by Andrew
It’s nice to see that Congress is finally getting into the game, even if they are several years late. This is how our government is supposed to work, with each branch jealously guarding its turf from encroachments by the others. (I talked about why this doesn’t work a few months ago.) For the past six years, the Bush administration has been all over jealously guarding its turf, but the other two branches failed to show up for the game, giving the executive disturbingly broad powers with the apparent consent of the other branches.
Actually, while I say the other branches, it’s Congress I’m displeased with. (Though happy they are now starting to do something.) That is not in any way intended to grant a pass to the administration for their actions; the President should have tied Congress into the war effort from day one, rather than treating them as a problem to be avoided at best and finessed at worst. But when he failed to do so, Congress should have screamed bloody murder. Their failure to do so was a contributing factor in the problem we find ourselves in now. I was particularly happy to hear this.
"We are not a parliament, and when we function like a parliament we’re unfaithful to the process and our system of government," said Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), who will preside over the Iraq hearing. "We hurt our country and both branches of government. If we had been more forceful . . . Abu Ghraib would have never happened."
I think he’s wrong in the specific case of Abu Ghraib; that was a failure because we put a bad unit with a lousy commander in charge and got predictable results. The Army’s failure to hold senior leaders accountable for that remains a personal embarassment for me, and it did a great deal to undermine the legitimacy of our occupation. But be that as it may, Congress is supposed to be overseeing the executive in these matters, and if they are now really going to take up that responsibility, than kudos to them.
The question is, will they take it seriously? Given that this is an election year and the President’s dismal approval ratings mean it behooves Republican candidates to be seen taking him on, politics may work in our favor in this. This is a good opportunity for the Democrats to start making substantive proposals that demonstrate their ability to perform the oversight role for the greater good of the nation, which could redound to their favor in November as well.
“But when he failed to do so, Congress should have screamed bloody murder.”
Unfortunately, the party in charge of Congress and their allies in the press preferred to scream treason when anyone attempted oversight.
I think he’s wrong in the specific case of Abu Ghraib; that was a failure because we put a bad unit with a lousy commander in charge and got predictable results.
So you think that the only reason the CIA had a free hand to torture people in Abu Ghraib was because there was “a bad unit with a lousy commander in charge”? Or do you too subscribe to the notion that the systematic torture committed in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and Bagram Airbase was all the result of a bad unit with a lousy commander at all three prisons?
[Abu Ghraib] was a failure because we put a bad unit with a lousy commander in charge and got predictable results.
Hm. So that sending Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller to “Gitmo-ize” it played no part, even though that was an explicit move to transfer the supposedly Geneva-less practices of Guantanamo to Iraq, which was a war clearly subject to the conventions.
Likewise, Major Carolyn Wood, who brought to Abu G the practices of Bagram, another Geneva-free chamber of horrors, played no role in making Abu Ghraib the fruit of the administration’s lawless policies.
Likewise, we should give no weight to the pressure for information about an insurgency that his boss was publicly denying existed from Donald Rumsfeld’s sidecar, Stephen Cambone (who had been made Deputy Secretary for Intelligence, thereby, in the Pentagon of this regime, boss of everyone who had any connection with intel-gathering.)
No, just bad units and lousy commanders.
Abu Ghraib’s initial claim to infamy was the abuse of prisoners by the guards, not the interrogation techniques. Those abuses were a direct result of lousy commanders all the way (at least) to BG Karpinski. It was to that and that alone I was referring.
not the interrogation techniques
Baloney.
Andrew, you can’t separate interrogation and prisoner treatement. The stage was set for the guard abuses by the request of the interrogators to “soften them up”.
And they got their marching orders from Geoffrey Miller, a man who went to Abu Ghraib fresh off being briefed on the final version of the “Working Group”‘s report on policies for prisoner treatment and interrogation (which were closely related in the administration’s and the interrogators’ minds). That report incorporated the most extreme, out-of-line positions of the OLC, and was actually kept secret from the members of the working group.
