Elizabeth Moon On Iraqi Prisoner Abuse

I may finally be calm enough to write something about the horrible events in Iraq. Understand, this is written from the viewpoint of a former military officer, but someone not on active service for a long time now.

Back when I was in OCS at Quantico, and again in Basic School (thus once while technically enlisted and once after commissioning) we were taught about the UCMJ. I haven't seen any recent version of the UCMJ, but it was very clear in our instruction then (and even though women were not then expected to be MPs or go into combat) that mistreatment of prisoners was illegal, and that individuals were expected to withstand pressure from above to do anything illegal, up to and including refusing an order and reporting illegal orders to a more senior officer ("jumping the chain of command" was strongly frowned upon, but letting a bad situation continue so the senior was caught off guard by the mess later was worse.)

The realities of human nature and war are such that *all* military organizations have in them some persons who will commit atrocities--who will murder, rape, and torture if they get the chance--and another cohort who will do so if ordered to do so whether or not they would think of it on their own. It is absurd to say that it's against "our" nature to do such things when you look at the news--when you see that bullying has been tolerated, that children are beaten and starved, women raped, farm workers abused, that respect for the civil rights of civilians has been eroded, that the ordinary police act more and more like Special Forces on a raid... and that, as I learned tonight, the grave of the black man dragged to his death in East Texas has now been vandalized. It *is* in our national character--not dominant in all of us, but never yet rooted out. We have racists, political extremists, vandals, stalkers... and until we see all that clearly for what it is, we will not have any chance of decreasing it, let alone eliminating it.

And it's not just us. Every nation--every subgroup of every nation--has some of the same elements.

What keeps prisoner abuse and atrocities from happening is a combination of training (both training in the law and training in appropriate behavior) and a commitment throughout the command structure that this will not be tolerated. That commitment has to exist at the top (in other words, senior officers *and the civilians who ultimately control the military*) must be committed to zero tolerance, must make it clear to their subordinates that they will not tolerate it, and must insist that abuse be *looked for* and *dealt with*. That commitment must extend down through the command structure, commissioned and non-commissioned officers alike, so that the green, inexperienced officers and enlisted personnel know, absorb from their elders, the standards of their unit. This is part of making unit spirit, unit pride: to distinguish the unit by its high standards.

"*We* don't do things like that." "We aren't that kind of unit."

A lot of people snark at the discipline imposed on military personnel, but this is why you have to have that (one reason.) Military personnel are supposed to perform well under conditions of the highest stress--when they're tired, hungry, hot, cold, overworked and underpaid, and--oh yes--getting the sh*t scared out of them by those trying to kill them. There is no way to achieve that performance without discipline, without training, without creating an esprit de corps.

There will always be bad apples, people who go into the military for the wrong reasons. They're full of hate and anger, and think this is where they get to work it off by killing people. The only way to control those is by making them conform to group standards... and that requires strong leadership. Not management, mind... leadership. Plato quoted Socrates as saying "Be what you would seem." It is the only way for leaders to lead... BE what you ask others to be.

If you don't provide the training and the leadership, the bad apples will...they will train people their way, and lead them to their ends, not yours.

The roots of what happened to the Iraqi prisoners go far back, thirty years at least. Vietnam was the great politicizing force in the military... prior to that, military personnel were not supposed to express a preference and many officers felt they should not even vote. After 'Nam, the military became increasingly politicized and alienated from the rest of the country. The change was going on even when I was on active duty, and it was a change not limited to the military, of course.. Moderate officers (of either party) were viewed with suspicion by both... and officers considered liberal were no longer in favor with selection boards. With the all-volunteer force, and selective reductions in force, the emphasis shifted from military excellence to political alliance.

For instance, in our training we were taught that the military has no business preferring a President of one party to another--that its role is to obey the Commander in Chief, whatever his politics. Yet in the wake of Vietnam, an increasingly politicized military leadership allowed itself to become identified with one party, and make very clear its support of one party's Presidents over the other's.

What we have here is a Commander in Chief whose mode of command is secretive--who is more interested in image than substance--who has said publicly on more than one occasion that he doesn't read, doesn't pay attention to anything he doesn't want to, and who, in his recent press conference, couldn't think of any mistakes he'd made. His cabinet follows his example: secretive, covering up mistakes, not dealing openly with Congress or the American people. This is a man who has lied to the American people and to the United Nations, and then shrugged it off with "What's the difference?" It's impossible to imagine Bush saying "The buck stops here..."

