My War Is Bigger Than Your War
As I listen to Teddy Kennedy challenge Gonzales’ “I was out of the loop” defense on the torture memos, it probably pays to remember what those memos actually said. Here’s a good article by the authors of the new book “The Torture Papers.”
The chronology of the memoranda also demonstrates the increasing rationalization and strained analysis as the objectives grew more aggressive and the position more indefensible–in effect, rationalizing progressively more serious conduct to defend the initial decisions and objectives, to the point where, by the time the first images of Abu Ghraib emerged in public, the government’s slide into its moral morass, as reflected in the series of memos published in this volume, was akin to a criminal covering up a parking violation by incrementally more serious conduct culminating in murder.
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Nor does any claim of a “new paradigm” provide any excuse, or even a viable explanation. The contention, set forth with great emphasis in these memoranda, that al Qaeda, as a fanatic, violent, and capable international organization, represented some unprecedented enemy justifying abandonment of our principles is simply not borne out by historical comparison. The Nazi party’s dominance of the Third Reich is not distinguishable in practical terms from al Qaeda’s influence on the Taliban government as described in these memos.
Al Qaeda’s record of destruction, September 11th notwithstanding–and as a New Yorker who lived, and still lives, in the shadow of the Twin Towers, which cast a long shadow over lower Manhattan even in their absence, I am fully cognizant of the impact of that day–pales before the death machine assembled and operated by the Nazis. Yet we managed to eradicate Nazism as a significant threat without wholesale repudiation of the law of war, or a categorical departure from international norms, even though National Socialism, with its fascist cousins, was certainly a violent and dangerous international movement–even with a vibrant chapter here in the United States.
No kidding. The idea that al Qaeda is some unique form of evil that requires we cast out all norms of civilization is simply mind boggling (Indeed, I get the feeling that it illustrates nothing more than ego run amuck — some kind of competitiveness with the Greatest Generation.)
The biggest threat we face is from nuclear weapons in the wrong hands. But we need to remember that this is not a new problem. Nuclear weapons have been in the hands of America’s mortal enemies for more than 50 years and while they may not have been as nihilistic as these terrorists, they were certainly as prone to accident and misjudgment as any group of humans. The stakes were unimaginable. These were not “suitcase bombs” or “dirty bombs”, as awful as those may be, they were ICBM’s aimed at every American city and if they were launched, the result was likely to be annihilation of the planet. That’s the threat we lived with for almost 50 years. We can handle this terrorist threat without completely losing our values, our wits or our moral authority.
But, the administration is listening to ideologues like Robert J. Delahunty and John C. Yoo, who should be cast into the farthest reaches of academia or think tankery where their hysterical ideas can cause no harm to real people:
When the Senate considers Alberto R. Gonzales’ nomination for attorney general this week, his critics will repeat the accusation that he opened the door to the abuse of Al Qaeda, Afghan and Iraqi prisoners. As Justice Department attorneys in January 2002, we wrote the memos advising that the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war did not apply to the war against Al Qaeda, and that the Taliban lost POW privileges by violating the laws of war. Later that month, Gonzales similarly advised (and President Bush ordered) that terrorists and fighters captured in Afghanistan receive humane treatment, but not legal status as POWs.
“Human rights” advocates have resorted to hyperbole and distortion to attack the administration’s policy. One writer on this page even went so far as to compare it to Nazi atrocities. Such absurd claims betray the real weaknesses in the position taken by Gonzales’ critics. They obscure a basic and immediate question facing the United States: how to adapt to the decline of nation-states as the primary enemy in war.
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Shortly after World War II, nations ratified the Geneva Convention in order to mitigate the cruelty and horror of wars between the large mechanized armies that had laid waste to Europe. Now, the main challenges to peace do not arise from the threat of conflict between large national armies, but from terrorist organizations and rogue nations.
To believe that the Geneva Convention should apply jot-and-tittle to such enemies reminds us of the first generals of the Civil War, who thought that the niceties that were ideals of Napoleonic warfare could be applied to battles fought by massive armies, armed with ever more advanced weapons and aided by civilian-run mass-production factories and industry. War changes, and the laws of war must change with them.
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Unfortunately, multinational terrorist groups have joined nations on the stage of war. They operate without regard to borders and observe no distinction between combatants and civilians. Our weapons for controlling hostile states don’t work well against decentralized networks of suicidal operatives, with no citizens or borders to defend.
There is another name that fits these terrorists a little bit better than an “unprecedented, non-nation state decentralized threat that operates without regard to borders and observes no distinction between combatants and civilians.” They’re called “criminals.” These international criminals do not represent a “nation” but what might be called a gang or a syndicate or a “family.” They can be brought to heel the same way criminal gangs can always be brought to heel. One of the ways that you do it is by enlisting the help of other nations in the manhunts with cooperative police and international quasi military investigations.
