Abu Ghraib Still Haunting America

by DemFromCT

It's the image we project in the Middle east. Tom Friedman can blather each week all he wishes about how wonderful Iraqi democracy is... without context, everything is wonderful. But Iraq is a mess, and Abu Ghraib is the face of America. Gonzales, who condoned torture, is AG. Rumsfeld and Sanchez and the other higher-ups are still there. So who gets to be the scapegoat?

President Bush approved yesterday an order demoting Army Reserve Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, the only general to be punished in connection with investigations into detainee abuse at U.S. military prisons.

Karpinski's rank was reduced to colonel, and she was issued a reprimand and relieved of her command. But the Army's inspector general recommended the sanctions based on a broad charge of dereliction of duty, as well as on a charge of shoplifting, essentially clearing her of responsibility for the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison. As commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade, Karpinski oversaw more than a dozen prison facilities in Iraq in 2003.

And what of the others?

Pentagon officials have cited Karpinski's punishment as evidence that the military has taken the Abu Ghraib abuse seriously. But the inspector general's report does not link Karpinski's deficiencies to the abuse and, as reported last week, clears four other top officers who were in charge of the war in Iraq. Those officers were Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, then the top U.S. commander in Iraq; his deputy, Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowski; Maj. Gen. Barbara G. Fast, Sanchez's top intelligence officer; and Col. Marc Warren, Sanchez's top military lawyer.

We get all exorcised [sic] about the nuclear option and Bolton (and rightly so), but this is the abuse of power that counts most. And everywhere else in the world is acutely aware of what Abu Ghraib means.

Until we do something about it,   until we take a stand against torture and punish the ones truly responsible, we cannot expect to move forward in the eyes of the world. We can reinforce that POV by appointing Bolton to the UN and Negroponte to anything. But there will be a reckoning, if not now than with a new Administration. A policy of condoning torture is not sustainable.

Comments

[DemFromCT]

JRowan over at Daily Kos has some excellent links today here including this from the New England Journal of Medicine:

Is there anything we can do to avoid this course? The answer is a qualified yes that depends on how everyone, from world leaders to local elected officials, decides to respond. We need bold and timely leadership at the highest levels of the governments in the developed world; these governments must recognize the economic, security, and health threats posed by the next influenza pandemic and invest accordingly. The resources needed must be considered in the light of the eventual costs of failing to invest in such an effort. The loss of human life even in a mild pandemic will be devastating, and the cost of a world economy in shambles for several years can only be imagined.

[Meteor Blades]

I hate to base a comment on a typo, but this time it's irresistible. Often I feel America needs to be "exorcised" when it comes to foreign policy, not just the unabashedly imperialist foreign policy of the NeoImps, but much of what has been done since Germany surrendered 60 years ago this week. From Truman's ignoring of Ho Chi Minh's pleas for help in maintaining a newly independent Vietnam in the face of its French reconquerors (who had collaborated with the Japanese), to the murderous policies of several administrations in Africa, the Caribbean, Central America and South America; from the inexcusable employment of Nazi war criminals as part of Cold War intelligence, to the backing of dictators in Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines and Indonesia, which, in the latter case, condoned mass slaughter.

Today we justifiably challenge and condemn the NeoImps for the hubris and sophistry they display in support of American global primacy at any cost, including the callous violation of conventions their predecessors helped draft. But current U.S. foreign policy did not spring full-blown from the forehead of Douglas Feith and Richard Perle and all their ilk. It runs on a continnum that harkens back as far as Manifest Destiny, not a straight line, to be sure, and with many moments to make proud those of us who cherish American ideals, but plenty of others to make us ashamed and outraged.

[DemFromCT]

Heh. Freudian slip? I'll leave the error to make your comment crystal clear.

[Mike S]

MB is right. And the sad thing is that we have never learned any lessons from ignoring the horror's and/or our support of the worst humanity has to offer. This shit almost always comes back to bite us in the ass. We still ally ourselves with people who are on a fast track to hell because of whatever our current short term goals are. Too many of our enemies today were our friends yesterday.

BTW I hope your family is doing well, Meteor Blades. I think of you all often.

[Crab Nebula]

It's also haunting the rest of the world. Did anyone see the NY Times piece on Botero's sketches of Abu Ghraib? It has definitely has penetrated the global consciousness once you have serious artists tackling it. It's not quite 'Guernica', but it's not far off.

Now this sorry episode will be preserved for history. That's a tragedy for any of us who is American.

[Crab Nebula]

Should read, "....who *are* Americans. Been readin too much of our President on the internets.