As a six year active duty Marine veteran who “vacationed” in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War my opinion on the recent revelations of abuse of Iraqi prisoners, may surprise new readers.
Not surprisingly to long-time readers, however, I disagreed with this war for several reasons, the first being that Saddam had been our “boy” since he was first trained as a counterinsurgent in 1958. He wasn’t just some dicatator – he was our dictator. Our relationship with Hussein didn’t sour until after he invaded Kuwait, which he asked for permission to do, by the way. Even then, we didn’t care until he started seizing control of the oilfields and it became clear that a lot of people were going to lose a lot of money very quickly. Until then, the Iraq-Kuwait invasion was a “border dispute” that we were going to stay out of. Hell, prior to the invasion, even Secretary Rumsfeld had his picture taken (big smile and all) with Hussein AFTER he ordered that chemical weapons be used on Kurds, resulting in the deaths of thousands. So give me a break on the whole “he’s a bad guy” routine. There are a lot of bad guys out there. Its more than slightly disingenous when you consider our relationship with the man from 1958 – 1990. He didn’t just magically become a dictator in 1990.
Further, please spare me the “terrorist” dogma. None of the 19 hijackers on September 11 were from Iraq, in fact, the majority were citizens of our ally – Saudi Arabia. So please, stop with the “all Arabs are terrorists” routine. Iraq was not involved in the terrorist attacks on September 11, and even the Bush Administration has admitted such. Why my friends in the pro-war circles continue to push that fallacy is a mystery, especially when their president has told them otherwise. Someone explain this to me, please.
Of course, the argument that we were going to free the Iraqi people from a dicatator only surfaced AFTER it became clear we weren’t going to find tons and tons of sarin and cyclosarin lying around. Then we were liberators. Bullshit. When exactly will we be liberating China, Cuba and North Korea? And will several hundred more Americans pay the ultimate price for these interventionist wars? And for my “patriot” friends, what about the Founding Fathers’ advice that we avoid “entangling alliances” and not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy?
As far as support for the troops goes, I was one of the individuals who screamed and hollered before the war about the sorry state of our chemical and biological protective gear and other issues. Long story short, a lot of shoddy, defective gear has been mixed in with the newer inventory, and issued to unsuspecting troops. For instance, in six years time, I never once had a working gasmask. One thing you never forget when wearing that uniform – all of your gear was made by the lowest bidder. Quality is often sacrificed to keep costs down.
When I hear pro-war folks tell me I’m a traitor for opposing the war, I remember that they are no where to be seen when an issue like troop readiness and welfare is being raised. I remember that 99.9% or so never wore a uniform and wouldn’t now if asked to do so. And believe me – I’ve challenged quite a few on that issue. Further, they don’t have a thing to say when some young, underemployed military wife is struggling to raise their infant and pay enough bills to keep afloat while her husband is on his third deployment in as many years. The support of most pro-war folks translates to “don’t criticize, or I’ll call you a traitor.” Then it is back to planting the ass on sofa, Fritos bag firmly in grip. I understand what real support is, contrary to the nationalism and chickenhawk sqwaking that passes for “Support for the Troops” in certain circles.
Now, back to the topic at hand, as far as the men and women accused of violating Geneva Convention protections – they knew better. Don’t peddle this bullshit about how Iraqi prisoners don’t rate these protections – that’s a lie. These Convention agreements are just as much for our own protection as they are for enemy combatants and others in our custody. Everyone who participated in, or ignored these actions has endangered the health and well-being of future American prisoners-of-war. Once we take the gloves off, we have essentially told the world they are free to do the same – and it will be Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines unfortunate enough to be taken prisoner in the future who will ultimately pay the price for what has happened in Iraq. I find this more than a little disturbing. Its fucking infuriating. We all know better from our first training as members of whatever branch we chose. I wasn’t a military police officer, but I know damn well that we don’t strip down prisoners and shove objects up their asses. We don’t photograph them nude in submissive poses to show off to friends. We don’t put leashes on their necks. We just don’t. That’s a loss of military professionalism, bearing and basic human dignity. It shouldn’t take an officer or SNCO standing over you to make that point clear.
As far as punishment goes – its like this – any leader (NCO, SNCO or officer) that witnessed (and ignored), authorized or otherwise willfully permitted such activities should see their careers over and in the most extreme cases – such as those involved in physical assaults and sexual abuse – jail time. Run this scenario as far up the chain of command as the apathy and knowledge extends. E-3’s and below, who take orders rather than give them, should receive non-judicial punishment, assuming they didn’t commit any of the assaults or homicides currently under investigation. Counsel them, retrain them and make sure they never do it again.