In addition, this is a man who asked for (and got) a wholesale attack on the civil rights and freedoms of American citizens in this country, who authorized the treatment of captives at Guantanamo Bay and the treatment of prisoners held for questioning about terrorism. This is a man comfortable with the CIA and FBI kicking down doors and throwing people to the ground... who, as governor of Texas, was very reluctant to hear about abuse of prisoners in Texas prisons. This is a man who authorized the use of civilian outsourcing to perform many of the traditional support functions of the military (and without authorizing sufficient oversight), including civilian guards and interrogators. (Civilians--paid more and granted privileges the military personnel don't share--do nothing for unit morale.)

This kind of example at the top suggests to commanders down the line that the rules may have changed. Most of them, to their credit, will continue to perform well. But I know, from a former Army officer friend, that cuts in personnel numbers and various political pressures to conform to the right-wing ideal have stripped from the military the kind of rock-solid NCOs I worked with... there are fewer and fewer 20 year veterans around, fewer shaped by the old school of "We aren't like that in *this* man's Army..." Meanwhile, the chickenhawks in the Administration and Congress and their buddies in the defense industries like to talk about how it's necessary to be rough, tough, mean, etc...of course, they never were in the military and thus never exposed to the UCMJ. Their undisciplined lust for blood (after all, it isn't *their* blood) spews out and sounds exciting and self-righteous and gets the adrenalin flowing.

So you have the senior civilian command already demonstrating a contempt for the human rights of prisoners (both civilian and military), a double standard in the combat zone (civilian contractors living much better than soldiers), a commitment to secrecy rather than openness (and not secrecy for real military purposes... just secrecy for its own sake.)

You have a breakdown in training. You have personnel kept in-country, in daily danger, too long. You have a shortage of personnel, so that there is no adequate supervision of young MPs... and you have civilian contractor interrogators giving orders to military personnel. You have a serious, very serious problem in the chain of command, when the whistleblower felt he had to push an anonymous note under his CO's door. That's not a healthy unit.

His CO, to his credit, immediately investigated, passed word up the chain, and the Army did a creditable job of following procedures. Up to the point when word was passed to the Pentagon.

And here again it's clear that the rot started at the top, not the bottom. The right thing to do was *immediately* get word to the Commander in Chief. (Did they try? Was he not listening?) The President should have *immediately* informed Congress, and very shortly thereafter the press: "Something horrible happened; we're shocked; we're investigating, we're bringing people to trial and we're looking at the whole command structure to see how it happened and how to prevent anything like that again." But no. This Administration, in its usual way, tried to hide the mess until someone leaked it, and then, characteristically, blamed the existence of the pictures for the uproar, instead of the deeds. Nobody at the top is taking responsibility... it's the whistleblower's fault, the fault of whoever took the pictures, etc. Rumsfeld today complained that people were making a political issue out of it...as if it were not, by its very nature, a political issue.

Worse, and proof that the problem is not just those particular MPs, is that right-wing columnists and media talking heads want to shrug this off as just what always happens and if there weren't pictures no one would make a fuss...and after all, Saddam killed and tortured more people than we have killed and tortured. I was ready to punch out the TV tonight, listening to one of them. They don't get it. They don't get that when a military organization starts torturing prisoners *for whatever reason*, it fails itself--it becomes, to that degree, dishonorable, and that stain smears everyone. And when a military loses its honor, it turns very ugly indeed...it becomes an armed, undisciplined mob, no longer committed to the best it can be.

The only way to redeem that stain is for everyone, top to bottom, to recognize and admit what went wrong and where it started. This Administration is clearly not interested in lancing the infection... they want to put a pretty white bandage on it and call it cured, by making the guards the scapegoats.

Certainly the guards must be charged and court-martialed and punished: no doubt about that. But condemning them is like condemning Lt. Calley (and he, at least, was a commissioned officer who had a greater responsibility.) It does nothing to clean up the much larger problem. McCain gets it...he, unlike the rest of that bunch, is a real veteran and he knows what's at stake and what's been lost. Watching him trying to get Rumsfeld to answer a question directly (rather than rambling off on side topics) was... interesting.

And it's going to get worse. At best... at absolute best... we have over six more months of this man and his cohorts: men without honor, men without courage, men without even intelligence. He has already damaged our nation's honor, credibility, economy, and military. We are in a hole that will take some climbing out of, and he's still digging with a steam shovel.

The worst thing we could do at this point is turn on the rest of the military... the honorable among them are hurting already, and we need to support them where they are honorable (and kick their butts where they aren't). We need to express our support for *decent* behavior and those who exhibit it, and keep reminding that popinjay in the White House that he has responsibility, not just authority.

E.

Elizabeth Moon is a fantasy and science fiction writer and former Marine officer who lives here in Texas.