You can read an excellent summary of material I have been posting and writing about as well as some more statistical and political data here. Even Glenn Reynolds is now forced to concede that the accumulation of evidence is “non-hysterical”, (i.e. written by a heterosexual male), and “well-documented” (unlike, I suppose, the review-essay I wrote a while back after poring through all the official government reports). One critical fact the author omits is, to my mind, one of the more telling: there have been no reports of prisoner mistreatment anywhere in the war-zone in detention facilities that were not geared toward interrogation. Doesn’t that suggest a strong link between the abuses and new interrogation standards? Another really excellent review is found in the current New Republic by Noah Feldman (alas, subscriber-only). Feldman points out that critics like me do not have a huge smoking gun linking all the abuse to decisions by the White House to relax standards of detainee treatment. The reason?
Plenty of material certainly remains classified, and it will remain so for the foreseeable future, as perhaps some of it should in light of the continuing terrorist threat. We cannot at present answer responsibly the question of the exact consequences of the memoranda by the administration’s lawyers.
But we can parse what we know and the empirical evidence points to widespread abuse and torture of detainees in every field of operation. The patterns of abuse were very similar – geared toward humiliation of Muslims through nakedness, use of dogs, sexual shame, etc. – and they crop up everywhere. Abu Ghraib was “Gitmoized” and techniques approved for the CIA in cases of al Qaeda big-shots “migrated” throughout the system, as the government reports delicately put it. The memos lowering U.S. moral standards were part of the Iraq war-plan, even though no observers would dispute that the Iraq war was covered by the Geneva Conventions in every respect. The evidence of abuse – far greater than any infractions in domestic U.S. jails – is now simply indisputable. It is telling, it seems to me, that the administration’s essential defense now is that all the abuse was a result of military insubordination, i.e. that it was not in control of its own soldiers. So you get to pick between a deliberate legal choice of abuse and incompetence on an epic scale. But if it was incompetence, why have none of the architects been fired? In fact, they’ve been rewarded.
THE QUESTION OF RECIPROCITY: Feldman’s deeper argument – and the superb essay is well worth re-reading – is that the administration made a simple decision after 9/11 to change for ever the way the U.S. wages war. Since the enemy was now beneath civilized standards, the argument was that we should be prepared to match them in depravity, if “military necessity” required it. The Jacksonian logic was one of reciprocity. But the point of the Geneva Conventions was far more than reciprocity. It was to lay out clear, universal moral standards for civilized countries to pursue; and, like all such international agreements, gained force and power by the cumulation of adherence. For the most powerful actor on the world stage to formally renounce or marginalize the code of Geneva might have made short term sense in pursuing the evil men of al Qaeda (although the purported benefits have yet to be shown). But in the medium and long term, all it has done is to soil the U.S.’s reputation as a beacon for human rights and undermined the war itself, especially its broader pro-democracy aspects. It has also made the cumulative force of Geneva far weaker. The next time a U.S. soldier is captured and tortured, we will have very little credibility in complaining. Why could we not have said: “This is a war. We will fight it as we always have done – with vigor but humaneness toward prisoners. Just because they are scum doesn’t mean we have to copy them. We will provide them with our own military documentation and treat them like Geneva inmates. We will only release them when bin Laden declares an unconditional surrender.” If we’d done that, we would have maintained the vital structure of Geneva, we would have avoided the blights of Guantanamo and Bagram and Tikrit and Basra and Abu Ghraib. We would have far more moral force in our legitimate, vital campaign for democratization in the Middle East and beyond. Now it is too late. You only get one shot at maintaining Geneva. And we blew it. Reversing course now would subject too many soldiers and commanders and CIA interrogators and administrtoion officials to legal perils. So Bush will hang in there. It remains one very important reason why we should have fired him last November.
The Dish 