Shame and (Self) Loathing in Politics

[Blake]

Originally Posted by Godless Dave

I just don't understand how anyone could be shocked this late in the game.

Because TV news reeks, newspapers aren't much better, and most people spend their time lost in the entertainment multisphere of gaming and movies in any case, never even getting as far as the above-mentioned crappy news sources.

[Cool Hand]

Originally Posted by Godless Dave

I am not, and never have, accused Cool Hand of being a genocidal maniac. I am accusing him and people who share his views of being blind to the fact that their party is run by, not just pandering to, genocidal maniacs. His parroting the administration's laughable excuses for the Abu Ghraib abuse just lends credence to that.

CBS story on Abu Ghraib

General Karpinski Blames Intel For Abuse


A few out of control soldiers my ass.

Godless Dave,

I'm calling bullshit on you.

Allow me to refute, point by point, the nonsense you continue to spout in this thread, which you have attempted to hijack to somewhere far beyond its original intent.

1) You say above,

I am accusing him and people who share his views of being blind to the fact that their party is run by, not just pandering to, genocidal maniacs.

It is a fact that the GOP is run by genocidal maniacs? Good grief, man. Do you care to support such an absurd assertion with actual, hard, cold facts, rather than naked partisan rhetoric? I want facts, not out of this world partisan mud-slinging nonsense. Name me the leaders of the Republican Party--and I want names, dates, places, persons murdered, body counts, means of killing, and all other relevant details--who are genocidal killers. Put up or shut up. You are not getting away with making any more scurrilous and inflammatory comments in this thread.

2) You comment,

His parroting the administration's laughable excuses for the Abu Ghraib abuse just lends credence to that.

First, I'm not parroting anything. I would appreciate your granting me a little credit for being able to think for myself. Second, the administration has made no attempt whatsoever to excuse or justify the atrocities some U.S. Army Reservists committed at the Adu Graib prison. Show me any quote, any statement, any press release at all in which the President or anyone at the Cabinet level has attempted to excuse or justify the tortures and abuses committed against the Iraqi prisoners. Give me one, just one.

What you actually have is the administration and Army generals universally condemning what the handful of soldiers at the prison did. Read your own links. I'm familiar with the same news accounts you are. Nowhere in them will you find any evidence that the President or his aides or any high level military officer ordered anyone to torture, abuse, or murder Iraqi prisoners of war. Nowhere.

What you find in the news accounts you linked to are statements from regular army generals, some of the accused soldiers and their attorneys, and from reporters. The generals condemn and denounce the abuses. The accused soldiers and their lawyers blame their conduct on a lack of training and supervision, and also on the prison's being under-staffed. Some of them claim that military intelligence officers--without naming anyone or specifying a unit or anything else about them--instructed them on how to interrogate POWs. If they are claiming that the MI soldiers instructed them to abuse and torture prisoners as a lawful and effective means of gaining valuable intelligence, then I find such a claim to be self-serving and incredible. I am not a stranger to what is lawful treatment of POWs, nor am I a stranger to military intelligence and effective interrogation techniques.

I served almost 4 years on active duty as a U.S. Army judge advocate before and during the first Gulf War. Before I completed law school and was admitted to my state's bar, I was assigned to the military intelligence branch of the U.S. Army. I was an instructor in the law of war, including the code of conduct allowed towards POWs under the UCMJ and in accordance with international law, for hundreds of soldiers at my post. I am familiar with what is prohibited by, what is allowed pursuant to, and what is considered a crime under the UCMJ with respect to treatment of POWs. Furthermore, I am familiar with the training all U.S. soldiers on active duty receive with respect to the lawful treatment of POWs.

I am confident that there was no systemic order to abuse prisoners. No one has produced a shred of evidence to the contrary. What should be abundantly clear is that the reservist MPs who were given prison duty at Abu Ghraib were: 1) poorly trained in the law of war; 2) poorly supervised; 3) under-staffed; and 4) not the best choice of personnel for overseeing the prison and conducting interrogations.

What is not supported by any credible evidence is any assertion or claim that anyone other than the American soldiers at Abu Ghraib made a decision to visit torture and abuse upon the Iraqi prisoners of war there. There was no one there above the rank of staff sergeant. Their commanding officers, presumably those at the company level and possibly at the battalion or even brigade levels, have been disciplined for improper supervision (dereliction of duty under the UCMJ), not for ordering the commission of war crimes.

3) You comment in closing,

A few out of control soldiers my ass.

Six soldiers were to stand trial by court-martial as of the writing of the news accounts you linked to. Six. Their commanding officers were reprimanded, presumably for dereliction of duty in failing to supervise them. The reserve general charged with overseeing the prisons in Iraq was relieved of her duty. That's it. Yes, I would call that a few soldiers. Out of control? Yes.

