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I disagree that this is some limited aberation, lack of displine or any of the like.

This is what Americans don’t get. They don’t understand why the world dislikes Americans.
This is what the third world has seen of us for years. This is how our government and military operate overseas. Remember the death squads in El Salvador? Well, guess who we appoint as the ambassador to Iraq. John Negroponte. What a coincidence.

Look, the world is a rough place. War is not a day at Disney’s new Liberation Land. Wake up. This wasn’t about WMD. This wasn’t about freeing the Iraqi people. This was about forcing at gunpoint a U.S. centric regime down the throat of the Iraqi’s so Americans can comfortably drive their SUV’s to soccer practice.

We as Americans have benefited from this domination of third world nations. We’re not evil beings, we’re just self absorbed and choose to be blind as a population to the realities of our policies.

Jimmy Carter was one president who tried to bring morality and integrity to foreign policy…he was run out of office by a population that saw him as ineffective and praised Reagan who illegally dealt with the Iranians prior to his election and then illegally funded the terror in El Salvador by selling the terrorist regimes of both Iraq and Iran weapons, as well as funneling cocaine through Noriega.

The only thing that will be punished in Iraq is those responsible for allowing the pictures to get out.

This is, sadly, reality. It really shoudn’t be a shock to anyone.

If this is how you wish things to be then vote for it in November. Perhaps we can all live happily in Suburbia and drink a Latte and tell ourselves those nasty terrorists are just crazy people not like us at all.

Hey Sebastian,

That’s only one propaganda item that’s being exploited by the terrorists. Don’t forget the way the mujahadeen fought the US Marines to a standstill at Fallujah, the “Arab Alamo” as they’re calling it, and then forced them to retreat.

Bin Laden made his reputation holding out in an Afghanistan cave for two weeks against the Soviets. The decision to pull out of Fallujah will make a few more jihadist heroes, I’m sure.

It’s nice to see Stryker and Smash come out so strongly against their actions. I’ve seen a lot of armchair chickenhawks defending it with the third-grade argument “yeah, well Saddam was worse!”, yet every service member I know is disgusted by it.

Thank You. It’s the the First honest and frank description from the Rerpublican Right. I commend you for your integrity and your forthright honesty. It is refreshing not to see more “apologist” garbage.

While it is true that abuses and toruture are common in the Middle East and elsewhere(Remember the story of Chinese organs being removed before the prisoner were even killed?). It is no justification for ANYONE from this country to behave in such barbaric and disgusting ways, no what they might think is their justification. Since when do we open the door to discussion, acceptance of our ideals, or promoting American values by being worse than or imitating the saddists in history?

Not only did these people embarass those in uniform, now and for many decades to come, they have also severly harmed American civilians. CNN showed a story of “honor” killings and abuse by Turkish immigrants Thursday night (5/7).

There are many of these immigrants now in this country. Their experience with Dictators, police and prisons in their own country’s have taught them that the only justice in this world is that which they and their commrades wrought themselves. They have no experience nor expectation that their officials or thos in authority will allow them justice if they are not part of the ruling echeleon.
They did not leave these ideas behind when they boarded a plane for Western Countires.

In addition to the backlash on our Armed Services, to their way of thinking they are justified in extracting revenge on ANY American. Possible future fallout is the rise of gangs or “militias” on our own Western streets to exact revenge for they they believe to be their collective humilation.

I honestly believe the only way out of this downard spiral is for all (Officers, Civilian Contractors and everyone else involved to any degree)is for these people to be loudly condemned by our media, and forced to stand trial for war crimes in an international court. (As an aside, has anyone actually read al Jazeera online? Many of their articles are quotes taken directly from American and British news).

Perhaps then, we may regain some of our credibilty and moral ground internationally.

I fully agree Sebastian. We must publicly punish everyone involved. The truth is that Americans do not have an exemption from being moral and decent. Americans are human. Humans are not always good. What does make us different is that our political and legal system is geared to protect the individual from such abuse.

I think part of what happened here is that these people saw themselves as being outside of their normal social strictures. They took a vacation from decency. They thought they were outside of the normal rules.

Experiments like the infamous one in Stanford show that the line between good guy and bad guy can become blurred fairly quickly. It’s the difference between outside law and inner law.

My pastor is fond of saying that the test of a man is what he is willing to do when no one is watching.

