3) Based on the film, the class discussion and the readings, what specific policy changes to US military doctrine would decrease the levels of atrocity by US forces in conflict situations and in detention?
I am going to specifically address Abu Ghraib, because I compulsively wrote a few notes during the video, so those thoughts are pretty fresh.
One issue that I specifically noted during the film was that the soldiers at Abu Ghraib were severely outnumbered. The atmosphere of sheer terror that must engender could only contribute to the sort of abuses that occurred there. Obviously, we're in a war, and just because more troops are needed does not mean they are available. Nonetheless, the sort of statistics the film related - was it something like eight MPs for 800 detainees? - almost require brutality simply to hold down a much larger population. Of course, that can always lead the subjugated to riot, as happened at Abu Ghraib.
Another suggestion is to ensure that the right type of soldiers are doing the right jobs. The MPs were clearly not trained to be prison guards, and certainly not guards who are supposed to control a group of enemy suspects. There have to be soldiers who are better trained to handle these sorts of situations.
Still another policy option is to ensure that detainees who hold no information are cycled through the system quicker. There were simply too many prisoners for Abu Ghraib, and the vast majority of them evidently held no intelligence that was of use to the military. As soon as military intelligence officers realized that people they were interrogating did not have useful information, they should have released them. Obviously, an intelligence officer cannot release someone on a whim, but there should be some sort of system in place for discharging people who have been wrongly arrested.
Really, all three of these suggestions come down to the same basic problem: there were too many prisoners, and too few, poorly trained, guards. It is obvious that this sort of a situation would almost automatically lead to "othering", simply in order to survive. By putting these soldiers in an untenable, terrifying situation, they were almost guaranteed to bond together and to lash out at those who are vulnerable when something goes wrong.
Also, really, the military needs to do better screening. There was at least one soldier in the film that I immediately singled out as not belonging to this war. As soon as he said "I wanted revenge" he should have been pulled out. There is a difference between wanting to defend your country and wanting revenge. I recognize that a lot of soldiers signed up after September 11 because they wanted revenge, and that we might lose half our military if we were to screen them out, but these are the people who might not distinguish between noncombatants and enemies. Because, strictly speaking, revenge is not feasible. The men who committed the attacks on September 11 died. We cannot take revenge on them. Besides, just war doctrine states that war cannot be done out of revenge. Perhaps the military should consider screening for those who seek vengeance.
An additional suggestion goes to the culture of permissiveness that had been promulgated by officials. I think this topic has been addressed ad nauseum, but it still needs to be addressed. Especially because I don't want a glaring hole in this post that will pull my grade down. Anyway, officials from the very top of the military and civilian hierarchy created a perception that all Middle Easterners are enemies, and deserve to be treated badly. The Bush Administration, and all the way down through the ranks of the military, created a system in which no clearly delineated rules were given to the troops on the ground, and in which results were encouraged without consideration for methods. To argue that they did not authorize the terrible treatment of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib is incorrect. If they did not directly authorize or know what was going to happen, they should have. Combining a bunch of terrified twenty-somethings, with no rules, a war, and a recent terrorist attack is a pretty clear recipe for mistreatment.
On the other hand, I think this sort of thing will always be a problem. The process of formal military training, and the chaos of war creates this sort of behavior, and I don't know that there is a way, short of pacifism, to prevent atrocities.
I would, however, like to point out even with all that has been said above, I still think that Americans in general are well trained and have behaved remarkably well in this war. Abu Ghraib was such a scandal becase it was seen as being inconsistent with our principles and practices. If one compares what happened at Abu Ghraib with the sort of horrors inflicted on prisoners in, for example, Latin America during the 1970s, Abu Ghraib looks like small potatos. It is very sad that this awful event has turned so much world opinion against the United States. This doesn't excuse what happened, but I try to bear in mind that whether or not the average person could become a monster, most of our soldiers haven't.
