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Power is no license to commit mayhem

by Barry Henderson

We are at war, no matter what you call it—the global war on terrorism or the war to depose brutal, dictatorial regimes and give freedom and democracy to the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. War is not a pretty enterprise under any circumstances, and the prospects for an interminable war in the Middle East are plain ugly.

Compounding the difficulties in waging that war is the specter of uncertainty over who, exactly, the enemy is. We may not know until he strikes, multiplying the value of reliable intelligence and fueling the urge to lash out pre-emptively wherever our fears lead us. Just because we have vastly superior firepower and surveillance ability doesn’t mean much to us when we’re dying in Afghan valleys or on Iraqi streets and roads and when great portions of the nations we’re hoping to reform are mired in chaos, lawlessness and tribalism. Still, we don’t have to become barbarians just because we’re embroiled in what appears to be an unholy misadventure.

We have to walk a very fine line between trying to civilize that war from our side, which would be a futile endeavor, and allowing it to drag us along on a rapid descent into savagery.

We have to fight that war, as long as we have the stomach and the compulsion to do so, with the whole range of American ideals in our war bonnet. That means not just the concepts of freedom and democracy and our right or obligation or impulse to proliferate those concepts all over the planet. It means also that we should respect the rights of others as though they were our own. If we don’t respect the rights of individuals, we’re lost. And we have not been doing that consistently in this war we’re engaged in. The pursuit of information has gone berserk.

Prisoners have been grossly physically abused, tortured and killed by our own military and intelligence-gathering personnel. I have waited, horrified, but hopeful to find out that it was aberrant behavior on the part of a few hateful sociopaths, disgracing their uniform and their country. But, I regret to conclude that this is not the work of a few “bad apples,” unless those apples are ranking members of the armed forces and national administration who’ve encouraged it or condoned it or ducked its implications. Recognition of the scope of the scandal has been obscured by the brass and the administration. But the numbers of abused prisoners or those who’ve died in custody are steadily growing as each month of “investigation” of our interrogators’ conduct drags on. There have been scores of victims, scores of perpetrators identified. A pattern and practice is all but open and evident.

Regular servicemen and women, along with CIA “contractors” and other shadowy figures working under the U.S. aegis, have done the unconscionable in the name of extracting information that their prisoners may or may not have. Torture. It’s an unthinkable American practice. It certainly is to any American who lived through very much of the 20th century, when torture was a grotesque technique conducted only by our worst enemies, who pulled out fingernails or burned flesh with cigarette butts or broke fingers or arms or legs to get our soldiers to “talk” and put their comrades and our nation at risk. Surviving, or dying, without breaking down and telling what they knew made heroes of those imprisoned fighting men and women. So now we’re making heroes—or corpses—of the prisoners we’re taking in our war on terror. Practicing terror to fight terror. The contradiction would be comical if it weren’t so deadly, so utterly Orwellian.

Our protracted investigation of ourselves is not enough. Prosecution of a few scapegoats is not nearly enough. Those are disciplined people in a strict chain of command who are committing these horrors in our name. Stop them. Retrain them. Tell them what it means to be an American and to set an American example to the world. Prove that example.

So far, I see nothing to indicate that there is anything but an agonizingly slow delaying strategy underway at the Pentagon and in the Justice Department. In spite of their words of assurance, I see nothing in the eyes of Donald Rumsfeld or John Ashcroft that abhors torture as a means to their ends. If their commander-in-chief, their president, won’t get them to end the practice of torture and abuse of prisoners in American hands, replace him. If he won’t take responsibility for it, we have to. I’m a citizen of this gloried nation, and I’m sickened by the actions of many of our soldiers and the inaction of our leaders.

Power is not license. We do not commit crimes against individuals in the name of freedom and security. We are not that desperate, and if we ever get that desperate, we don’t deserve to gaze upon the flag we fly.

October 21, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 43 © 2004 Metro Pulse