No, there’s a straight line from the White House to the cellblocks at Abu Ghraib, where a prisoner was tortured to death by interrogators, and the interrogators ran the guard staff.
I’m glad you’re welcoming Congressional oversight, because the Senate Judiciary Committee will have a chance to exercise it when it holds confirmation hearings for William Haynes, the very man who kept that pro-torture report from the people in whose names it was issued but made sure it was read by the man on his way to whip Abu Ghraib into shape.
Will Sen. Graham continue to be a disgrace to JAGs? Will John Warner demonstrate an actual, rather than rhetorical commitment to the military by denying a promotion to the man who did as much as anyone to rip the guts out of the UCMJ?
Maybe it’s too much to hope that Haynes will sit before the war crimes tribunal he richly deserves, but it doesn’t seem out of line to demand that those who previously rubber stamped these lawless policies deny a promotion to the federal bench to the man whose legal doctrines had to be sneaked past the military and which have been directly rejected by the Supreme Court. (hat tip to Thomas Nephew at Newsrack)
This is a good opportunity for the Democrats to start making substantive proposals that demonstrate their ability to perform the oversight role for the greater good of the nation, which could redound to their favor in November as well.
So Andrew (welcome to ObWings, btw) do you truly believe that a (this)Republican-led Congress is going to seriously assert itself vis-a-vis the Executive it has so reflexively and uncritically supported for the past three sessions? Especially on “War”-related issues?
Given that Karl Rove has stated that the Republicans’ 2006 campaign is intended to hinge on “national security issues” (i.e. chesty, flag-waving jingo for the “base”, and smearing Democrats as wimpy/disloyal/appeasers/peaceniks), it’s hard to envision any Congressional hearings about “oversight” to be anything more than finely-scripted political theater. Designed, I’m sure, to give the impression of Serious Institutional Concern about various Executive-Branch peccadillos; but, at bottom, carefully orchestrated for maximum Republican-boosting at the polls come November. A bit of considered criticism here, a few calls for more humanitarian policies there, and at the end of the day, ringing praise for the Adminstration’s fine job of “protecting America”, and (all-GOP) photo-ops at the White House (Well, maybe not “all-GOP”: Joe Lieberman will be invited too, no doubt).
Given that this is an election year, what possible benefit could House or Senate Republicans derive from even giving any “substantive proposals” from Democrats (even assuming they make any) the time-of-day? Except, of course, to dump on them as “partisan” and/or “divisive”.
I know this all sounds a bit cynical, but after nearly six years of this Administration and its zombie-chorus of Congressional enablers – I will believe in GOP expressions of dedication to “oversight” when they happen.
And if/when they do, I will be sure to graciously apologize.
Nell,
I can still be appalled by the failure of the commanders to put a stop to it, and of the failure of the Army to punish the right people. Well, all the right people. There are two possibilities that I can think of with Abu Ghraib: the commanders knew what was going on, or they didn’t. If they knew and didn’t stop it, they’re as guilty as the soldiers who were performing the acts. If they didn’t know, then they were derelict in their duties. In either case, they should have been prosecuted, for my money.
Abu Ghraib is a sore spot for me, because I view it as a black mark on the Army. That may well cause me to focus too much and miss the larger point. I am proud of my service and the institution of which I am a part, and when someone disgraces that institution, I take it somewhat personally.
yeah, what Jay C said.
Jay,
I’m not optimistic, no. As I noted, I think the only thing that may spur Congress to do their job in this case is that President Bush’s poor approval ratings make taking him on a course of action that shouldn’t hurt them at the polls. It’s a thin reed, I’ll admit.
“… a course of action that shouldn’t hurt them at the polls”
Exactly: and if this Administration (for whom politics is all, and whose maintenance in power is almost entirely dependent on a compliant Congress) can’t find a way to exploit even critical hearings for their own advantage: well, maybe then Karl Rove should go to jail – for the worst crime of all for a political consultant: failure.
