The New York Times ran a sickening article on the alleged murder of two Afghan detainees by American jailers. And [t]he harsh treatment, which has resulted in criminal charges against seven soldiers, went well beyond the two deaths.
Some will dismiss this article, and me for commenting on it, as anti-troops. Well, I am opposed to torturers. I am opposed to savages. I am opposed to war criminals. And if these soldiers are guilty of that, then I am most unashamedly anti-THOSE troops. And if you don't like it, tough cookies. If you think torture is ok so long as it's done by Americans, then go read Ann Coulter instead of this blog. If you think torture and despicable inhumanity are wonderful things provided the perpetrator has the correct flag patch on his or her uniform, then get lost.
There are lots of soldiers out there doing good things like protecting schools and delivering food aid. I tip my cap to them. But I'll be damned if I call these torturer (and allegedly murderous) criminals 'our heroes'; they're not heroes and they're sure as heck not mine.
And it's not just the 'long-haired hippy' crowded that's condemning these savages.
"What we have learned through the course of all these investigations is that there were people who clearly violated anyone's standard for humane treatment," said the Pentagon's chief spokesman, Larry Di Rita. "We're finding some cases that were not close calls."
So if I'm anti-troops for denouncing the torturers, then so is Donald Rumsfeld's spokesman.
And before some nitwits claim this is nothing more than college frat razzing, consider this:
In some instances, testimony shows, it was directed or carried out by interrogators to extract information. In others, it was punishment meted out by military police guards. Sometimes, the torment seems to have been driven by little more than boredom or cruelty, or both. In sworn statements to Army investigators, [AMERICAN] soldiers describe one female interrogator with a taste for humiliation stepping on the neck of one prostrate detainee and kicking another in the genitals. They tell of a shackled prisoner being forced to roll back and forth on the floor of a cell, kissing the boots of his two interrogators as he went. Yet another prisoner is made to pick plastic bottle caps out of a drum mixed with excrement and water as part of a strategy to soften him up for questioning.
When the two tortured kidnapees died, Military spokesmen maintained that both men had died of natural causes, even after military coroners had ruled the deaths homicides [underlined parts are my emphases]
In reality, this just underlines how difficult and messy it is to occupy a foreign country. People don't like to be ruled by invading foreigners. Occupation troops are put in extremely difficult and stressful situations for long, sustained periods of time (as opposed to combat battles which are intense, but comparatively short). As I've written before many times, if you put people in inhumane situations, they are going to act in inhumane ways. American Exceptionalism nonsense aside, Americans soldiers aren't immune from human nature. It's unreasonable to expect them to be.
It also shows poorly planned the Iraq invasion and occupation were. The article details how inexperienced and hastily trained many of the soldiers were. Unfortunately, when you need 150,000 troops, you can't be overly selective.
The incident also risks being far more damaging than the 'Koran abuse' stories.
As the BBC reported: the US could improve its image in the Muslim world if it started "listening more, speaking in a humbler tone, and focusing on bilateral aid and partnership, while tolerating disagreement on controversial policy issues," according to a report by the Council on Foreign Relations.
Admittedly, listening and being humble are not the strong points of American foreign policy.
But it means that we have to be careful. The Times noted that many of the officers and soldiers interviewed in the Dilawar investigation said the large majority of detainees at Bagram were compliant and reasonably well treated. Yet it's hard to ignore a few murders.
This is a chance for us to demonstrate that being humble aspect. Instead of reflexively defending the alleged murderers as 'our heroes,' we need to apply the same standards to these soldiers as to any other accused killers. Charge them and give them trials (something not afford to Guantanamo kidnappees). If found guilty, lock them up for life. Give them public condemnation, not rallies in their honor or hysterical rants in their defense. If they get excused for the inexcusable, it tarnishes the reputation of all other soldiers... and of America as a whole.
Update: while this is going on, it's reassuring to know that our Congress is focused on the right priorities. Such as grandstanding about the steroid policy of a sports' league that doesn't even have a huge problem with steroids.
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