None of the above supports your outrageous allegations that the Republican Party and/or the Bush administration had anything to do with ordering, soliciting, or condoning the war crimes the handful of soldiers committed at Adu Ghraib.

If you want to debate this subject further, I suggest you start your own thread devoted to the same. If you do, I will be happy to debate you and provide actual facts to support my position. I will expect and demand that you do the same. If you are unable or unwilling to provide factual support for your outrageous claims, then I will call you on it and end my further participation, as I will not debate someone who refuses to put up when asked.

I'm not interested in an insult contest. You called me a troll. Fine--you believe what you want. I will not stand for you to hijack this thread with blowhard demagoguery, however.

Cool Hand

[Cool Hand]

Originally Posted by Blake

It took me years of fairly intensive research, allowing for working a full-time job, to figure out how to discern alternative explanations such as the above from the "party line" explanation Cool Hand repeated. Please, Dave, allow him the benefit of the doubt, since he appears to be near the beginning of such a process of political discovery.

Blake,

I appreciate your stance on this matter and I appreciate your giving me the benefit of the doubt. I believe that your intentions are honorable and friendly. Nevertheless, I have to comment that I am a little uncomfortable with how you seem to be portraying me.

Please do not misunderstand. I mean no offense to you. I ask you, however, to look at your words above, place them in context, and then try to imagine that someone else is speaking about you. Now, if you do that, can you see that I might find your words to be at least somewhat patronizing? I do not really believe that you intend them to be insulting or belittling to me.

I am not a political babe in the woods. I am well educated, I try to stay informed, and I studied for a political science undergraduate degree for two years at a respectable private university before having to abandon that pursuit in favor of a degree in mathematics. Furthermore, I participated in my university's mock presidential convention when it was held, and it is a very realistic facsimile of the actual convention for the party out of power at the time. It happens to be a highly accurate predictor of the nominee selected before the actual convention, with a successful track record spanning nearly the entire 20th Century. Furthermore, I led a team in a political research seminar that conducted a university-wide scientific survey of the students and the faculty members. We had a participation rate greater than 85% of the population.

My shame and disgust I express in my OP is from the perspective of a disillusioned Republican. I am disillusioned not only by the President's stances on several social issues, but also by the ease with which real party politicians at the state and local level co-op straight party issues and positions, without dissent or actual personal input. I am witnessing that first hand and up close for the first time. I fully expected to see more disagreement and debate within the party. I did not anticipate so much pressure within the local party to conform and to adhere to a narrow band of core beliefs. Simply put, my local party does not leave any room for individual thought. It prefers to be a rallying place for right-wing ideologues, without leaving room for moderates to feel included.

Heh. Now that I have written all this, I sense that I am reacting too harshly to your remarks. You apparently meant no offense at all, and in retrospect are quite sympathetic to me. Well, I'm sorry now, Blake. I've gone from being very mildly offended due to feeling patronized to being contrite.

Oh well, perhaps you are right. Perhaps I am on a road to political discovery. Perhaps I have been on it for many years, but I am just now reaching a satisfactory point at which I can look back and appreciate where I have been, where I am, and where I might be heading in the future.

Take it easy.

Cool Hand

[Blake]

Thanks, Cool Hand; for the second time in my life, I find myself saying "you're too kind" and really meaning it. I did not intend to be insulting, belittling or patronizing, but that's entirely what my words mean. I apologize. I'd like to reply at much greater length, but that will take me a while, so I wanted to post this for the time being.

[Cool Hand]

Blake,

No apology is necessary. You didn't mean any insult. Thanks for being kind enough to respond, but please do not spend any more time or effort addressing or pondering it. I'm not offended or insulted. I over-reacted and saw a slight where none was intended. For that I should be apologizing to you. I'm sorry I over-reacted and mentioned it at all.

Cool Hand

[Blake]

No, I should. You da man.

It was patronizing, and you're only not feeling insulted because you think I might be right. Anyway, make you a deal? We stop apologizing to each other, and go back to an actual political discussion.

[Godless Dave]

Originally Posted by Cool Hand

It is a fact that the GOP is run by genocidal maniacs? Good grief, man. Do you care to support such an absurd assertion with actual, hard, cold facts, rather than naked partisan rhetoric? I want facts, not out of this world partisan mud-slinging nonsense. Name me the leaders of the Republican Party--and I want names, dates, places, persons murdered, body counts, means of killing, and all other relevant details--who are genocidal killers.

George W. Bush
Dick Cheney
Donald Rumsfeld

Dead: tens of thousands of Iraqis
method of killing: bombs, missiles, artillery, tanks. Some small arms.

Originally Posted by Cool Hand

the administration has made no attempt whatsoever to excuse or justify the atrocities some U.S. Army Reservists committed at the Adu Graib prison.