I hate to see a few assholes tarnish the reputation of hundreds of thousands of hard working, low paid men and women in uniform. But ignoring the crimes of the few isn’t support – its punishment to those who do the right thing on a daily basis. It lessens the importance of their contributions and dedication to duty. Its also sends the wrong message to the young boot, trying to earn that E-2 promotion.
This isn’t rocket science. You simply don’t commit these types of actions accidentally. It is indicative of a total loss of military bearing, a breakdown in the command structure and its conduct unbecoming.
And as a former active duty Marine and Gulf War veteran, I am beyond shocked and disgusted. And I’m not the only angry veteran (here and here).
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2319.htm
The president’s real goal in Iraq
(Bookman is the deputy editorial page editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
By JAY BOOKMAN
29 September 2002.
The official story on Iraq has never made sense. The connection that the Bush administration has tried to draw between Iraq and al-Qaida has always seemed contrived and artificial. In fact, it was hard to believe that smart people in the Bush administration would start a major war based on such flimsy evidence.
The pieces just didn’t fit. Something else had to be going on; something was missing.
In recent days, those missing pieces have finally begun to fall into place. As it turns out, this is not really about Iraq. It is not about weapons of mass destruction, or terrorism, or Saddam, or U.N. resolutions.
This war, should it come, is intended to mark the official emergence of the United States as a full-fledged global empire, seizing sole responsibility and authority as planetary policeman. It would be the culmination of a plan 10 years or more in the making, carried out by those who believe the United States must seize the opportunity for global domination, even if it means becoming the “American imperialists” that our enemies always claimed we were.
Once that is understood, other mysteries solve themselves. For example, why does the administration seem unconcerned about an exit strategy from Iraq once Saddam is toppled?
Because we won’t be leaving. Having conquered Iraq, the United States will create permanent military bases in that country from which to dominate the Middle East, including neighboring Iran.
In an interview Friday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld brushed aside that suggestion, noting that the United States does not covet other nations’ territory. That may be true, but 57 years after World War II ended, we still have major bases in Germany and Japan. We will do the same in Iraq.
And why has the administration dismissed the option of containing and deterring Iraq, as we had the Soviet Union for 45 years? Because even if it worked, containment and deterrence would not allow the expansion of American power. Besides, they are beneath us as an empire. Rome did not stoop to containment; it conquered. And so should we.
Among the architects of this would-be American Empire are a group of brilliant and powerful people who now hold key positions in the Bush administration: They envision the creation and enforcement of what they call a worldwide “Pax Americana,” or American peace. But so far, the American people have not appreciated the true extent of that ambition.
Part of it’s laid out in the National Security Strategy, a document in which each administration outlines its approach to defending the country. The Bush administration plan, released Sept. 20, marks a significant departure from previous approaches, a change that it attributes largely to the attacks of Sept. 11.
To address the terrorism threat, the president’s report lays out a newly aggressive military and foreign policy, embracing pre-emptive attack against perceived enemies. It speaks in blunt terms of what it calls “American internationalism,” of ignoring international opinion if that suits U.S. interests. “The best defense is a good offense,” the document asserts.
It dismisses deterrence as a Cold War relic and instead talks of “convincing or compelling states to accept their sovereign responsibilities.”
In essence, it lays out a plan for permanent U.S. military and economic domination of every region on the globe, unfettered by international treaty or concern. And to make that plan a reality, it envisions a stark expansion of our global military presence.
“The United States will require bases and stations within and beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia,” the document warns, “as well as temporary access arrangements for the long-distance deployment of U.S. troops.”
The report’s repeated references to terrorism are misleading, however, because the approach of the new National Security Strategy was clearly not inspired by the events of Sept. 11. They can be found in much the same language in a report issued in September 2000 by the Project for the New American Century, a group of conservative interventionists outraged by the thought that the United States might be forfeiting its chance at a global empire.
“At no time in history has the international security order been as conducive to American interests and ideals,” the report said. stated two years ago. “The challenge of this coming century is to preserve and enhance this ‘American peace.’ ”
Familiar themes
Overall, that 2000 report reads like a blueprint for current Bush defense policy. Most of what it advocates, the Bush administration has tried to accomplish. For example, the project report urged the repudiation of the anti-ballistic missile treaty and a commitment to a global missile defense system. The administration has taken that course.
It recommended that to project sufficient power worldwide to enforce Pax Americana, the United States would have to increase defense spending from 3 percent of gross domestic product to as much as 3.8 percent. For next year, the Bush administration has requested a defense budget of $379 billion, almost exactly 3.8 percent of GDP.
It advocates the “transformation” of the U.S. military to meet its expanded obligations, including the cancellation of such outmoded defense programs as the Crusader artillery system. That’s exactly the message being preached by Rumsfeld and others.
