And that effort is not going to come easily. The brass is of the opinion that a certain percentage of this kind of thing is inevitable, and who knows? – deep down in places they don’t take about – maybe even reassuring that the values they’ve been trained for have taken root.
Which is why I’m for publicizing the photos. Public outrage can be a very healthy, very motivating force for the powers that be to start fixing their own problems.
This is definitely true and it hits at a problem indicative in the military as a concept. Officers are the entrenched power within the military (I’m speaking about all militaries.) While we have civilian control of the military, that’s limited in practical effect as within the military the top brass have enormous power and over the years it is only to be expected the officers stick together and advance their power and status.
You’re also correct that nothing short of active efforts by the top brass themselves is going to fix this.
Which is an interesting situation because one reason the military has always been hesitant to follow crimes “up the chain of command” is because the people who run and structure the military don’t want to be prosecuted or forced out in shame because of things their subordinates do.
There’s also the understanding that just because someone is under your command you shouldn’t be held legally responsible for everything they do as there are many situations where you’re not going to be able to oversee everything they dol. But there certainly should be prosecutions when an officer orders this type of stuff, explicitly or implicitly.
Prisoner abuse has nothing to with the values that are trained in the American armed forces.
I think the point is that these pictures don’t add anything new to the debate. It is possible to be convinced that torture is de rigueur in the armed forces based on whatever has been known or alleged to date, or even based only on the pictures which are the only real, solid evidence to date. But more documentation of the same stuff already established doesn’t, or shouldn’t, change that. It isn’t anything new.
In other words, if you are already convinced based on the first batch of pictures, then another batch isn’t necessary. If the first batch isn’t enough to convince you that this is more than some isolated incidents, then another batch of the same isn’t any different.
Regards,
Shodan
Gotta disagree with you on this one. Those new photos showed wound patterns and restraining techniques I hadn’t seen in the old ones. To a certain extent, they were just more of the same thing, but saying that they provide nothing new just doesn’t add up.
Also, if nothing else, the new batch of photos helps keep the problem of prisoner abuse fresh in our minds. I happen to think that the fact American soldiers in American uniforms are abusing and torturing prisoners and further inflaming hatred against us is a very important thing for the American people to keep in mind. Not because I hate the military–I don’t–but because if we don’t deal with it, history very well might.
torture is our policy, not our aberation.
The pix are the tip of a loathesome iceberg, and we are fixin to play “nearer my god to thee”…
I guess I am saying that the new photos don’t show torture to be any more widespread than the old, in the sense that more people were/are involved or it happens more commonly. You can argue that the already-identified incidents at abu Gharib are now more appalling, I guess, but not that torture in general is more common.
Not much to argue with here.
Regards,
Shodan
All of them thugs, rapists etc? Hardly! Quite the opposite actually. … I believe that atrocities are committed by both sides and should be dealt with when discovered.
Sure cavemen could have painted these kinds of acts on their walls too but it’s awful difficult for them to send the info to the news media. Prior to digital photography it was still much more difficult to develop or ship film out of the war zone.
No, I’m not defending the acts whatsoever.
Where do you get the idea that the torture of prisoners reflects a value that the military trains for? Is this something you honestly believe or were you just taking a cheap shot?
Two points:
First, this ain’t new. Back in the biblical book of Deuteronomy, many centuries BC, there are rules about what to do when soldiers in the heat of battle rape women, etc. THe bible says it’s wrong to do it, but it also recognizes that in warfare, this will happen, and it deals not just with punishing the soldiers but with reparations to those wrongfully injured.
Soldiers are not police officers, trained in how to maintain their cool, realizing that they are dealing with fellow citizens who will face judge and jury. Soldiers are in fear of their lives, dealing with an enemy out to kill them, and the tendency towards “thug” is very natural and very understandable. Plus, soldiers are in a group (unlike most police activities), where the mob mentality can easily take over. I’m not saying it’s OK to torture prisoners, I’m just saying that it’s a very human reaction that leaders need to try to curb.
Second, we have a free press. We allow photographers access to almost anything they want, almost any time. Consequently, we’re going to see more photos of mistreatment. How do the Iraqi insurgents treat their prisoners? I’m sure it’s worse, but we’re not going to see that, unless it’s a deliberately videotaped execution for publicity.
We get this all the time with organizations like Amnesty International – an extremely worthwhile organization, but they focus on countries where they can get information. Prisoner abuse in the Arab world ()for instance) is wide-spread, I think, but there’s no free press, no publicity, no photographs allowed.
What part of “maybe” don’t you understand?