The fact is that this isn’t a “war” by any reasonable definition. However, the powers that be have deemed it so, in which case they should not be able to change the rules of warfare to accomodate what isn’t a war in the first place. If it’s a war, then it’s a war, which means that quaint little treaties like the GC cannot just be tossed at will. If it isn’t a war then we should follow the criminal model and use the laws and rules that have been established to to deal with this. This is a bullshit flim-flam that should have been nipped in the bud at the very begining, but because the leadership and opinion makers of this country (including you Andy — and you too Tom) decided that this was a good opportunity wallow in their own self righteous bloodlust instead of using their heads, we are stuck in this ridiculous position where we have elevated a bunch of criminal thugs to the status of warrior kings — exactly where they want to be.
And we are further digging ourselves into a hole by endorsing the use of police interrogation methods that experts throughout the world know don’t work. And because we have denied any use of due process there is no corrective mechanism for the mistakes that are being made by the soldiers in far off lands who, with limited understanding of the culture are “capturing” people who have little or no connection to the criminal enterprise, coercing confessions and holding them indefinitely on that evidence. I just don’t know how we could do this any more ineptly.
But Woo and Delahunty aren’t just talking about terrorists when they say the Geneva Conventions are no longer applicable. They go further and claim that “psuedo-states” are also exempt.
The problem of terrorist groups has been compounded by the emergence of pseudo-states. Pseudo-states often have neither the will nor the means to obey the Geneva Convention. Somalia and Afghanistan were arguably pseudo-states; Iraq under Saddam Hussein was another.
Pseudo-states control areas and populations subject to personal, clan or tribal rule. A leader supported by a small clique (like Hussein and his associates from Tikrit) or a tribal faction (like the Pashtuns in Afghanistan) rule. Political institutions are weak or nonexistent. Loyalties depend on personal relationships with tribal chiefs, sheiks or warlords, rather than allegiance to the nation.
Quasi-political bodies such as the Iraqi Baathist Party, the Taliban or even the Saudi royal family exercise government power. Defeat of the “national” leader or clique typically results in the complete disintegration of the regime.
Well, that definition of psuedo state says that any established non-democratic state is no longer a real state. Iraq, you see, was a psuedo state, so when we invaded it wasn’t a typical war of aggression or choice, we were just toppling a “national” leader, which isn’t the same thing at all. (I hate to bring this up, but Hitler claimed that sovereign borders weren’t sovereign for a bunch of bullshit reasons, too. That’s why the whole blanket condemnation of wars of aggression thing came up in the first place. You say Czechoslovakia, I say Sudetenland.)
Multinational terrorist groups and pseudo-states pose a deep problem for treaty-based warfare. Terrorists thrive on killing civilians and flouting conventional rules of war. Leaders like Hussein and the Taliban’s Mullah Mohammed Omar ignore the fates of their captured soldiers. They have nothing riding on the humane treatment of American prisoners.
A treaty like the Geneva Convention makes perfect sense when it binds genuine nations that can reciprocate humane treatment of prisoners. Its existence and its benefits even argue for the kind of nation-building that uses U.S. troops and other kinds of pressures in places like Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq; more nation-states make all of us safer. But the Geneva Convention makes little sense when applied to a terrorist group or a pseudo-state. If we must fight these kinds of enemies, we must create a new set of rules.
Please. The Bataan death march, the holocaust, the fire-bombing of Dresden and Tokyo and the dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were fresh memories when the Geneva Conventions were signed. The people who conceived them had intimate and personal knowledge of the kind of inhumane actions against millions of prisoners, civilians and soldiers the horrors of war can bring. Please don’t say that attacking civilians is unprecedented. It’s just ridiculous. Ill treatment of prisoners? Jesus. Inhumanity wasn’t invented on 9/11 for christs sake.
The reason for the conventions was to establish written civilized norms. There were no illusions about the “binding” of a future Hitler or a future bin Laden, but they sure as hell thought it would bind the United States of America! The idea that 9/11 is something so unique and the hatred of our enemies so threatening that we must discard all the rules that we created in the wake of the most horrifying conflagration in human history is intellectual bankruptcy of the highest order.
Nobody disputes that it was a terrible day or that we had to respond. But this wholesale redefinition of what constitutes torture and what constitutes a nation state in order to accomodate an allegedly unprecedented threat appears more and more like a self-serving excuse to broaden the executive’s power. Re-writing the rules of warfare as necessary to fight this unique threat can then be seen as an extension of that power grab. All the subsequent hemming and hawing is a cover-up of that essential extra-constitutional action.
There are people who have the kind of temperament that is drawn to authoritarian modes of governance. People like John Woo and George W. Bush and Alberto Gonzales. These are people who saw 9/11 as a reason to do what they always do when given the opportunity — make their own rules.
The terrorism that people like these are arguing requires a wholesale rejection of all the norms and rules that have brought us to this point in human history is another of the phony crises, like WMD in Iraq and Social Security solvency that they have perpetuated since George W. Bush took office. Al Qaeda is a serious threat. But it is not so serious that WWI and WWII pale in comparison or that we face an unprecedented existential threat. It’s absurd to put it in those terms and it’s a misunderstanding of the problem on such a vast scale that we are actively making the threat worse instead of better.
We are being led by a man who has been convinced that “his” war is bigger than the big one and anything goes. Yet, the single most searing image of our warrior leadership is the president with a bullhorn leading a cheer. I think that says it all.