Sunday, October 19, 2008
S.O.P.
I got to tell you. I just finished watching Errol Morris latest documentary which is called 'Standard Operating Procedure'...
http://www.sonyclassics.com/standardoperatingprocedure/
Now the documentary itself was about the events that transpired over Abu Ghraib...
http://www.salon.com/news/abu_ghraib/2006/03/14/introduction/
And I can still remember the exact week that those photos came out. I specifically remember it because I had friends...good friends whom I have known around the world in countries from Egypt to Pakistan to China...who emailed me, chatted with me and basically almost begged me to tell them that those pictures were fake. None of my friends wanted to believe it. I was and felt humiliated having to apologize to friends who live in some places where the US is not held in such high regard...and we just took our reputation off a cliff. After that there was no going back.
The amazing part is...as the film shows...is that at Abu Ghraib the pictures only started getting taken when someone who was disturbed about what was happening and wanted to record it to protect themselves were the same pictures that got those people who 'softened prisoners' up for interrogation sent to jail. No one at the officer level has ever been charged with a crime or held to even a moderate level of accountability.
After seeing all the photographs and videos of what happened there over the year the pictures were being taken...as someone who was in the military no way in hell you are going to convince me that six enlisted soldiers did that all by themselves. If the commanders thought that the behavior stopped at those six then why did a Colonel working for military intelligence after the scandal broke announce a 'blanket amnesty' for anyone in the command who engaged in torture...provided they personally bring forward or destroy any pictures, film, videos or other incriminating evidence that could embarrass the command...
But it's interesting to me that Errol Morris in his commentary of the film made a very fascinating observation. It had to deal with this picture...
http://x28.xanga.com/5fef00e064535216034699/z168973107.jpg
And Errol Morris had said the following, "After the release of the photos, when I saw this photo in particular (the picture above), that photo came to symbolize the way that the world perceived the foreign policy of the United States under George Bush."
In other words he is saying the way the world sees us is that the United States is the military power (the soldier holding the leash) and they want the world to be submissive. As for how President Bush has acted unilaterally with our foreign policy and his judgments I can't disagree with that idea. But it is also interesting that this year because of the web access around the world the magazine the Economist, which I am a great fan of, decided to roll out a project for a 'global electoral college. In essence the asked the world who would they vote for President in the US if they could. The results so far? Well in Barrack Obama wins he will have a lot of goodwill waiting for him. Except maybe in Cuba where McCain has an edge...
http://www.economist.com/vote2008/
Standard Operating Procedure was fascinating to me as a documentary because you do get to see through the eyes of the soldiers who were there what happened and how they believed why it did. But I also don't know how we could restore the traditional sense of honor to a military where people are told, "if you don't do 'X' (in the case of Abu Ghraib it was torture) Americans will be killed". Would you disobey an order if it was put to you that way and you were in the military? The people who got convicted and a few of them were in the documentary could have easily been you or me. And maybe that is the greatest tragedy and for me the paradox. I don't see them as the criminals they were made out to be. They are not blameless...but they also were not monsters. Now those ghost officers, operatives working behind the shadows and the policymakers who endorsed these policies? That is a quite a different matter entirely...
The only people ever convicted of a crime at Abu Ghraib were convicted almost solely on the photographs that they took of themselves as evidence. For these intelligence agencies that are all faceless how do you demand accountability from them to not act like animals without compromising their mission?
http://www.sonyclassics.com/standardoperatingprocedure/
Now the documentary itself was about the events that transpired over Abu Ghraib...
http://www.salon.com/news/abu_ghraib/2006/03/14/introduction/
And I can still remember the exact week that those photos came out. I specifically remember it because I had friends...good friends whom I have known around the world in countries from Egypt to Pakistan to China...who emailed me, chatted with me and basically almost begged me to tell them that those pictures were fake. None of my friends wanted to believe it. I was and felt humiliated having to apologize to friends who live in some places where the US is not held in such high regard...and we just took our reputation off a cliff. After that there was no going back.
The amazing part is...as the film shows...is that at Abu Ghraib the pictures only started getting taken when someone who was disturbed about what was happening and wanted to record it to protect themselves were the same pictures that got those people who 'softened prisoners' up for interrogation sent to jail. No one at the officer level has ever been charged with a crime or held to even a moderate level of accountability.
After seeing all the photographs and videos of what happened there over the year the pictures were being taken...as someone who was in the military no way in hell you are going to convince me that six enlisted soldiers did that all by themselves. If the commanders thought that the behavior stopped at those six then why did a Colonel working for military intelligence after the scandal broke announce a 'blanket amnesty' for anyone in the command who engaged in torture...provided they personally bring forward or destroy any pictures, film, videos or other incriminating evidence that could embarrass the command...
But it's interesting to me that Errol Morris in his commentary of the film made a very fascinating observation. It had to deal with this picture...
http://x28.xanga.com/5fef00e064535216034699/z168973107.jpg
And Errol Morris had said the following, "After the release of the photos, when I saw this photo in particular (the picture above), that photo came to symbolize the way that the world perceived the foreign policy of the United States under George Bush."
In other words he is saying the way the world sees us is that the United States is the military power (the soldier holding the leash) and they want the world to be submissive. As for how President Bush has acted unilaterally with our foreign policy and his judgments I can't disagree with that idea. But it is also interesting that this year because of the web access around the world the magazine the Economist, which I am a great fan of, decided to roll out a project for a 'global electoral college. In essence the asked the world who would they vote for President in the US if they could. The results so far? Well in Barrack Obama wins he will have a lot of goodwill waiting for him. Except maybe in Cuba where McCain has an edge...
http://www.economist.com/vote2008/
Standard Operating Procedure was fascinating to me as a documentary because you do get to see through the eyes of the soldiers who were there what happened and how they believed why it did. But I also don't know how we could restore the traditional sense of honor to a military where people are told, "if you don't do 'X' (in the case of Abu Ghraib it was torture) Americans will be killed". Would you disobey an order if it was put to you that way and you were in the military? The people who got convicted and a few of them were in the documentary could have easily been you or me. And maybe that is the greatest tragedy and for me the paradox. I don't see them as the criminals they were made out to be. They are not blameless...but they also were not monsters. Now those ghost officers, operatives working behind the shadows and the policymakers who endorsed these policies? That is a quite a different matter entirely...
The only people ever convicted of a crime at Abu Ghraib were convicted almost solely on the photographs that they took of themselves as evidence. For these intelligence agencies that are all faceless how do you demand accountability from them to not act like animals without compromising their mission?
