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Invasion of Iraq: "Following Orders" My Foot!
Posted on Sunday, January 16 @ 15:55:37 UTC
Topic: USA
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 By Linda E. Edwards
The verdict is in, sentence has been pronounced; and court martialed, demoted Private Graner of the United States Army is off to jail for the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq. His defense was that he was "only following orders". He lied. He clearly disobeyed orders. The pictures proved that.
His orders were not to document these types of tortures, clear contraventions of the Geneva Convention. The White House Counsel, Gonzales, had described these articles on the humane treatment of prisoners as mere pieces of old paper, or words to that effect. That did not get Gramer off to jail. It was the use of cell phones that take pictures, pictures they were forbidden to take, that got him jailed.
Without the self-incriminating evidence of a pyramid of naked prisoners, without the sight of one prisoner wearing what must have been a female offficer's panties on his head, without the sight of Private Englund's leading a prisoner on a dog leash, the world, with America in the lead, would have dismissed claims of abuse as so much propaganda, promulgated by the "Enemies of the USA" and egged on by allies of dubious positions on the war, namely France and Germany who refused to join in. It would have been dismissed as a "fundamentalist Muslim" red herring across the trail searching for WMD's and "Democracy in Iraq." But the pictures did not lie. Gramer did when he said he was only following orders. He disobeyed orders by taking forbidden pictures.
The damage control specialists rushed in when the pictures became public, to say that a "few rogue elements" had to be weeded out, so that on the morning after sentencing, Pvt. Gramer's mother blames President Bush for her son's sentencing, saying that the remark about rogue elements doomed him.
I would like to think that whether President Bush had said anything or not, those pictures would have condemned a man, many layers of men, under whose watch this happened. I would like to think that something basic to the American character, to humanity's values as a whole, was outraged by these pictures, and the decent military personnel on that jury at the court martial would have seen this for what it obviously is, the sadistic behavior of someone out of control, drunk with power, and willing to use the conqueror's jackboot on the neck of the conquered because "we are in charge here now. We are the new Romans."
(The quote is not Gramers, but attributed to some white house factotum, drunk on power)
My outrage goes deeper. What kind of woman , a soldier in the US Army, has sex with her partner(Englund and Gramer) in front of naked Muslim prisoners? Were there other US army personnel getting a vicarious thrill from this? Was that her panties on that prisoner's head, or were they special, clean ones, supplied by the personnel who also supplied the dogs for biting naked butts? Was it the one she wore after sex? Was there semen in it? This country has made a big issue about semen before-( dried smears on the little blue dress, saved unwashed for over a year, that threatened to bring down a presidency.) So no one other than the most crass hypocrites will even pretend to be disgusted by this question.
Now, what part of the uniform code of military conduct covers the issue of sex in the presence of prisoners of another belief system, a very conservative one, in the hopes of "softening them up?" To what further levels of disgust would we have slithered if these forbidden pictures had not surfaced to condemn those who were in them? Those who took them?
Many of my students go directly from high school into the army, at eighteen. What kind of people are we preparing to unleash on this society when that war ends? Physical wounds is one thing, psychological wounds could create a bigger crisis, but psychological wounds coupled with degenerate behavior fostered by abuse of the other, could wreck this society far worse that the Vietnam war ever did.
"I was only following orders" was used before, in the defense of that captain, charged about thirty years ago, in the deaths of "146 Vietnamese human beings" at My Lai, a remote village in South East Asia. He got away with. There were no picture phones then. If we could have seen the bodies of the children piled up, if we could have seen the water buffaloes with their hides peeled back, up close, if we could have seen that what was destroyed was a village of women and children and a few old men, perhaps, that captain too, would have gone to jail, and "only following orders" would have been thoroughly disgraced as a defense in abuse of prisoners of war and enemy combatants. It is a defense used twice in justifying the abuse of people who do not look like the majority of Americans.
As it is, he failed to follow orders. He and his team took pictures, documentation, documentation, documentation. Perhaps they thought the tabloids would pay, perhaps they planned to use them in personal memoirs, in a war where troops have embedded newsmen, but only for certain events. No news photographer could have made the world aware of these horrors. The officer who took pictures of the flag-draped coffins of dead soldiers arriving at Dover Air Force base was fired. She disobeyed orders. We do not want to see plane-loads of flag draped coffins.
Soldiers do not always follow orders. One hundred face court-martials for refusing to take a vaccine the army thought they needed. About nineteen refused the order to accompany a convoy in Iraq because it was deemed too dangerous with the poor equipment they had. Others refused to go back, and were willing to inflict wounds on themselves. One disobeyed orders in Korea and was arrested fifty years later. In each case cited above, the soldier was making a decision in his or her own selfish interest, contrary to the direct orders of superiors. The soldier felt threatened by the rule or order and refused to carry it out. Yet "I was only following orders" is used every time someone exceeds the rules of human decency in the treatment of people of another culture.
Perhaps, at the end of this disastrous war, the US Army may need to rewrite it manuals on how to treat prisoners. If this happens, a lead sentence should be: Attention You Idiots, we are going in there to win, not to make enemies by asinine joy-rides into the devious byways of your own psyches. If you are that crazy, stay the hell home, or your team mates will be ordered to frag you. You are not going there to make us look bad. If others are dying for this cause, you must hold up your end. If you cannot do that, deselect during basic training. The army is not for sadists and other deviants".
Then, all the US military personnel will have to do is enforce this rule and find an accurate psychological test to "weed out the rogue elements" during the selection process; but that is hard to do in an unpopular war. Often, you have to take what you can get. A good psychological test would have probably eliminated the My Lai guy, Timothy McVeigh and Graner.
Pvt. Graner will have a long time to contemplate this issue. Meanwhile mothers and fathers of future soldiers have to instill respect for human beings as people, then hopefully, these values will stay after military training.
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