May 26, 2004

DEMOCRACY ON TRIAL


This issue appears a few days earlier than usual because next week I shall be attending a scientific meeting in Europe. The key event of this month was the public airing of photographs, which documented the scandalous behavior of some members of the U.S. military in Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison. Although everybody, Republicans and Democrats alike expressed immediate shock and outrage the political polarization of the country soon took over thereafter. Defenders of the administration labeled the incidents as shameful and regrettable but insisted that it was simply the behavior of some “bad apples,” relatively junior people, who acted out their sadistic impulses. The Democrats who want to win the upcoming election used the scandal as another example why thorough house cleaning is needed in Washington on Tuesday November 2.

When one looks at the published pictures, and I have no interest in seeing more, it is quite apparent that especially Pfc Lynndie England and Spc Charles Graner thought that the type of behavior they showed in the photos was a joke and they had a good time documenting it. As Pfc. England testified, [it] was basically us fooling around.” Yes indeed but England and Graner didn’t come up with these ideas by themselves. They were put up to it and that is where the “few bad apples” explanation loses validity. We are now told that the abuse of prisoners was designed to “soften them up” to get information that would lead to a suppression of the ongoing insurrection. We have also been told that the pictures were to be used to show other detainees what would happen to them if they did not divulge any and all information about ring leaders, weapons caches etc. This seems reasonable and clearly puts the entire situation into a different light.

The Bush administration was increasingly frustrated by the way the Iraq invasion had turned out. Weapons of mass destruction, the ostensible reason for the attack, could not be found and the Iraqi people were no longer overjoyed by the anarchy the US army had brought in its wake. Some began to rebel against the Americans while others settled intra-Iraqi scores.

From the Defense department’s point of view, which is encumbered by tunnel vision, this problem was simply one of inadequate intelligence. If detainees were properly, or improperly as it turned out, grilled they would lead our troops to the hidden weapon’s treasure and the nasty people who might use them. This was the fantasy and, as usual, it totally ignored the realities of human behavior.

If one really wants to understand the Abu Ghraib problem one has to go back to the Afghanistan invasion and the decision that captured Taliban and Al Qaeda members are not prisoners of war but “unlawful enemy combatants” and as such not entitled to the protection of the Geneva Conventions. This is where the problem started and why it will continue to fester unless and until this issue is addressed. The president has declared that we are in a war against terrorism and since the terrorists don’t wear uniforms they are not soldiers and can only expect the same treatment as they inflict on others. This is a repudiation of all the principles civilized societies are supposed to stand for. Yet it is still official policy of the United States. The detainees in Guantanamo, for instance, have no civil rights and we have no idea what goes on there, except that “useful information has been obtained.” But what this useful information consisted of we have no idea. Furthermore, journalists, the supposed guardians of our democracy, are not allowed to visit. Since General Miller, who was in charge of Guantanamo, had initiated procedures in that facility which supposedly led to confessions, he was the person chosen to bring these practices to Iraq. Thus, the ultimate responsibility lies with the persons who authorized the policies to extract confessions by physical and mental abuse and not only with the underlings who did the dirty work and in their ignorance enjoyed it.

This whole sad affair brings back memories of WWII and shows that people the world over when put into similar circumstances will behave in a similar way regardless of sex, religion, ethnicity or nationality. Since behavior of this type does not conform to the norms society expects, it is shrouded in secrecy. I personally knew that Dachau existed and that the prisoners in that facility were not treated kindly. But this is where my information ended and I had no interest in pursuing the matter further because it would have led to a long term first hand acquaintance with that place. But is the average American really interested in knowing what goes on in Guantanamo today, or in Abu Ghraib, or any of the other places where we hold prisoners?

Martha and I live about 10 miles northeast of Bluffdale, which is Utah’s state penitentiary but we have not faintest idea how the prisoners are being treated. Since Utahns are good God-fearing people one assumes that nothing bad can happen there. But The Salt Lake Tribune reported recently that two of the Abu Ghraib prison guards (not directly involved in the scandal) were from Utah, had served in Bluffdale, and stated that humiliating naked prisoners is routine procedure there. It is obvious, therefore, that human beings, whenever they are given absolute power over others may well be prone to abuse that power. This is a fact of life and the existence of sadism, in most of us needs to be recognized. This is what civilization is supposed to be all about: to curb our negative traits and enhance the positive ones. When the rules of civilized behavior are officially declared as non-applicable and provisions of the Geneva Conventions as “quaint,” one is encouraging sadism. It’s as simple as that.