Andrew: I take Abu Ghraib personally since it’s a slight on my country. I can’t imagine what it would be like if it had happened at the institution I work for and love. This is one of the many reasons I hate this administration’s torture policies (slightly down the list after ‘effects on detainees’, ‘increased likelihood of our soldiers getting tortured’, ‘demise of our moral standing’, etc., but important nonetheless): that when people do things that harm other people’s utterly admirable loyalties, it makes me very angry. — I love the loyalty many people in the army seem to have for it, and it burns me to see the likes of Bush and Rumsfeld harm it so carelessly.
A very minor comment: Andrew, can you include “by Andrew” in the first line of your posts as the other ObWi posters (largely) attempt to do?
A well written post; thank you.
Andrew: I can still be appalled by the failure of the commanders to put a stop to it, and of the failure of the Army to punish the right people. Well, all the right people.
Absolutely. My father taught at a military college his whole career, was in the Army Reserve for the full term. He taught me that if things don’t come down right from the top, it all goes bad pretty quickly.
In that vein, it’s a bleeding disgrace that Geoffrey Miller was not only not punished in any way, but is in line for a third star. (I could be wrong about that, will look it up. But I remember reading that and just burning.)
No one should be let off the hook just because the fearful little gang in the WH decided to throw the Geneva Conventions out the window — but that’s where the rot started, and it can be awfully hard to arrest that at the field level. As I’m sure you’ve experienced, though I hope in less serious ways.
My mother went through an analogous situation in the second world war. She was in the Women’s Marine Reserve, teaching Marines back from combat to navigate fresh-from-the-factory planes. Quite a few of them didn’t want to be in any classroom, and thought for sure that they didn’t need to pay attention to anything some woman had to teach them, so they didn’t, and they flunked.
Her immediate superiors put a lot of pressure on her to pass them. She went up the ladder protesting, and didn’t get real support until she hit a general who saw the justice of her argument (these planes cost a lot of money, and we’re trying to win a war here; it will hurt our side if they crash or are shot down because the navigator doesn’t know how to get the plane where it’s supposed to go).
William Haynes had a serious hand in creating a situation where the Army, Navy, and Marines would have had to resist orders, or at least the resist the drift of high-level “advice”, to maintain decent treatment of prisoners. He used extremist, out-of-our-tradition legal reasoning to do so. I hope you take that personally enough to let your Senators know how unacceptable that makes him as a federal judge.
Congress is “getting into the game?”
So far from this (Republican-controlled) Congress, all we’ve gotten is words. Sometime pretty words, sometimes angry words, sometimes common-sense words.
But actual actions restricting the Administration? Nothing. Arlen Specter is perhaps the worst offender in this department: he feigns High Dudgeon and then goes on to enable exactly that which he previously condemned.
So I would wait for some actual deeds before I congratulated them on their words.
Arlen Specter?
Well, at least he has earned the enmity of the Redstate crowd and their fellow reds. He’s considered the Lieberman of the Republican Party, though David Brooks finds nothing unusual about that.
In fact, Redstate might like Lieberman better than Specter .. for about 11 seconds. Then Lieberman too would be a traitor, a tax and spender, and a Supreme Court usurper of rights for Redstaters.
The KOS crowd has a long way to go to emulate the discipline of the Republican cadres and their ideological Joan of Arcs in power. I don’t think we can do it. We’re too something … or not enough of something else.
I’m not hopeful. And I think the polls will show Bush bouncing back before November. He’s the perfect embodiment of 51% of the American people. He is simultaneously incapable of changing his mind AND he really doesn’t give a s—.
He’s going to do what he pleases after November anyway. As is Congress. You’ll be watching mass death in Iran, more fun in Iraq, while your Social Security system has its marrow cut out of it.
Expect more tax cuts, too. The deficit is down. And we can’t have that.
Oh, the right-wing blogosphere isn’t always so disciplined. I still cherish the time during Ben Domenech’s downfall when there was a RedState diary titled “Michelle Malkin: Dead to Me”.
