Ed Philpot

The recent reports of abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers and civilian contractors are troubling on several levels. First and foremost, supervised or not, the type of behavior exhibited towards the prisoners cannot be justified, explained or in any way minimized. On a human to human level it is no less than appalling. There is simply no excuse for humiliating or harming captives; it violates common decency and fundamental morality. To say that it happened because of a lack of supervision, instruction or a clear set of rules and guidelines for behavior simply does not wash. It was wrong, and the individuals who did it were wrong.

In addition to being wrong, the actions of these people were stupid. Photographing their crimes was colossally stupid. The world wide publication of photos of Americans humiliating Iraqis will fuel the flames of anti-American sentiment worldwide, and will undo any good that might be being done by our occupying army or its civilian counterpart on the ground. It will also serve as justification for the mistreatment of American prisoners, and American citizens worldwide.

Anti-American elements now have graphic illustrations to back up their claims of mistreatment of Arabs, and of Muslims by Americans. The individuals who perpetrated these crimes, and the system that allowed this behavior to occur have placed future American POWs in grave danger of suffering the same abuse, or worse. What’s worse, we can no longer meet such mistreatment with any sense of indignation as we have apparently set the standard.

To say to the world that it was only a small group of individuals who were responsible for these acts is not accurate, because it is the system in place in Iraq that has facilitated these abuses. In his report on prisoner abuse, Major General Antonio Taguba made several telling statements. He said that the soldiers operating the prison had not been instructed on how to behave according to the Geneva Convention, and he said that the Army had no jurisdiction over civilian perpetrators of crimes against Iraqis.

I don’t think education in the Geneva Convention is required to know that what was done to those prisoners was wrong, but I do think that some level of instruction on the treatment of captives should have been high on the list of things to do. If there was any sort of plan at all for how to administer a conquered Iraq, the treatment of criminals, captives and POWs should have been in the manual. Apparently, it was not.

The fact that the Army has no jurisdiction over civilian contractors working in conjunction with their military counterparts in prisons and in other jobs where they have contact with Iraqi civilians or prisoners is extremely problematic. It also highlights the need for better civil administration of Iraq. Right now there is no body of law, other than international law, governing the conduct of civilian workers who answer only to their civilian bosses. Some of these civilians are performing what are traditionally military or intelligence-related functions, such as prisoner interrogations.

The lack of preparation, organization and supervision of the post-conquest administration of Iraq highlights the fact that we don’t have a plan, we don’t have things under control, and we are in over our heads. You just can’t justify what’s going on in Iraq any other way. To say it’s just a few bad apples takes away the greater responsibility for systemic failure. The mistreatment of prisoners is only a symptom.

The State Department, not the Department of Defense, should be in charge in Iraq. Soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines are trained to fight, not to police, administer and reconstruct. They are being asked, at every level, to perform functions for which they are not trained, and for which they are ill-equipped. What is worse, they are being asked to perform their duties in an increasingly hostile environment. That is not to say that the soldiers are not needed; they are. What is also needed is a clear political strategy to facilitate the creation of a popular civilian administration capable of holding onto power after the soldiers leave.

Ahmed Chalabi and his friends are not the answer. Chalabi has begun to entrench himself in a model reminiscent of U.S. puppet governments of the past. The Shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein come to mind. There is evidence of corruption on the part of Chalabi and his family, a consolidation of valuable and useful information under his control and of the installation of his family members in sensitive positions within the government.

Here again, the U.S. model supports the kind of behavior exhibited by Chalabi and others in Iraq. Our Vice President has direct links to civilan contractors who are operating under very lucrative no-bid contracts in the Iraqi theatre, protected by U.S. troops and equipment, all at the expense of U.S. taxpayers. Last year, I mused about whether or not a U.S.-style representative democracy could flourish in Iraq. Chalabi seems posed to give it a go.

The President seeks to assure us that the situation in Iraq is under control. It clearly is not. Buoyed by what they see as a victory in Fallujah, insurgent forces are pressing America to gain concessions in other Iraqi cities like those resulting in the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Fallujah. It appears that our government does not know what to do with Iraq, so its solution is to throw more troops at it.

We need to ask for help. We need to remove ourselves from this situation in a safe, orderly and appropriate manner, with some assistance from states that still have credibility in Iraq and in the rest of the Middle East. We can’t occupy Iraq forever, and we can’t expect that a puppet state will survive: the publicly supported resistance is too strong.

The problem is that our President is too disconnected from the big-picture reality of what is going on in the mid-east. His government is too hyper-focused on its plan to oust Saddam and to create a “democratic” Iraq to realize that there is no fertile ground for our system to take root there. Our system of government is not the one-size-fits-all panacea. The history, culture and tradition of what we now call Iraq is simply not going to turn into a nation created in our image.