Leaving morality aside, now comes the next question: how useful is the information obtained under these cruel circumstances? This is the real problem, which has so far not been properly aired. Even when detainee and interrogator speak the same language fear and pain can lead to useless confessions as any criminal lawyer will readily testify to. But with our Arab or Taliban prisoners we have a profound language barrier. The question arises, therefore, who are these interpreters and “civilian contractors” we rely on? What is their background and what are their motives to serve in this capacity? It seems obvious that they are volunteers because if they were drafted their interpretations could not be trusted. But even under the best of circumstances how do we know that what is being interpreted is what the prisoner really said?  We don’t, and that puts the utility of the whole interrogation process into question. The language problem has additional ramifications, which directly impact on the military conduct of the current guerilla war. We rely on informants to lead us to enemy strongholds in Iraq as well as Afghanistan but they may deliberately mislead us to attack innocents. This has occurred in Afghanistan and may have happened recently on the Syrian border. Patriotic Iraqis and Afghans have only one primary goal: to get us out of their countries. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that they may intermittently feed us false information and when civilians get killed America stands exposed as a brutal oppressor.

President Bush expressed outrage and said that the Abu Ghraib behavior “is not the America I know.” Yes, that’s probably true but had he cared to inform himself about the seamy side of American life he would have been less surprised. In the May 20 edition of The Christian Science Monitor one can read, “‘Simply stated, the culture of sadistic and malicious violence that continues to pervade the ... prison system violates contemporary standards of decency.’ That conclusion written by Judge William Wayne Justice, does not describe Abu Ghraib in Iraq last fall, but the Texas prison system in 1999 when George W. Bush was still governor there.”

The president could also have benefited from having read about the behavior of some American troops in Germany after the end of WWII. Ways to bypass the Geneva Conventions had their precedent in the spring of 1945 when General Eisenhower was confronted with millions of German soldiers who had surrendered to the Americans. Their numbers were augmented by a deliberate Wehrmacht policy to leave only a relatively smaller force in the East in order to delay the Russian advance. The intention was to save the bulk of the men from destruction and allow the Western Allies to occupy the country rather than the Soviets. In this way more than five million soldiers ended up in American captivity. James Bacque, a Canadian, chronicled the events in Other Losses, An investigation into the mass deaths of German prisoners at the hands of the French and Americans after World War II. This book ought to be a “must read” for all those, including the president, who insist that Americans are, by nature, morally superior to people of other nations.

On March 10,1945 Eisenhower requested from CCS (Combined Chiefs of Staff of Britain and the USA) that prisoners of war taken after VE day not be accorded POW status but identified as “disarmed enemy forces (DEF),” which placed them outside the limits of the Geneva Conventions. The request was approved, but only for prisoners in American hands. The British refused to go along with it. The ostensible reason for Eisenhower’s request was simple: he did not want to feed the millions of prisoners he expected. That was supposed to be left to the German authorities, although he must have known that in the post-war chaos German authorities would not exist because all organizations, including those concerned with social welfare, had been run by the Nazi party. The real reason for the request was punitive and part of the Morgenthau plan, which was to guide America’s post-war conduct towards Germany. The plan was designed to return Germany to the pre-industrial age so that the country could never again play a leading role on the world stage. Since the DEF status clearly contravened international law it was kept secret from the public.

