As world power go, US is not pretty begnign

The biggest problem with your article is that its basic premise is flawed.

You completely rely on the "torture" issue in Iraq as the basis for your argument.  Abuse of POWs happens in every war. Regardless of where, why, who, it always happens. The question is a matter of how much, not whether there is torture.  I wouldn't be surprised if real torture (i.e. physical torture) occurred in Iraq, by Americans, that we don't know about.  What we do know, however, is that this "torture" was essentially pre-interrogation intimidation. The POWs weren't physically tortured in any conventional sense. But even if they were, trying to use a single incident as the basis for why the US isn't benign is not reasonable.

I think we can all agree that war is bad. But I also think that you really should look into history a little more.  For example, the fact that you use Vietnam as an example of the US doing a "Bad" thing is telling. Do you know what the Vietnam war was about? Do you know what happened in Vietnam and the region after the United States left? Do you not think the people of a given terriitory have the right to decide for themselves who would rule them?

In Iraq, for example, I would be perfectly happy to let the Iraqi people hold a referendum after June 30 (date of the turnover) and if they want the US out, the US should then leave. But it should be up to the people of the country to decide that.

And despite your flawed thesis, you didn't even prove your point. All you did was say the USA is bad as others. You also, again, have a serious blind spot for history. Germany has been in a bit more than a "colonisalist" war.  Russia has done a bit more than just crack down on Tibet.  China has done a bit more than just crack down on Tibet.  And in none of those cases could they be considered "liberating" those countries.  The people in Iraq have overwhelmingly said they are glad Saddam is gone. We can debate all day whether Iraq has been liberated or not (I think it's pretty obvious that the US was a liberating power - unless you're going to argue that the US is planning to say annex Iraq).

Any leading world power is going to be like a bull in a china shop. The qeustion is whether that power is relatively well behaved or not. And relatively speaking, since that is the only comparison we can do, the US has been pretty benign. Nothing you've written says differently.

Abuse of POWs happens in every war.

It may be the case, but why accept it? Is it because it is common? If that's the case, that agrument seems weak to me.

The good thing about totalitarian regimes is that they keep things like this out of the public view. Nazis and Stalinists for instance, were very particular about what people were able to see, and I'm sure they kept their torture procedures under tight security and scrutiny. When I see these photos, my disgust is not in the humiliation (this is a fact of war), but in the way the soldiers were posing for pictures. That is absolutely stupid and intolerable. These pictures should never have existed, much less been leaked to the public. You'd think that the U.S. military would have instructed its soldiers in the proper techniques of dominating a population while being professional enough to avoid this type of damage.

I disagree with Draginol. This is not about 'how much' torture there is. It's about the limited number of photos that were released, and the unlimited potential they pose to come back and bite us in the ass. Now every terrorist can keep a copy of one of these in his wallet before he blows up a bus full of Americans, just so he doesn't forget his cause. Smart fucking move, Pentagon. Maybe if Bush had waited a little longer before rushing into war, spent a few months on some much needed basic training for the soldiers, and actually prepared a decent strategy, we could have succeeded.

First off, abuse of POW's happens in every war.....regardless of the sides...it happens....although with respect to what happened in Iraq...they are the exception...not the rule....and as for both the arab and world media in general and their biased outrage over it....please....where were they when the former regime was in power and torture was the rule..not the exception....nowhere......and linking Iraq in anyway to Vietnam is not only idiotic but uninformed

There are always sick individuals who will torture pow's in any war.

The important question is what the administration does to ensure the fair treatment of pows and minimise such abuses.

In Iraq the administration failed.

They failed to provide any training to soldiers on how to handle prisoners
They failed to provide details of the rights of prisoners to soldiers
They failed to answer soldiers uestions for MONTHS on how to treat the prisoners
They failed to stop the torture when it was first highlighted 4 months ago
They failed to stop the torture when UN and EU missions highlighted it 3 months ago
They failed to stop the torture after a report was completed 2 months ago
They failed to supervise the soldiers

This is the problem with Iraq. Not that some soldiers committed torture, but that the environment to allow such torture continued and was not changed. And to clarify, physical torture DID occur in both Iraq and Afganistan!

Paul.

First off, abuse of POW's happens in every war.....regardless of the sides...it happens....although with respect to what happened in Iraq...they are the exception...not the rule....and as for both the arab and world media in general and their biased outrage over it....please....where were they when the former regime was in power and torture was the rule..not the exception....nowhere......and linking Iraq in anyway to Vietnam is not only idiotic but uninformed

Yeah but the problem is, America wnet in there because it is supposed to be BETTER, to be above these things. This is without a doubt the most damaging thing that could happen, as it completely destroys the halo America tries to picture over it's troops. This proves to the Arab world, already bestowed with a largely negative perception of America, what they had been thinking all along.