It urges the development of small nuclear warheads “required in targeting the very deep, underground hardened bunkers that are being built by many of our potential adversaries.” This year the GOP-led U.S. House gave the Pentagon the green light to develop such a weapon, called the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, while the Senate has so far balked.
That close tracking of recommendation with current policy is hardly surprising, given the current positions of the people who contributed to the 2000 report.
Paul Wolfowitz is now deputy defense secretary. John Bolton is undersecretary of state. Stephen Cambone is head of the Pentagon’s Office of Program, Analysis and Evaluation. Eliot Cohen and Devon Cross are members of the Defense Policy Board, which advises Rumsfeld. I. Lewis Libby is chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Dov Zakheim is comptroller for the Defense Department.
‘Constabulary duties’
Because they were still just private citizens in 2000, the authors of the project report could be more frank and less diplomatic than they were in drafting the National Security Strategy. Back in 2000, they clearly identified Iran, Iraq and North Korea as primary short-term targets, well before President Bush tagged them as the Axis of Evil. In their report, they criticize the fact that in war planning against North Korea and Iraq, “past Pentagon wargames have given little or no consideration to the force requirements necessary not only to defeat an attack but to remove these regimes from power.”
To preserve the Pax Americana, the report says U.S. forces will be required to perform “constabulary duties” — the United States acting as policeman of the world — and says that such actions “demand American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations.”
To meet those responsibilities, and to ensure that no country dares to challenge the United States,the report advocates a much larger military presence spread over more of the globe, in addition to the roughly 130 nations in which U.S. troops are already deployed.
More specifically, they argue that we need permanent military bases in the Middle East, in Southeast Europe, in Latin America and in Southeast Asia, where no such bases now exist. That helps to explain another of the mysteries of our post-Sept. 11 reaction, in which the Bush administration rushed to install U.S. troops in Georgia and the Philippines, as well as our eagerness to send military advisers to assist in the civil war in Colombia.
The 2000 report directly acknowledges its debt to a still earlier document, drafted in 1992 by the Defense Department. That document had also envisioned the United States as a colossus astride the world, imposing its will and keeping world peace through military and economic power. When leaked in final draft form, however, the proposal drew so much criticism that it was hastily withdrawn and repudiated by the first President Bush.
Effect on allies
The defense secretary in 1992 was Richard Cheney; the document was drafted by Wolfowitz, who at the time was defense undersecretary for policy.
The potential implications of a Pax Americana are immense.
One is the effect on our allies. Once we assert the unilateral right to act as the world’s policeman, our allies will quickly recede into the background. Eventually, we will be forced to spend American wealth and American blood protecting the peace while other nations redirect their wealth to such things as health care for their citizenry.
Donald Kagan, a professor of classical Greek history at Yale and an influential advocate of a more aggressive foreign policy — he served as co-chairman of the 2000 New Century project — acknowledges that likelihood.
“If [our allies] want a free ride, and they probably will, we can’t stop that,” he says. But he also argues that the United States, given its unique position, has no choice but to act anyway.
“You saw the movie ‘High Noon’? he asks. “We’re Gary Cooper.”
Accepting the Cooper role would be an historic change in who we are as a nation, and in how we operate in the international arena. Candidate Bush certainly did not campaign on such a change. It is not something that he or others have dared to discuss honestly with the American people. To the contrary, in his foreign policy debate with Al Gore, Bush pointedly advocated a more humble foreign policy, a position calculated to appeal to voters leery of military intervention.
For the same reason, Kagan and others shy away from terms such as empire, understanding its connotations. But they also argue that it would be naive and dangerous to reject the role that history has thrust upon us. Kagan, for example, willingly embraces the idea that the United States would establish permanent military bases in a post-war Iraq.
“I think that’s highly possible,” he says. “We will probably need a major concentration of forces in the Middle East over a long period of time. That will come at a price, but think of the price of not having it. When we have economic problems, it’s been caused by disruptions in our oil supply. If we have a force in Iraq, there will be no disruption in oil supplies.”
Costly global commitment
Rumsfeld and Kagan believe that a successful war against Iraq will produce other benefits, such as serving an object lesson for nations such as Iran and Syria. Rumsfeld, as befits his sensitive position, puts it rather gently. If a regime change were to take place in Iraq, other nations pursuing weapons of mass destruction “would get the message that having them . . . is attracting attention that is not favorable and is not helpful,” he says.
Kagan is more blunt.
“People worry a lot about how the Arab street is going to react,” he notes. “Well, I see that the Arab street has gotten very, very quiet since we started blowing things up.”