From the perspective of the researchers, the experiment became exciting on day two when the prisoners staged a revolt. Once the guards had crushed the rebellion, “they steadily increased their coercive aggression tactics, humiliation and dehumanization of the prisoners,” Zimbardo recalls. “The staff had to frequently remind the guards to refrain from such tactics,” he said, and the worst instances of abuse occurred in the middle of the night when the guards thought the staff was not watching. The guards’ treatment of the prisoners ­ such things as forcing them to clean out toilet bowls with their bare hands and act out degrading scenarios, or urging them to become snitches ­ “resulted in extreme stress reactions that forced us to release five prisoners, one a day, prematurely.”

Unfortunately these acts play well into the transnational-progressive belief that the US is a dictatorship. Except that out of 130,000 soldiers, six will be court martialed. That’s something like 0.0046%. In comparison 6.7 million people were estimated to be incarcarated in 2002. That’s 2.3% of the population.

One thing we’ve learned in looking at dictatorships around the world is that, when people disappear, that’s when the worst atrocities are committed. And in effect, we have a system of disappearance that the United States is running today, where people are picked up, sent off to detention facilities, and nobody even knows where they are. Their detention may not even be acknowledged unless it happens to be picked up by the press. -hrw.org

We should be held to a higher standard and we should do everything we can to live up to that standard.

You are playing pretty fast and loose with the stats, there Eric. Fact per Rumsfeld and Gen. Meyers yesterday, there are 18,000 criminal investigations underway in the military currently.

Your reference to incarcerateds include a majority who have been serving time for more than this last year. We are looking at a time frame of just a little over a year in Iraq. Take a look at how many individuals as a percentage of our population were incarcerated for felonies in the last year, and compare that to the percentage of military convictions in the last year, and you will be comparing apples to apples.

I’m just glad Eric isn’t playing it off as schoolboy hazing. Thank you for taking this more seriously than some others on your side of the page.

I hope you wrote a letter to President Bush urging him to make a full investigation, and to swiftly bring the guilty to justice.

I’d also like to commend Rumsfeld for taking responsibility. I’m sure he never ordered the actions, but he and his boss, the President, are responsible for the conduct of the military.

I think dismissing Rumsfeld would send the right message to the world, but it would be a shame. Other than being too Hell-bent on invading Iraq, I think he’s done a pretty good job.

“I will be announcing today the appointment of several senior former officials who…….” Sec. Rummy

Why do they have to be senior former offcianls? Why not junior officials with great records? There are many well educated former draftees and enlisted people out here who are more than capable. Is it that former senior officials are more likely to take the heat off present senior officials? Let’s face it, it’s a club type thing isn’t it? Whereas junior officials, like former sargeants, captains and Seamen will most likely blame the senior staffs for not giving clear orders as to what they wanted and turning their backs telling them “don’t tell me how your are doing it and don’t show me any pictures, just get it done.” I think many of us former MP’s heard that line more than once, or something very close to it. Why else would the Secretary of Defense be among the last in the USA to see the pictures? It’s because this administration let it be known that the senior staff in Washington is expected to be insulated from the nasty things that happen in war. The generals are even afraid to tell them directly that they need more troops.

This is a good piece Sebastian. This is the only logical position the right can and should adopt. To decsend into moral relativism, as some have done, is to miss the point entirely, and should run counter to all that they hold dear.

Should Rumsfeld resign?

Why did this tread disapear?

Andrew Sullivan’s site has a good link on why Rumsfeld should resign by the Economist. I’d still like to know Sebastian’s opinion on this.

David,

If we just take “adjusted violent victimization rates, number of victimizations per 1,000 population age 12 and over,” total violent crime for 2002, the Bureau of Justice Statistics puts that number at 22.8 per 1000. That’s still 2.28%.

The point is not that the military won’t have criminal behaviour, but that it’s not higher and may in fact be lower. After all our soldiers are also citizens and are from the population itself.

I think the key to this is still the Stanford Prison Experiment. I’m sure you’re familiar with it. In retrospect, the Bush administration, or at the least the defense department should have been excercising more active oversight considering the conditions… including how understaffed they were.

The Stanford Prison Experiment took college kids and made some prisoners and some guards. It was all an excercise. Yet, they very soon fell into their assumed roles. With guards ehibiting dehumanizing treatment of ‘prisoners’ they knew were not guilty of anything.

The guards broke into each cell, stripped the prisoners naked, took the beds out, forced the ringleaders of the prisoner rebellion into solitary confinement, and generally began to harass and intimidate the prisoners. -Stanford Prison Experiment.

I am not trying to excuse anyone with this. But it helps me to understand and make some sense of why it happened.

2 reasons why Rumsfeld should not resign or be fired.

One is that I see the the call to resign as highly partisan and entirely premature. Very much like the calls to impeach the President himself.