Bacque reported that, “On a trip to Europe in the summer of 1944, Morgenthau [Roosevelt’s Treasury secretary] discovered that the Allies under Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower had some first-rate plans for getting into Germany, but no idea of what to do once they got there. Foreign Secretary Eden read to him from the minutes of the Teheran Conference the discussion of the proposed dismemberment of Germany, but no one had figured out how to carry this out. Morgenthau could not understand the lackadaisical British.” The only person who impressed Morgenthau was “Eisenhower, who, Morgenthau said, wanted to ‘treat them rough,’ when he got to Germany.” When Morgenthau reported to Roosevelt that “‘No-one is studying how to treat Germany roughly along the lines you wanted;’” the reply was “‘Give me thirty minutes with Churchill and I can correct this. We have got to be tough with Germany and I mean the German people, not just the Nazis. We either have to castrate the German people, or you have got to treat them in such a manner that they just can’t go on reproducing people who want to continue the way they have in the past.’” This attitude was the groundwork for the catastrophe which descended on the Wehrmacht soldiers who had surrendered in good faith believing in the ideals America is supposed to stand for. They were to be sorely disappointed.

By April 1945 the U.S. army had already set up huge detention facilities for the masses of soldiers who surrendered. These consisted of barbed wire enclosures in open fields without any form of shelter, exposed day and night to the elements. There were no sanitary facilities and only minimal food rations. While U.S. troops received about 4000 calories a day the allotment for the prisoners was officially set at 1150 calories per day for non-workers and 1,850 for workers. As Bacque notes, “This was sentencing them to death in a fairly short time, especially considering the lack of shelter and clean water.” Although the German civilian population was eager to help feed their captive soldiers they were not allowed to do so. On May 9, 1945 Eisenhower issued a proclamation which expressly forbade civilians to provide food. “Those who violate this command and nevertheless try to circumvent this blockade to allow something to come to the prisoners place themselves in danger of being shot.” This order also applied to American troops who felt pity for their incarcerated fellow human beings. “Private Martin Brech, a guard at Andernach in spring 1945, was told by an officer, ‘that it is our policy that these men not be fed.’” He was also informed that disobeying this order would lead to court martial.

While the food and water situation was terrible so was in some instances the space allotted to the prisoners. The official figure was 175 square feet per person but at times the enclosures were so crowded that people couldn’t even lie down. But even when overcrowding was not the issue absence of protection from the weather was the most pressing problem apart from lack of food and water. As one prisoner, who had a PhD, put it in his notes, which he penned on toilet paper, the only available material, “Our only wish is finally after six weeks to get a roof over our heads. Even a savage is better housed. Diogenes, Diogenes, you at least had a barrel.”

Bacque puts the blame for these conditions clearly on Eisenhower and makes the point that while other generals like Patton and Mark Clark discharged their prisoners within a few weeks Ike did not. He even transferred some of the ex-soldiers, who already had discharge papers issued, to the French where they lingered in captivity and forced labor for several more years. In addition while German POW’s were allowed to get mail through the International Red Cross in the British and French occupation zone after a few weeks, those in the American zone had to wait for over one year for this privilege. The American public gets a steady dose of Nazi atrocities in TV documentaries but it is deliberately kept in the dark about those which the American government instituted during those years because that would shatter the carefully maintained myth of America’s moral purity. Why was Eisenhower so punitive towards the German people? There may have been a number of reasons but as he wrote in a letter to his wife in 1944 he “hated Germans.” 

Thus, the Abu Ghraib scandal is new only in the methods used for harassment and intimidation of prisoners, but not in its purpose which is to break down the morale of the adversary by whatever means available. The pronounced sexual humiliations of the current scandal are clearly a legacy of our popular culture, which continually promotes sex in all its forms on our video screens. So is the role of women. They must no longer be depicted as caring mothers but gun-toting, physically aggressive amazon warriors. Should one be surprised that other cultures, especially those dominated by the Muslim religion, want no part of this type of democracy?

By calling the punitive expeditions on the Taliban and Al Qaeda a war on terror president Bush has opened the door to the abuses we witnessed. Furthermore, some defenders of the war do not hesitate to call the current situation World War III and insist, along with the president, that it may go on longer than the previous wars. If this is what they want they will get it but they may not like the eventual outcome, which can only be a further brutalization of our society. I will never forget listening to Goebbels’ speech in February of 1943 when he asked the attendees in Berlin’s Sportpalast, “Wollt Ihr den totalen Krieg? (Do you want total war?)” And the crowd roared Yes! Whereupon he followed up with “Wollt Ihr in totaler und radikaler als sich irgend ein Mensch in Deutschland heute noch vorstellen kann? (Do you want it more total and more radical than anybody in Germany can even imagine today?), which was likewise answered by a resounding: Yes! What their country looked like two years later they really could not have imagined. But that is what war brings and why those of us who have seen war first hand are so dead set against its repetition.