Brad:

As far as i know, there have been 25 dead prisoners in Iraq jail. So there might have been some physical torture at least strong enough to kill some of them..
But i agree with you, the pictures exhibited are outrageous but not torture as it maximum. But can you quantify torture? When does it start to be too much? Under what level it is still acceptable? Of course the answer is correlated to who is torturing. Democracy and Dictatorship aren't tie top the same principle. I could understand people in guerrilla warfare doing torture in a way to get information. I wouldn't agree with it, but I can get why.

I agree with Saint Ying, the picture show the humiliation of prisoner, and really stupid soldier who demonstrate brilliantly that you don't need any training to enjoy sadism. Again I can understand, it is human, but I will totally reprove it.

Now tell me, aren't soldier suppose to be supervised,?Does this fantastic machine is let freewheeling? or is there any decent people in control? In your article you were highlighting the action of American media compare to foreign media. What about the reaction of the leadership of the US? Didn't they know it? What was their reaction?

I was outraged by your series of articles because their only purpose was to diminish the responsibility of US leader into that great failure. All this story is just showing their lack of respect to the very principle they are suppose to defend. And consequently, you, Mr Wardell, are supporting unlawful, immoral and incompetent behavior because the responsible administration is of the same border as you.

There are time were belonging to the left or the right is the important matter. But sometime this border is not relevant anymore specially when confronted to unacceptable behavior coming from the oldest democracy of the world.

My article wasn't too much about the superpower defense ( we are big, we are overall good so you should be happy that we are proving we are human by doing mistake) that you have been brilliantly describing but about the fact that you were finding circumstances were torture were more or less acceptable. I know that my title was confusing, I didn't really mean that. Sorry.

Again: Unless you can demonstrate that prisoners who come into US custody are disproportionately in danger versus falling into the hands of any other major power then it is a futile argument.

Using the incidents in Iraq do not prove one way or the otehr whether the US is relatively benign or not.

If you want to start an article saying that the abuse of Iraqi POWs is bad then go right ahead, we're all in agreement on that.

For be honest, I don't understand the whole point of comapring it. As afar as I know only US put Iraqi people in custody. Other could do worst or not, actually they didn't get in a situation to do so in first place.

As i repeat, your are using this rethoric to decriminalise the whole torture thing.

The British have Iraqi's in custody too and have their own abusing problems.

Again: If you have enough POWs with enough people, statistically, some are going to be abused.

Now, my 2 cents on the issue as succinct as possible: I think the US has totally blown it in Iraq. I think the whole situation has been mishandled right from the start from where Bremer get appointed. 

What I don't like is the lack of perspective being shown on this issue - we're only weeks since innocent Americans were brtually murdered by being set on fire, had their bodies dragged through the streets and then hung from a bridge. You have to keep that backdrop in mind. If the world showed even a remotely equal amount of outcry at the misdeeds of others then I think we could have a more reasonable discussion.  But the people shrieking about this POW incident in Iraq are the same people who keep mum about the atrocities commited against Americans. 

I mean really, it's pretty ironic for say the Egyptian papers to cry about US treatment of some POWs (and just a handful here) when its secret police commits all kinds of horrific atrocities against its own people. Same in Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, etc.  I mean hell, ever heard the term "wouldn't want to get stuck in a Turkish prison"?  These are all Iraq's neighbors. Relatively speaking, this is nothing. 

It is STILL terrible because the US needs to be behaving at a higher standard and especially because it has made itself out as this personification of liberty, justice, and human rights. I think the US will have a hard time recovering from this incident in that area.  But again, relatively speaking, the US is very benign and that is the whole thing.

OK speaking jsut on the Superpwer status, as you were pointing before superpower tend to be like an elephant in a porcelaine shop, there will be damage soon or later.

However, it is not possible not to compare US with anything else because you wpould agreee that there is hardly any equivalent now. A problem I would raise regarding the fact that it is now the only one, there is so far no alternative, no counter weight. You could argue that it is a better "empire" than all the previous empire, it is still one. With a lot of good and bad. It might be benign from your point of view, it still have heavy consequences all round the world. Because of his fantastic hegemony, US doesn't have to follow any rules. It create its own for its best interest. I'm sure that you believe in competition. Where is competition now?

There is always competition, not necessarily equal competition.

But, for instance, what contending super power would you prefer to be in the US's position? Your options are:

A) China

B)Russia

Maybe in 50 years you'll have more choices (India for instance).