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3 comments:
I read thru your posting and have four points to make in response to your discussions;
Prisons;
You spoke about the guards being outnumbered at Abu Ghraib causing a feeling of terror for the people who were responsible to guard the prisoners. I can only imagine that it did, but the same situation exists in the prisons here in the United States. Prison guards are outnumbered all the time. I hated going into prisons knowing that we, the good guys, were outnumbered 10,20 sometimes 30 to 1. The fact that the Abu Ghraib guards claim outnumbering cause a situation of abuse to occur is ridiculous. Control is important, abuse however is unwarranted.
People doing their own jobs;
In this respect you are absolutely correct. The people responsible for guarding the prison should have been doing just that, guarding. The so called “softening” of priosoners for military intelligence was uncalled for and should not have been done. The abuses could have been avoided if the guards were left guarding and the intelligence gathering was left to the intelligence community.
Wrongful arrests;
The other subject you brought up were the arrests of people and their subsequent releases after discovery that they had no information for military intelligence. The real questions that need to be addressed here are, why are people being rounded up and detained without cause? Why are people being arrested by Americans simply because they might have information? No other probable cause but the possibility they might have information. It appears that the centuries of legal precedent set fort by the founding fathers of the United States was thrown away in a zeal to catch “terrorists” by any means. Why are people being rounded up and held without legal representation? Smacks of Nazi roundups of Jews in World War Two, (simply because they were Jews).
Weeding out of the bad apples;
The military is stretched out to where we have no choice but to allow those people, who might have questionable motives, join the military. The entire Abu Ghraid situation was created because the guards that were responsible for Abu Ghraib were replaced with military police because there were no corrections specialists available to replace the current guards. There are not enough people in the military to conduct the campaign correctly. With the constant rotation and reactivation of people who already served are examples of the lack of properly trained and available personnel. Maybe we don’t need to rotate people out anymore. When you went to war during WW2 you knew you were gone for the duration, and in some case that was years. Maybe we need to do that? I wonder what would happen to enlistments then? We might see a draft similar to Vietnam, again? I hope not.
Adding to what Jim commented, I agree with your analysis re the duties of the MP's. I'm not in the military and I don't completely understand what role the MP's play, but if I had to guess who would be in charge of corrections in a war-time prison, I would guess the MP's would be it. Regardless of what I think, if the Marine MP's arrived at Abu Ghraib and were told to put their weapons away and didn't know what to do, I see this causing a problem. It seemed as though they were the baby birds jumping from the tree trying to fly; in other words, they were learning how to be corrections officers by doing, not through any training.
Regarding the prisoner to guard ratio, I'm not really sure where I stand. I highly doubt the guards would allow enough prisoners to move freely at the same time to cause a large scale riot, but then again, that is what happened at Abu Ghraib.
I might be crossing into unchartered territory, a bit out of the scope on what you wrote about or what the class wrote about, but I'm really curious how much the psychological influences attached to the Abu Ghraib prison had on the US guards. The documentary spends some time discussing how the prison was used prior to the US invasion (one of Saddam's centers for torture and death). I wonder if, because they know it was a horrible place under Saddam, they somehow adopted that same reputation into their decisions to treat prisoner inhumanely. Kind of like the Stanford Prison experiment. On top of which, the US guards could hear mortars, IEDs, and gunfire outside the prison. It is probably impossible to determine how much these circumstances added to the pressure on the guards.
I do think being so terribly outnumbered played a role, even though, as Jim pointed out, American prison guards are also outnumbered. However, I would imagine they are not *as* outnumbered as at Abu Ghraib. Being so much in the minority instills so much fear, and almost necessitates brutality. It's the same awful behavior we saw in apartheid-era South Africa.
I also agree with Creeco's comments. There was already such a sense of terror and horror about Abu Ghraib because of its role in Saddam's time, you have to wonder if it didn't infect the soldiers and prisoners. Also, the video mentioned the stifling heat inside the prison. My parents grew up just outside of Philly, and my mom used to tell me stories about riots every summer, because the heat made people crazy. I'm sure it didn't help the guards, who were in no way used to it. In addition, adding mortars and IEDs to the mix only made the situation that much more volatile.
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