QandO

May 08, 2004

Aberration or the regular workings of the system
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Lawrence Kaplan, senior editor for The New Republic, writes about the battle between the left and right over whether the activities in Abu Ghraib are the aberrant acts of a few individuals, or the logical result of "the system".

Despite themselves, the Bush and Kerry campaigns stumbled into a profound philosophical debate this week, the implications of which are likely to shackle the next president and the one after that. Even as the two campaigns busied themselves trading accusations over whether their respective bus tires hailed from Canada or Detroit, the candidates--and their ideological counterparts--tackled one of the thorniest questions of our time: Does the responsibility for wartime atrocities lie with their immediate perpetrators or does it lie within a "system" that permits and even encourages such depredations?

The debate has never been settled--not by the mass graves the Germans left behind in Russia, not by the razed villages of Vietnam, and not by the prison at Abu Ghraib. But it never goes away, and in response to the disgusting photos of Americans humiliating Iraqi prisoners, the familiar contours have emerged once more. On the one side, we have President Bush, who vows the abuses "represent the actions of a few people" who will be punished accordingly. Conservative editorial writers at The Washington Times and elsewhere have chimed in, painting the catastrophe as an aberration rather than the norm. The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, The Washington Post's Phillip Kennicott, and other left-leaning writers have pegged responsibility for the deeds on American policy itself. The most confused response comes, however, from John Kerry. On the one hand, the candidate faults "some American troops [who] under some circumstance have engaged in behavior that ... is absolutely unacceptable." On the other, he assures that "if I were president, we'd have a very different set of activities going on in Iraq today"--the none-too-subtle implication being that the abuses amount to an authentic expression of American policy...

Echoing as it does the cliché that Vietnam was an "atrocity-producing situation," Kerry's suggestion that Abu Ghraib was more policy than accident implies that the guards were not so much victimizers as victims who deserve a Nuremberg defense. But the notion, popularized then as now by the likes of Kerry and Hersh, is risible. By all accounts, what happened at Abu Ghraib did not reflect official policy--indeed, the source of the photographs was a military investigation into violations of official policy. But even in the unlikely event that the photos reflect practices sanctioned, as Kerry puts it, "up the chain of command," the candidate's blame-the-mission-more-than-the-perpetrators stance relieves the guilty of the burden they so clearly bear, and, to the extent it identifies any moral agency at all, locates it in a supposed policy that--whether measured by the Uniform Code of Military Justice or the Old Testament--it is every soldier's duty to disobey. None of this is to say that any senior administration official aware of the abuses should be spared swift and severe punishment. On the contrary, accountability runs up the chain of command. But that hardly exempts the abusers themselves.

Kaplan's position is that--while wrongdoing at any point in the chain of command needs to be punished--blaming the system, in effect, relieves the perpetrators of at least a measure of their guilt. It transfers some responsibility from the individual perpetrator to a faceless--yet evil--"system", of which the perpetrator was a helpless collaborator.

One of the things that has so shocked me about what happened at Abu Ghraib, is that it is so at variance with my experience during a decade of active service.

I was a USAF Security Policeman¹ and an Air Base Ground Defense (ABGD) specialist. For those who don't know, the Air Force doesn't have any formal infantry units. Yet their agreement with the Army is that the Air Force will provide their own ground troops for the defense of Air Bases in combat zones². The Air Force's method of handling this when I was on active duty was to identify a percentage of SPs, and send them to ABGD School (essentially the USAF version of the Army's Advanced Infantry Training) at Camp Bullis, Texas for several weeks. Additionally, the SP force is split into two career fields: Security, which is responsible for the physical security of USAF weapons systems and bases, and Law Enforcement, which is responsible for normal police duties. I had the unusual fortune to work in both career fields, spending about half of my time in Law Enforcement.

In any event, every day I was on active duty, we were constantly exhorted about Air Force Standards. And not in a casual way, but an uncompromising way. We were regularly trained about our responsibility both to obey lawful orders, and to refuse unlawful ones. Every day we were inspected to ensure our compliance with USAF standards of appearance. Our NCOs and officers were rigorous in enforcing standards. Our flight chief (equivalent to a Platoon Sergeant) came to see us and spend time with us at least once every day. Our squadron-level senior NCOs and Officers visited us regularly. Our squadron training NCOs regularly pulled unscheduled exercises to correct deficiencies in procedures. Our squadron quality control NCOs regularly came out to pull unscheduled QC examinations on individuals, and if a patrolman or entry controller or desk sergeant failed, they were immediately decertified to hold those positions.

