanford. Absolute power corrupts all over.

By: halfway educated

halfway educated — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 20:35:00 +0000

t, The relation between education and torture in the (US) military, is that the educated are staying within the written and unwritten rules, and the uneducated, I assume because they know neither, are more prone to violate those rules and cause things like this scandal. It is in that sense I do agree with the original statement by Ben Benny. It isn’t that difficult to maintain military discipline in these issues. But it does require an effort. And education. To make a well educated guess, those that are going to be court marshalled over this issue aren’t those with the college degrees. As I said they will get off with some administrative punishment. Your assesment i also know that what you call “moderate torture” is a routine part of military training and interrogation techniques, and that soldiers (officers and enlisted) are taught both to withstand and to practice such techniques. is almost certainly wrong. It may be routine for a very limited part of the military. But basic training for a standard soldier is a few weeks to a few months and almost certainly doesn’t include that. The most famous US POW couldn’t handle basic rifle maintenance, and the soldiers involved in this scandal complained that they received a days worth of training to handle prison issues. It would be a bit strange if they received a complete training in interrogation techniques. Because if they did they wouldn’t have made such a mess of themselves.

By: msg

msg — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 19:38:30 +0000

Ben Benny- I still mostly agree with you, but I want to emphasize the similarities between the kids who wash up against the grates of the employment gutters, and the ones who enter the military as a career enhancement. Some of those kids who stay home get to choose only between Wal-Mart and some other slave-portal, that’s a kind of passive recruitment right there. And it’s ultimately the same hive-energy drawing them in. The fact that the military promises things which it doesn’t make good on, and the big box stores don’t, isn’t quite the essential difference you make it out to be. And, there’s an unspoken assertion it seems, behind the idea of the “bottom rung” volunteer military, that things would be better if the more noble, or middle-class, or whatever, were being recruited into the armed forces. But it seems clear that the whole point is to use disposable men and women, young ones, in the military, and at the “bottom rung” of the job market. They both draw from the same, essentially surplus, population. Their executives both act with the same disdain for that population. It’s that disdain I almost see in what you said. Again, the “bottom rung” of a sick society is not the same as that of a healthy society. For one thing, in a sick society many of the misfits and losers, the unsuccessful, are, perforce, themselves “not-sick”.

By: No Preference

No Preference — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 19:36:18 +0000

That would indeed be a pretty cheesy apologia, if it were an apologia. It was a little strong to label your post an "apologia". My "apologias". I think I was reacting to other posts as well as yours. What do you suppose “turning a blind eye” means, if not condoning? A sin of omission versus a sin of commission? Officers have a clear responsibility to stop that kind of behavior. Deliberately ignoring it is a sin of commission in that context. Your link doesn’t work. Here's a link that does. I also find it hard to believe that abuse — of this kind, at least — is widespread. First of all, Abu Ghraib by itself is a large, high-profile facility. Second, this activity appears to have been going on for months. Riverbend discussed this a month ago. Third, there have been reports of mistreatment at other facilities. Earlier today the BBC's David Willis said that he had heard stories of other abuses at the US prison at Baghdad Airport. I don't think this is an isolated story. I think it's emblematic of how many Americans view Iraq and Iraqis. That appears to be the main reason why Iraqis have turned against the occupation.