KCinDC:
Malkin took on a made man. She’ll get special duty leading up to November as punishment … which involves being even more vicious than usual.
JohnT: how we will be able to tell?
Why is it that I’m not surprised that Abu Ghraib happened when systematic ill treatment is going on in prisons all over the U.S. and was documented by Amnesty International in a report dating from 1998 ?
The problem is not just with the individuals, however high up they may go (which is not to say that I favor impunity, far from it). The problem is that U.S. society for the past 25-30 years now has been seized by a rage to punish and repress, with the inevitable consequence that all who are caught up in this “system” : detainees and detainers at all levels risk being dehumanized, thus behaving in a dehumanized manner. So, to a certain extent Congress is indeed responsible, as it must (ideally) provide ideas and leadership to American society, and not just pander to an electorate.
“The problem is that U.S. society for the past 25-30 years now has been seized by a rage to punish and repress….”
You’re saying that the U.S. prison system was noticeably kindler and gentler in the Sixties, Fifties, and earlier? On what basis?
Mind, I’ve been blogging sporadically about the horror that is our prison system, and justice system, as long as I’ve been blogging. And the post-Rockefeller drug laws have grossly increased the number of inmates to astonishing numbers, and astonishing percentages of dark-skinned people, but I’m unaware of our having a kindler, gentler, incarceration system in decades past (setting aside the conditions of Super-Max, which isn’t really the problem, I think).
“Congress […] must (ideally) provide ideas and leadership to American society, and not just pander to an electorate.”
It’s good to have a dream, he said rather cynically.
When elected officals can joke about things like prison rape, I’d say that the reason our prison system is in such sorry shape. Which probably also helps account for the abuses of prisoners in the war. There seems to be a mentality that says if prisoners wanted to be treated well, they wouldn’t have broken the law. (And that doesn’t even address the issue of people who are wrongly imprisoned.)
Gary,
One very spectacular instance of worsening conditions : the resort to shackling which was not acceptable in the 60’s and 70’s. Another was the Republican controlled Congress’s decision (in 1982 I think, but may be wrong) to suspend federal funding for educational programs in prisons.
This smacks of a social trend to abandon any ideal of rehabilitation in favor of flat out punishment. And this ideological shift is directly responsible for creating the conditions that make Abu Ghraib possible abroad, and in the U.S. too for that matter.
To put specific dates on this phenomenon, in 1972 the Warren Court suspended the death penalty, which was a punishment that was decreasing at the time. The upward trend in executions begins in 1976 and they peak out in 2000 at which point they begin to decline. Since I think it is logical to assume that execution rates are a very good barometer of just how much a society wants to punish and repress, the figures are interesting in terms of what they promise : decline in executions hand in hand with decline of repression ? Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
As you say, Supermax is another question, but any army psychologist, or psychologist at all will tell you that those facilities are extremely sophisticated torture facilities…
Andrew: There are two possibilities that I can think of with Abu Ghraib: the commanders knew what was going on, or they didn’t. If they knew and didn’t stop it, they’re as guilty as the soldiers who were performing the acts.
Three: the commanders knew what was going on, and approved of it, because they knew that there was top-down approval from above them for torturing prisoners.
That the guards were told to abuse prisoners at Abu Ghraib is a disgrace: that the interrogators tortured and murdered prisoners throughout the system – Abu Ghraib, Bagram Airbase, Guantanamo Bay, other gulags without a name – is sufficient evidence to me that the abuse of prisoners by guards was to soften them up for torture by interrogators. Donald Rumsfeld, whom Bush thinks is the best Secretary of Defense the US ever had, said the problem with Abu Ghraib was that the photographs were made public – not that the events in the photographs took place.
Er…option one presumes the commanders approved of it. I suppose we could break it out into two possibilities, that they didn’t like it but chose not to act, or they approved, but in either case my condemnation of the commanders stands.