Two, besides the general responsibility of being ‘in the chain of command’ what did Rumsfeld directly do or not do that warrants his resignation? So far I would concede that in hindsight there should have been more active oversight here. Precisely because the actions of a few with taint many. I will not concede that there was a cover up. Because the investigations were announced. Information was given to the press and this story didn’t just come out. The news here was the pictures. Rumsfeld has no control over the press.

I still haven’t been able to find out how many soldiers are actually guarding prisoners and how many prisoners they are guarding.

The prisoners’ rebellion also played an important role in producing greater solidarity among the guards. Now, suddenly, it was no longer just an experiment, no longer a simple simulation. Instead, the guards saw the prisoners as troublemakers who were out to get them, who might really cause them some harm. In response to this threat, the guards began stepping up their control, surveillance, and aggression. -Stanford Prison Experiement

…And finally, about a third of the guards were hostile, arbitrary, and inventive in their forms of prisoner humiliation. These guards appeared to thoroughly enjoy the power they wielded, yet none of our preliminary personality tests were able to predict this behavior. The only link between personality and prison behavior was a finding that prisoners with a high degree of authoritarianism endured our authoritarian prison environment longer than did other prisoners. -Stanford Prison Experiement

From David Brooks’ column in today’s NY Times (Brooks is a big time Bush defender and supporter of the invasion of Iraq) (italics mine):

Even yesterday, months after the atrocities were first known, Rumsfeld and company were incapable of answering the most elemental questions from John McCain, Lindsey Graham and others about who was in charge of the prison, and why the photos weren’t immediately seen as weapons of mass morale destruction. If Rumsfeld had held a conference and pre-emptively presented these photos to the world, with his response already set, things would not look nearly as bad as they do now.

It seems to me that again and again this Administration’s weakness has proven to be its arrogance — and their assumption (usually correct, unfortunately) that they can control information and manipulate the truth with impunity. They honestly thought they were going to get away with keeping the lid on this.

-Cf

Uh, sorry, forgot to end that blockquote. the last paragraph is me.

…what did Rumsfeld directly do or not do that warrants his resignation?

Eric, you answer your own question:

So far I would concede that in hindsight there should have been more active oversight here.

Because of that, the President looks inept and ‘out of the loop’ about what’s going on in his own administration. Only by actually losing the war could Rumsfeld have caused greater damage.

The David Brooks quote Cf posted is right on. If the situation had been defused when it happened, or even a couple weeks before the pictures came out, it would have been embarrassing, but not potentially fatal for success in Iraq.

As it is, Bush should can him to show he doesn’t tolerate that kind of nonsense. He won’t though. This administration is all about personal loyalty. For Bush, personal loyalty is apparently more important than success in Iraq.

That’s not to say there’s not also some Partisanship involved in calls for his resignation. Just like there’s Partisanship involved in the support for him by Republicans.

…what did Rumsfeld directly do or not do that warrants his resignation?

Eric, you answer your own question:

So far I would concede that in hindsight there should have been more active oversight here.

Because of that, the President looks inept and ‘out of the loop’ about what’s going on in his own administration. Only by actually losing the war could Rumsfeld have caused greater damage.

The David Brooks quote Cf posted is right on. If the situation had been defused when it happened, or even a couple weeks before the pictures came out, it would have been embarrassing, but not potentially fatal for success in Iraq.

As it is, Bush should can him to show he doesn’t tolerate that kind of nonsense. He won’t though. This administration is all about personal loyalty. For Bush, personal loyalty is apparently more important than success in Iraq.

Thanks for the reply, Eric, and especially the reference to the Stanford Prison Experiment. No, I was not aware of it, though similar studies have been done with similar results. The best of which was the ‘57 Summer Study in which two youth camps were put to war by making them compete for resources sufficient for only one camp.

What was brilliant about the ‘57 Summer Study was the use of ‘superordinate goals’ to reinstate the peace. The experimenters directed the two camps to the understanding that they could all get more of the resources and be far happier if they helped each other acquire shared use of the resources (canoes, paddles, volleyball, etc.). Within two weeks hateful competing camps were intermingling as buddies and working together to maximize the utilty of the limited resources.

Your point however, is well taken, and I have written here elsewhere, that the military will reflect approximately the society from which it comes. But there are some real differences between the military and civilians. Consequences for illegal behavior face far swifter, surer, and stiffer consequences than similar crimes committed in civilian life. This should have the effect of greatly reducing military criminal activity per capita compared to civilian society. If it doesn’t there is a leadership or organizational flaw that would have to account for it.