In response to the uproar over the inflammatory evidence of abuse in
American-run prisons in Iraq, Rumsfield stated (as reported by the New
York Times):
Watch how a democracy deals with wrongdoing,” Mr. Rumsfeld said in what
amounted to a plea to the world. “We will strive to do our best, as
imperfect as it may be,” he said after declaring that he felt “the
heartbreak of acknowledging the evil in our midst.”
Most of all, Rumsfeld, and even Bush (albeit indirectly), apologized for what took place in Abu Ghraib.
But is an apology really enough? I recall an observation about human nature that a scholor of bloodfeuds made once made in class: The only believable apology is one that hurts the apologizer. Words are cheap. Blood is precious.
Regardless of what the Bush administration knew, when it knew it,
and the wisdom of its decisions, the only way American can truly
apologize for the Abu Ghraib disgrace is to make sure heads roll.
(Nowadays we call it “accountability.”)
Weren’t at least six soldiers charged back in February, before any of the photos were released? So that’s reassuring within the context of a horrid situation. But of course by “accountability” you probably mean higher-ups, which I agree with. However, I don’t think it should be done artificially. For instance, the calls for Rumsfield to resign, or be fired or impeached, because of this seem to me disingenuous (is there spellcheck on this thing?) if they’re based on him being automatically to blame for this. Maybe he did establish some rule or rules or approach that led to this — but that should be discovered first. It’s not so dissimilar from police abuse scandals, and how one should deal with the police chiefs in that situation. Of course, there could be other reasons for removal that are legitimate, like morale etc., but that’s a separate argument. It also makes me wonder what goes on in our domestic prisons (and whatever does, what worse goes on in many other “civilized” countries). Some of the outrage from Arab governments is a bit hypocritical though, no? What goes on in those countries daily for interrogation and control of citizens we couldn’t fathom… I guess outsiders perpetrating it against them rather than them perpetrating it against themselves does make a difference but we might make this a broader discussion.
On the “spontaneity” of the apology, absolutely. One journalist interviewed by NPR described the Iraqi tribal code of honor (which resembles what I know of the Icelandic Vikings’ I cited in reference to bloodfeuds) and how a face-to-face apology might suffice, but a million dollars thrown from afar will probably be rejected. (Prof. Miller, I think, observed how the appearance of spontaneity boosts the feeling of sincerity). That same journalist also claimed that a majority of the attacks against American (and I guess coalition) soldiers are being done for purposes of tribal revenge for some specific injury (e.g. “collateral damage”), not a generalized, nationalistic or anti-foreign motivation. I’d like to see some evidence of this, but if true, it would indicate that many of the tragedies we are suffering could have been prevented through more “sensitive” training of the occupying forces. (I wished I had taped the interview, but the journalist stated something to the effect that the current uprising coincides with the changing of the guard, and that the new division in charge of Falluja (?) abandoned the previous division’s practice of settling with families of civilian casualities).
My more realist take on Abu Ghraib is that these kinds of things are pretty much an inevitable consequence of war, and should really have been calculated into both the case for/against war as well as the war plans themselves, just as you would calculate casualties. These things can and will happen… the leadership question arises over how well you planned to handle them. This administration seemed bent on calculating only the best-case scenarios (our reception, length of stay, cost of operations, prospects for democracy). As BusinessWeek pointed out when grading Bush’s performance by B-School standards, “It requires no prejudice, however, to spot the contrast between the disorganization in postwar Iraq and the precision of the invasion itself — or the principles that Harvard taught MBAs during Bush’s 1973-75 stay and still holds today.” The administration’s contingency planning for situations like Abu Ghraib seems to be to just tough it out.