It could conceivably be true that our military leaders really don’t think of the enemy as 100 percent human. It’s happened before. It could also be true that on seeing some atrocity or another, they might see it as tragic on its face – even order investigation or punishment of some sort – but that thinking could also be tempered by a feeling, a gut response if you will, that in their place and with their training, “I’d have done the same.”
(See the movie A Few Good Men sometime for a peacetime, company-grade version of this same dilemma.)
At last, back to the OP!
It is my contention that there has probably been considerably more prisoner abuse and soldiers out of control or engaging in unacceptable practices.
I accept that this is part of the natural outcome of military training and one should not be surprised when it happens.
What gets my goat is when politicians (and senior military brass) come on the media and spout about these events being incredibly rare and saying that they have all been dealt with. One knows that low to mid level abuse is happening all the time, but it is only such abuse with incontrovertable evidence that makes it to court- hence the importance of video and still picture proof- the testimony of the victims is all too easy to discount for any number of reasons.
It is the hiding behind these false defences that makes me angry.
Additionally, it is counterproductive because it is redolent of PR, spin and outright lying. Maybe it would be better for these politicians to say: military training results in a corps of people who are attuned to work as hard as they can for your country and to avoid their own and others deaths. Because of this special situation, soldiers are more likely to mistreat people they see as the enemy. We work as hard as we can to stop this happening without negatively affecting our forces strength, but, yes, we put our hands up, these things are happening all the time and there is little we can do about it than educate and punish. Whatever is done, such things will continue to happen.
Maybe such honesty would lead to less anger as it seems more human than the BS spouted by John Reid and Donald Rumsfeld.
Of course, this would be difficult with the official support for torture lite as this runs contrary to any available defence in the Western world outside the USA.
This is not the natural outcome of military training. Military training involves learning how to kill the enemy and break his stuff while minimizing civilian casualties. Torture and abuse are the natural outcomes of severe psychological stress that one undergoes under warfare combined with the belief that one will get away with it. It is the getting away with it part that I hope will be corrected with the publication of the photos.
“Mistreating people they see as the enemy” in no way logically follows from “a corps of people attuned to work as hard as they can for your country and to avoid their own and others deaths.” Don’t forget that “avoiding others’ others deaths” involves avoiding civilian casualties who happen to live in the same area as the enemy troops, who are themselves protected by the Geneva Convention. And make no mistake: Military training involves learning about both the legal consequences of prisoner abuse and the Geneva Convention.
Ohhhh, no argument here. 
I am sorry, it is not the intended outcome of military training. But from a Human Development/Psychological Change/Learning Theory standpoint, it is almost certain to be an unintended consequence.
People usually do not find it easy to kill other people. That is why society is quite stable and murders are relatively few. Military training needs to use certain techniques to allow ordinary joes to act like killing machines when necessary. These techniques involve setting up mind sets that allow the subjects to see killing others as acceptable and laudable. Much use is made of clannishness, self protection and over-valuing one’s own people on the one hand, and demonization, dehumanization and stressing the low value and deserved negative fate of the enemy on the other.
It is virtually impossible to do this without some spillover into the areas of life where brutality and killing are not accepted. This accounts for the regular problems with hazing, beasting, bullying etc. which is rife in the army- the learned response to attack ‘the other’ is transferred to the weak, the difficult or the different within the unit. It also accounts for the high incidence of off base viloence suffered in bars and other facilities of military towns- if you learn that viloence is a way of settling your problems, then when your inhibitions are down (alcohol) it is easy to revert to individual or group violence.
Such behaviour is also common (though less extreme) in those workplaces that detain people- prisons, Psychiatric Hospitals, Residential Homes etc… Staff learn that they have a considerable power and that the client group have little power. Not surprisingly a proportion of staff will always abuse this power and explain it away by justifications used by soldiers to explain away their torturing or beating of the perceived enemy.
All of the above is fully documented in the literature of Social Psychology.
Perhaps you could provide a cite for how such behaviour is unrelated to military training.
Er, I’m not sure how these new pictures show anything one way or the other. They are just more pictures of the same events that we already knew took place. I’d say the ‘few bad apples’ thing is pretty much correct, depending on the definition of ‘few’…unless someone has some data that either a large minority or a majority of US/coalition troops generally exhibit this type of behavior. Perhaps you mean the prison guards, not the troops in general. Thats something from my own experience that I’d be more willing to believe…but I’ve still seen no proof. And more pictures from Abu Ghraib of the same events does not constitute furture proof. Now…if these were RECENT pictures…
I don’t think its as ‘real’ to most folks until they see the pictures. Sort of like the pictures from the various Civil War battle fields made things ‘real’ for the folks back home, and the nightly televised pictures from Vietnam made things ‘real’. Such things had happened and there had been stories about them in the past…but the pictures, especially taped film, really brought it all home. Think about how the American people would have reacted to raw footage from D-Day, or what the German people would have thought of footage from the various abuses in the concentration camps…
Is it your contention that no coalition forces were ever charged with mistreatment except those caught on film? That no military investigations were launched except those involving these pictures of abuse?
