Two Sides to the U.S. Operation in Iraq
There is at least some consistency to the worst stories about U.S. actions in Iraq:
Low level guards who are hardly more than thugs--some of them probably having been brutalized by working as guards in U.S. prisons (Marshall and The Corner)--are either given a free hand with prisoners, which they use to commit, er, "abuse"; or they are given some kind of encouragement by military intelligence to "soften up" so-called "suspects" who are to be interrogated later.
Standard procedure would be to have interrogations watched and supervised by JAG officers, but this practice has been deliberately suspended in both Afghanistan and Iraq. (Atrios links to Conason in Salon).
There may have been some thought that no legal implications could ever follow: at least some of the interrogators are private contractors, with no formal or legal status, and no requirement that they comply with the Geneva Convention; and the prisoners are (alleged) combatants, which is somehow different from "prisoners of war." Guantanamo is no place--neither U.S. soil, nor any other kind, so no law applies, and so on. (Lithwick).
U.S. units were ordered to make arrests, based on doubtful evidence. Worse, they would sometimes fail to find a certain person, or realize the address they were given wasn't real, so they would simply arrest someone else, like a neighbour who came over for a look. (Marshall linking to Guardian).
This fits with a description of Baghdad, linked earlier.
I did not quote this story before:
"I was with a US army unit when they went on a raid one morning. Tanks, armored personnel carriers and Humvees squeezed through the neighborhood walls as a CIA operator eyed the rooftops and windows of nearby houses angrily, a silencer on his assault weapon. Intelligence had intercepted a phone conversation in which a man called Ayoub spoke of advancing to the next level to obtain landmines and other weapons. Soldiers broke through Ayoub's door early in the morning, but when the sleepy man did not immediately respond to their orders he was shot with non-lethal ordnance, little pellets exploding like gun shot from the weapon's grenade launcher. The floor of the house was covered with his blood. He was dragged into a room and interrogated forcefully as his family was pushed back against their garden's fence.
"Ayoub's frail mother, covered in a shawl, with traditional tribal tattoos marking her face, pleaded with the immense soldier to spare her son's life, protesting his innocence. She took the soldier's hand and kissed it repeatedly while on her knees. He pushed her to the grass along with Ayoub's four girls and two boys, all small, and his wife. They squatted barefoot, screaming, their eyes wide open in terror, clutching one another as soldiers emerged with bags full of documents, photo albums and two compact discs with Saddam Hussein and his cronies on the cover. These CDs, called The Crimes of Saddam, are common on every Iraqi street and, as their title suggests, they were not made by Saddam supporters. But the soldiers couldn't read Arabic and saw only the picture of Saddam, which was proof enough of guilt. Ayoub was brought out and pushed on to the truck. He gestured to his shrieking family to remain where they were. He was a gentle, avuncular man, small and round, balding and unshaven, with a hooked nose and slightly pockmarked face. It seemed unlikely that he was involved in any anti-American activity; but he did not protest and maintained his dignity, sitting frozen, staring numbly ahead. The soldiers ignored him, occasionally glancing down at their prisoner with sneering disdain. The medic looked at Ayoub's injured hand and chuckled to his friends, 'It ain't my hand.' The truck blasted country music on the way back to the base. Ayoub was thrown in the detainment center. After the operation there were smiles of relief among the soldiers, slaps on the back and thumbs up.
"Several hours later a call was intercepted from another Ayoub. 'Oh shit,' said the unit's intelligence officer, 'it was the wrong Ayoub.' The innocent father of six who had the wrong name was not immediately let go so as not to risk revealing to the other Ayoub that the Americans were searching for him. The night after his arrest a relieved Ayoub could be seen escorted by soldiers to call his family and tell them he was fine, but would not be home for a few days. 'It was not the wrong guy,' said the unit's commander defensively, shifting blame elsewhere. 'We raided the house we were supposed to and arrested the man we were told to.' Meanwhile Army intelligence was still confounded by the meaning of the intercepted conversations until somebody realized it was not a terrorist intent on obtaining weapons. It was a kid playing video games and talking about them with his friend on the phone."
Not speaking the language, convinced that dangerous enemies are hidden here and there in the civilian population, not really knowing how to find them, committing casual brutalities against suspects: that is the pattern.
Matthew Yglesias has said before that the U.S. has two goals. It sincerely wants to bring democracy to Iraq; but it also has goals for its own security which a democratic Iraq might not share. Both plans would have involved removing Saddam, but after that, which takes priority? The Bush administration has never shown that it has thought about how these two goals go together.
From the point of view of U.S. security, they have probably planned from the beginning to build a significant military presence in Iraq, to replace the one they are losing in Saudi Arabia. This in itself, provided the Iraqi people seemed to more or less support such a presence, would be a victory for Western democracy. On the other hand, a real Iraqi democracy might question any substantial U.S. military presence, as the Philippines has come to do since Marcos was overthrown. A new Iraq could be anti-American in some ways, like France, without being undemocratic (or immoral, or haters of Disney movies or freedom). Is the U.S. prepared to say that seeing a country like that develop, knowing that the toppling of Saddam made it possible, is a great victory?
All of this has practical implications on the ground. We are all sick of analogies, but here is another one. The U.S. is occupying Iraq both in the way it occupied Japan proper in the late 40s--working hard to establish a new Constitution, and letting the Japanese themselves take control--and in the way it occupied Okinawa. Okinawa was run almost entirely by the U.S. military until very recently. Japanese civilians were treated as candidates for low-paying jobs in and around the various bases, and that was about it. Some effort to control the discipline of American service men was obviously made, but with a bit of a "boys will be boys" attitude. On the other hand, any disobedience or acting up by the Japanese was taken extremely seriously as a threat to American security.
The Okinawans were not exactly treated as actual or potential masters of their own destiny.
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