Hitler and Goebbels told us that the war they had initiated, and that had gotten out of hand, was one of “Sein oder Nichtsein” (existence or nonexistence). The Asiatic hordes must be prevented from overrunning Europe and the German soldier was the only bulwark which stood in the defense of Western civilization. Hitler was chosen by providence to fulfill this historic role as defender of the Western world. As Goebbels wrote in his diary on January 23, 1943, “All of us know that if Germany were to lose this war Europe would become Bolshevist and the Reich would, of course, also be lost.” Please note that this was not propaganda in Goebbels’ mind but knowledge, “wir wissen.” What does our president tell us? He believes that he has been chosen by God to lead the American people in the defense against evil terrorists, who intend to destroy our nation. This can only be done by pre-emptive strikes against nations “who harbor” them because the alternative of further and more devastating 9/11 attacks is too terrible to imagine. What Bolshevism and the Jews were for the Nazis, Islamic terrorists have become for the Bush administration. Let me emphasize that Bush is no Hitler but he uses the same rhetoric and is also convinced of its truth.

This is the point where genuine democracy must come into play. In Nazi Germany we had to keep our collective mouths shut and do our assigned tasks, but thanks to the founders of this republic we are allowed to play by different rules. Not blind obedience to a Fuehrer is required now but a thorough investigation into motives and means with which the present war in Iraq was initiated and is being conducted. The Abu Ghraib scandal could become the catalyst for a scrupulous soul searching. Reprehensible as the conduct of the prison guards was, they did not create the climate in which they operated. That originated with decisions made in Washington. It will be interesting to see if our media are up to this task and really follow through with investigating how this stain on our national honor came about. Will they be content with parading salacious photographs and the court martial of a few misguided low level “bad apples,” or will they be able to expose all the secrets about 9/11 and the administration’s response to it. There is no doubt that the American people have been deceived. The question still is: by whom and why? 

American prestige around the world has never been as low as today and the only way we can salvage our integrity is by honesty, which has to emanate from the highest levels. Pep talks as given by the president on Monday will not suffice. We cannot trust our government at this time and it is the media’s responsibility to uncover how and why our country has lost its way. This has nothing to do with partisanship and everything with what kind of a country we want to live in. This airing of facts needs to be done not only in some books or magazines, which few people read, but in the mainstream daily press and not just on cable but also the regular TV networks. When larger segments of the public become fully informed they will demand action from Congress and genuine nonpartisan hearings can follow.

We are involved in a guerilla war in Iraq as well as Afghanistan and it will not be won by “staying the course.” We have sufficiently aggravated the Muslim world that mere words will no longer “win the hearts and minds of people.” This administration and/or the next must come to understand that peace in the Middle East cannot be achieved unless there is peace in Palestine. As long as Muslims are denied access to the third holiest shrine, in Jerusalem, religious fanaticism will flourish and casualties will mount on both sides. A genuine non-punitive armistice between Israelis and Palestinians is essential and long overdue. It will not automatically usher in peace in the rest of the Middle East but it will allow moderate Arab governments to survive and gradually institute democratic reforms.
Unless America renounces its unconditional support for Israel’s current policies, there is grave danger that moderate Arab governments will not be able to survive and will be swept away by religious fanatics. What are we going to do if the Saudi monarchy falls and Osama becomes their Ayatollah Khomeini? What are we going to do if this sets off a reverse domino effect and the Kuwaitis get rid of their Emir and the Pakistanis of Musharraf? Bomb all of them? Invade their countries? Those are the nightmare questions, which have to be put before the American public, not just in these pages but shouted from the rooftops. We cannot postpone facing them because an election is at stake. The fate of the country and the world hangs in the balance and that is the reason why our democracy is on trial right now.
 
 
 
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