The cost of such a global commitment would be enormous. In 2000, we spent $281 billion on our military, which was more than the next 11 nations combined. By 2003, our expenditures will have risen to $378 billion. In other words, the increase in our defense budget from 1999-2003 will be more than the total amount spent annually by China, our next largest competitor.
The lure of empire is ancient and powerful, and over the millennia it has driven men to commit terrible crimes on its behalf. But with the end of the Cold War and the disappearance of the Soviet Union, a global empire was essentially laid at the feet of the United States. To the chagrin of some, we did not seize it at the time, in large part because the American people have never been comfortable with themselves as a New Rome.
Now, more than a decade later, the events of Sept. 11 have given those advocates of empire a new opportunity to press their case with a new president. So in debating whether to invade Iraq, we are really debating the role that the United States will play in the years and decades to come.
Are peace and security best achieved by seeking strong alliances and international consensus, led by the United States? Or is it necessary to take a more unilateral approach, accepting and enhancing the global dominance that, according to some, history has thrust upon us?
If we do decide to seize empire, we should make that decision knowingly, as a democracy. The price of maintaining an empire is always high. Kagan and others argue that the price of rejecting it would be higher still.
That’s what this is about.
“Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” a 2000 report by the Project for the New American Century, listed 27 people as having attended meetings or contributed papers in preparation of the report. Among them are six who have since assumed key defense and foreign policy positions in the Bush administration. And the report seems to have become a blueprint for Bush’s foreign and defense policy.
Paul Wolfowitz
Political science doctorate from University of Chicago and dean of the international relations program at Johns Hopkins University during the 1990s. Served in the Reagan State Department, moved to the Pentagon during the first Bush administration as undersecretary of defense for policy. Sworn in as deputy defense secretary in March 2001.
John Bolton
Yale Law grad who worked in the Reagan administration as an assistant attorney general. Switched to the State Department in the first Bush administration as assistant secretary for international organization affairs. Sworn in as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, May 2001.
Eliot Cohen
Harvard doctorate in government who taught at Harvard and at the Naval War College. Now directs strategic studies at Johns Hopkins and is the author of several books on military strategy. Was on the Defense Department’s policy planning staff in the first Bush administration and is now on Donald Rumsfeld’s Defense Policy Board.
I. Lewis Libby
Law degree from Columbia (Yale undergrad). Held advisory positions in the Reagan State Department. Was a partner in a Washington law firm in the late ’80s before becoming deputy undersecretary of defense for policy in the first Bush administration (under Dick Cheney). Now is the vice president’s chief of staff.
Dov Zakheim
Doctorate in economics and politics from Oxford University. Worked on policy issues in the Reagan Defense Department and went into private defense consulting during the 1990s. Was foreign policy adviser to the 2000 Bush campaign. Sworn in as undersecretary of defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Pentagon, May 2001.
Stephen Cambone
Political science doctorate from Claremont Graduate School. Was in charge of strategic defense policy at the Defense Department in the first Bush administration. Now heads the Office of Program, Analysis and Evaluation at the Defense Department.
http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/opinion/0902/29bookman.html
I agree with you on the punishment for E-3s and below and your comments as a whole. I must say that the only thing I notice not coming out of this, is the fact that people aren’t holding it against all the troops – meaning all who serve – which might have happened had the other problems in Iraq not been happening.
Hurrah!
Your comments are spot on, a little bit of sanity
in sea of US madness.
5/12/2004 5:13:00
I completely agree with damned near everything you said. My only concerns are that the officers in charge of the prison and the chain of command of the Abu Ghraib prison must be held accountable for the acts that occured under their command.
A leader doesnt shirk their responsibility.
As a former soldier myself, I dread the ideas of what the future conflicts will bring to our troops after our CinC, SecDef, and SecState, say that Geneva conventions dont apply to these situations. Also as a former soldier, I too can attest that our training included Geneva conventions regardless of the position you had as a soldier.
But, I also have another concern. As a fomer soldier, there is an understanding that sometimes, there is a fine line between morality and survival. Did the Chain of Command refuse to provide adequate staffing, and who was the established authority through the prison?
When asked to Rumsfeld, who ran the Abu Ghraib Prison, CIA, MI, MP, or civilian contractors; there was no clear answer.
In that situation, the failure falls heavily on the chain of command. And I think in some cases it can be a little easier to understand some extreme measures when its you alone against 500 prisoners. Were the soldiers that commited these attrocities monsters of their own volition, or were they the eventual product of lack of supervision, and wonton disregard for the welfare of Iraqi detainees by the Administration?
Are the soldiers innocent, No. Should the chain of command and pentagon officals go scot-free? No.