But they have made every attempt to deny their own responsibility in the matter.

Originally Posted by Cool Hand

What you actually have is the administration and Army generals universally condemning what the handful of soldiers at the prison did. Read your own links.

And covering up the fact that their orders came from intelligence officers and civilian interrogators who have yet to be indicted.

Originally Posted by Cool Hand

I'm familiar with the same news accounts you are. Nowhere in them will you find any evidence that the President or his aides or any high level military officer ordered anyone to torture, abuse, or murder Iraqi prisoners of war. Nowhere.

Of course they didn't order them directly. They are too smart for that. But the White House did communicate a policy that Iraqi resistance fighters were to be considered "enemy combatants", not enemy soldiers. The White House sent the person in charge of Gunatanamo Bay to oversee interrorgations in Iraq. And they put General Boykin in an intelligence gathering role at Abu Ghraib, after he had made anti-Islamic remarks in public, in uniform.

Maybe I will start another thread about this. I can't believe you're falling for this obvious cover up.

[wade-w]

Godless Dave;

Have you ever served in the military? I suspect the answer to that question is "no."

One of the things that is stressed in the Navy, and I have no reason to think it's any different in the other branches of the service, is the difference between a lawful and an unlawful order. You are required to obey the lawful orders of all superior officers and petty officers. You are, however, required to disobey all unlawful orders. It is the sailor or soldier's responsibility to determine if a particular order is lawful or not. This is made clear from day one of boot camp. These violations, if they were ordered from above, would be clear, indeed textbook, cases of unlawful orders.

Given the above policy, I can't see how the entire chain of command all the way down to squad level could reasonably be expected to en masse obey what are clearly unlawful orders.

[Dingfod]

How does the grunt in the field determine what is a lawful or unlawful order? I mean, murder should be obvious, but what else would there be to tell? It's not like they can call the legal department and say "Sarge says shoot the sumbitch, the sumbitch is unarmed and holding a white flag, can I go ahead and shoot the sumbitch?" Sarge may not like that much.

I understand that during the Vietnam war and even in Desert Storm, the soldiers were given cards with Geneva Convention rules for treatment of enemy prisoners, but this time they were not. In fact, the administration made quite a big deal out of saying the Geneva Convention didn't apply. If the administration sets the tone by implying that international law is to be ignored, how can someone at the field level make a determination of what is legal or not? You'd think it would be obvious, but I bet it's not.

If, by international law, the entire pretext for attacking Iraq was unlawful, is everyone in the military culpable for obeying that unlawful order? Remember, Iraq had not attacked anyone since they invaded Kuwait. Attacking another country because they merely might be capable of being a threat is a rather new tactic, gunboat diplomacy without the diplomacy.

Miscellaneous curious ramblings by a guy that never served in the military either.

[Godless Dave]

I believe that's why they purposefully assinged undertrained reserve troops to that duty, and excluded General Karpinski and her people from the interrogation part of the prison. I don't think it went all the way down the chain of command. I think it went Rumsfeld -> intelligence contractors -> MPs.

[Blake]

I've started a new thread on the Abu Ghraib scandal and the Administration's culpability therein over here. Warren has also started a subject specifically on the topic of whether soldiers are capable of distinguishing lawful from unlawful orders here.

Incidentally, Dave, CBS News is a totally inadequate source to buttress as strong an argument as you advanced here. There were at most a couple of sentences in both the articles you cited that even pointed to the argument you were trying to make, and a reader would have had to extrapolate further from those sentences on faith without access to other material.

[Clutch Munny]

Originally Posted by warrenly

I am not a Libertarian, but I am a libertarian. The difference between my views and a big-L Libertarian is only incremental. I am very much a social libertarian and all the freedoms that entails. However, I think there is a responsibility we have as a society, whether it is spelled out in the almighty Constitution or not, a responsibility to care for our fellow man and to make policy that advances society as a whole. It takes money to pay for that, tax money, which seems to be abhorent to the average Libertarian.

I quite agree, though I would extend your remark about "society as a whole" to mean having a state that safeguards the right and the good for all citizens, even when it is in the short-term economic interests of no single private entity to do so.

But I think this notion of small-l libertarianism is not very useful, since the term connotes primarily the economic policy you reject, and not the social policy you endorse. [l]ibertarianism in your sense seems consistent with the motivations for virtually any extent of leftist politics.

For a position much like the one you describe, Warren, I think of myself as a classical liberal in the mould of JS Mill: The greatest liberty and privacy consistent with the liberty and privacy of others, plus a full-blooded conception of the state's role in securing the public good.

Were I an American I too would despair. But I'd vote Democrat as the horrible corporatist party that is -- astonishingly -- by far the least opposed to my idea of a just and thriving polity.

[Dingfod]

"Classical liberal". I like that.