My entire experience is so totally at odds with the slovenly buffoonery exposed in the Taguba Report, to which I referred earlier, that it is scarcely conceivable.

It appears that General Karpinsky didn't even perform the basic tasks one expects of a commander. For instance, every military unit is required to compile a list of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) that define the appropriate actions to almost any conceivable situation. In addition, each unit maintains a Mission Essential Task List (METL), that identifies the responsibilities of every duty position, from the commander down to the lowest-ranking enlisted member. Beyond that, each individual SP is issued with a set of Special Security Instructions (SSIs) for his post every day upon assuming that post. Moreover, every unit I served with issued each person a Squadron Security Police handbook that outlined their responsibilities, and the standards they were expected to maintain.

These requirements are so basic, and so universal, that Taguba's statement that they didn't even exist are completely mystifying. The lack of them might not raise any eyebrows if we were talking about some partially trained Third World force. Or, frankly, even a European Army, who tend to be a bit more lax about such things.

Their lack in an American unit is so far outside my years of experience, it just leaves me slack-jawed with stupefaction. My entire experience is of a system that demanded adherence to high standards, demanded unquestioned personal integrity, and, also provided swift, and relatively severe punishments for infractions.

But, even if the Karpinsky and her whole chain of command were a collection of slackers, freaks and weasels, each individual, even in the absence of specific guidance, knows their general responsibilities from day one.

Each SP, on the very first day of the academy, is taught the three General Orders that each SP is required to memorize and repeat upon demand for the remainder of their career:

1. I will take charge of my post and protect all personnel and property for which I am assigned until properly relieved.

3. I will sound the alarm in case of disorder or emergency.

And even beyond that, there is the Security Police Creed, which identifies the ethical responsibilities of the SP:

I am a Security Policeman. I hold allegiance to my country, devotion to duty, and personal integrity above all. I wear my badge of authority with dignity and restraint, and promote by example; high standards of conduct, appearance, courtesy, and performance. I seek no favors because of my position. I perform my duties in a fair, courteous, and impartial manner irrespective of a persons color, race, religion, national origin or sex. I strive to merit the respect of my fellow airman and all those with whom I come in contact with.

For my entire career, my experience with the system was that it was built around those principles. There was never any question in my mind that I would refuse an illegal order from any individual, of any rank. Indeed, on several occasions, I refused direct orders from officers, when they violated my instructions. (That isn't an unusual experience for military policemen, since an officer's first response upon being caught doing something naughty is to order the MP or SP to look the other way. Heh. Nice try.)

Each individual service member knows his general ethical and legal obligations. Yes, the chain of command should have provided proper training. The troops should have had METLs and SOPs. SSIs for each post should have been available.

But even in the absence of them, and even if they were completely unsupported by the entire chain of command, each individual knew his responsibility. Each individual is responsible for committing acts they they knew were violations of Army standards. No matter how lackadaisical their chain of command one, each person involved knew their responsibilities. They each knew what Army standards were. And each of them intentionally violated those standards knowingly and of their own volition.

They don't now get to fall back on, "I was following orders." We didn't put of with that crap from the Nazis, even when we knew it was true. I'm not willing now to hear it from American soldiers.

The problem with Abu Ghraib wasn't the system. The problem was a chain of command, from BG Karpinsky on down, who didn't want to fulfill the requirements of the system. The system is designed specifically to prevent this kind of thing. I know the system, and I know that praqctically everything described at Abu Ghraib is a direct violation of the system's procedures and principles.

When we see it, my experience tells me that it is the result of officers and NCOs who have ignored the system for their own convenience. And I expect, that in this case, as is appropriate, they'll pay the full measure for doing so.
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¹ The Army has Military Police, or MPs. The Air Force has Security Police, or SPs.

² The Air Force/Army agreement is a horrifically complicated document that covers all aspects of the split between air and ground units. For example, it tasks the USAF with close air support, and prohibits the army from operating fixed-wing combat aircraft, which is why the helicopter figures so prominently in the Army's order of battle. These kinds of agreements are necessary to restrain interservice rivalry, which has a long and bitter history. As one Army officer on the War Department staff quipped in WWII, "The opponents are the Germans and Japanese. The enemy is the Navy."

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