Of course not. Only a fool would think that when you put hundreds of thousands of soldiers into a hostile situation that AG constitutes all the abuses that have happened. Even if only 1% of the various coalition troops are ‘bad apples’ thats still thousands of folks.
More wide spread than what? Than has been reported? Certainly. I’m sure things have happened when there was no one around to see them.
One has to ask ones self though if they are more wide spread than in the past for this sized conflict. I’d have to say that my WAG is that this war has been ‘cleaner’ than any past conflict of like size…mainly BECAUSE abuses like AG can and do come out, and they come out in such a way that the information is distributed world wide instantly. We live in a digital age where such things are increasingly difficult to hide…especially if the government allows reporters pretty much free reign to investigate things and wander about…and doesn’t seriously try and prevent distasteful things like AG from getting out to the wider public.
All in all this OP is kind of a yawn to be honest. We have beat this dead horse to pulp here and in the wider public forum. These abuses have been dealt with. Simply bringing out more pictures of the same events is like turning up another rape video tape on a convicted rapist serving 4 consecutive life sentences. He’s ALREADY been tried and convicted. You going to give him a 5th life sentence perhaps? AFAIK, and from what I recall reading a few months ago, the folks involve have all been punished, corrective measures have been taken that seem to have vastly improved the situation, etc etc. Now…if you have some evidence that this isn’t the case and abuses continue…well, that would be a fresh debate.
-XT
And how exactly am I supposed to intend to prove a negative? I think the burden of cites is on you. You’re the one blaming everything on army training. Got any Human Development/Psychological Change/Learning Theory standpoint cites to back your claim?
The citizens of Nazi Germany, Rwanda, Israel, the Sudan, Darfur, Afghanistan, North Korea, the former Soviet Union, and any number of places would beg to differ with you here if only they could.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that you never received military training. I have (I’m an army vet.), and you are wrong on just about everything. I will give you that the “subjects” (We actually refer to them as “recruits,” just so you know.) are taught to see killing others as acceptable, for example when they’re actively engaged in the pursuit of killing you or slaughtering helpless unarmed citizens.
If we were trained to do this, Pjen, atrocities would be more frequent and more severe than they already were. You seem to think that army training involves handing someone a gun on his first day in basic and basically telling him that it’s OK to slaughter the world, because they’re subhuman scum. In actuality, recruits learn respect, self-image, survival skills, teamwork, and above all, discipline. As I’ve said above, they also learn about UCMJ and the consequences of going against the Geneva Convetion.
Yes, you will find this in the army. You will also find it in fraternities, sports teams, prisons, and other places in which people are forced to deal with each other under conditions of extreme stress. You can’t just lump the whole hazing thing and scream about the evil army. (I might add that military members caught doing this are punished under UCMJ.).
Less extreme, huh? The victims of prison rape, shivving, rape in psychiatric hospitals (Yes, it happens.), and abuse of senior citizens in old age homes would beg to differ with you on this one, as well.
Nevertheless, you are correct about the atrocities that often happen in war. But to say that soldiers commit atrocities in war is quite different from saying that they are trained to do it. Saying that soldiers dehumanize their enemy is quite different from saying that they are trained to do it. Saying that soldiers engage in hazing is quite a bit different from saying that they are trained to do it.
You won’t catch me saying that Abu Gharib et al. were isolated events. I would say that it happened in spite of military training, not because of it. I believe that the military has to take responsibility for this, but the problem is a lack of training, not the training itself.
Even if the rate of occurrence was 100 times more common than what was being photographed, wouldnt it still be only a small minority overall?
The desire to record torture also seems to be a fairly common behaviour, perhaps because voyeurism can also be related to dehumanisation, so its hard to know what the rate of non recorded to recorded torture really is.
I wonder what kinds of controls the army tried to put on general camera usage over there, they must be a PR nightmare.
Otara
Thank you Linty. This is pretty much the whole point I came back to make whittled down to it’s essentials.
Yes, and it could conceivably be true that in most of these photos the prisoners injured themselves. However, simply stating that with nothing to back it up is pointless speculation and detracts from the debate rather then adds to it; regardless if whether I toss in a “maybe” or not. As is, it’s just a pointless swipe.