So which of those options would you prefer to super-size it. Do you believe their international behavior would be better than the US's?  Do you think that had the USSR won the cold war we would be better off?

This reminds me of what they say about democracy (well, actually, the US version of it): "It isn't a perfect system, but it's the best system we've got." If there was no "empire", I have a feeling that another nation would eventually rise up and become one. With the current candidates we have now, I guess my point is that the US isn't perfect, but it's the best we've got.

I tend to compare the US's actions against European countries actions. The biggest difference here is accountability. The US is accountable to no one. European countries are accountable to the EU justice system. This means that if British soldiers commit crimes in Iraq (I say if as there are serious questions about the authenticity of the pictures), the British government is responsible for punishing them and ensuring that adequate changes are made. Should they fail in this then the European system kicks in. As a last resort the European court of justice could take action. The individual soldiers can even be tried in the ICC. The bottom line is that people are sure that accountability is there and everyone from the soldiers responsibile to their commanding officers will have to justify their actions.

The US does not have these fail safes. If the US military finds a US soldier murdered an Iraqi they may just decide to discharge them. That has recently happened! The soldier who murdered one of the Iraqi prisoners was just discharged! No extra criminal proceedings! No justice seen to be done. From an international point of view the US is corrupt. It's soldiers are part of a club that protects them from the consequences of their actions.

This is NOT benign. This is corruption.

Paul.

It seems that we are in a dialogue of deaf.

- I reckon that my title is badly chosed, as i want to react more agaionst Brad than what he was saying
- US is not the worst, that's for sure, but it isn't at its best currently.
- My real point in this blog was to highlight the manner of right wing and Brad in particular to diminish the responsibility of the administration and the army. Fortunatly in europ, we can't hear fine people saying that soldier need to release the pressure and have good time by doing a bit of torture.

US is benevolent, and that's why antiamericanism has never been so high. I guess that's because the remaining of the world is pretty bad..

Paul - again it's about relativity here. 

When Europe was the center of the world, the world got countless wars and the slaughter of hundreds of millions of innecents in the course of just 30 years.

When the Soviet Union was in power it exterminated tens of millions of its own people and supressed all of Eastern Europe.

China, in the past 40 years, has killed off 20+ million of its own people, invaded Tibet, suppressed its own citizens and made noises about conquering Taiwan.

There's no equivalent in the US. The best you'll get is Vietnam where a couple million Vietnamese died in the fighting but who was the aggressor there? It's, at best, arguable. And once the north conquered the south, vastly more millions died from the various purges and such (the killing fields, boat people, etc. come to mind).

Anti-Americans have to go around knit-picking little actions. I'm sorry but RELATIVELY speaking, the abuse of some POWs is nothing compared to the alternatives. And look at the treatment US soldiers get when they're captured. where's the outrage? You never hear it.

The question isn't whether the US is benign comjpared to some mythical perfect benevolent power. The question is whether the US is benign relative to the alternatives. History has provided ample evidence of the actions of alternatives.

 

I don't think anybody here (well I can't speak for everybody) is trying to make the abuse look better than it is, but people are trying to put it into perspective, that it's happened before, it'll happen again, and it's happened by even soldiers not American. The thing is, some people are acting as if this is the worst atrocity ever and even saying it is the end of America. Trivializing it is bad, as it'd be so shameful if those responsible weren't punished for their actions, but so is making more of it than it really is. Also, as Brad keeps mentioning, it's also happened to Americans, but without any outrage against the Iraqis responsible and the Iraqis who supported the acts. I think some even acted as if it was just. Sure, one might expect such actions to occur to Americans, but that doesn't mean one has to condone it or remain silent about it.

You're way off here, Brad. This has absolutely nothing to do with relativity. Why do you bring up China and Tibet? The Soviet Union? You can dig up any old regime that has committed war crimes and done worse things than the US, but it doesn't really matter. You try to make this incident look insignificant by making irrelevant comparisons.

Ethically, this is despicable. End of story.

Corio: It's not my fault you don't understand what this discussion is about.

This article is in response to my article that explicitly points out that while the United States isn't perfect, it is relatively benign as world powers go.

What IS ethically despicable is people trying to paint the entire US and its decades of good deeds in a bad light because a dozen or so soldiers abused some POWs.

Comparisons matter because here, in the REAL world, we have to deal with things as they are, not as we really wish they might be in some fantasy land.

Oops, posted in the wrong article. Sorry 'bout that. Kudos for managing to insult me in three different ways in such a short response, though.

Brad,
you are well aware that I don't like using history to justify the now. Comparing the modern US against European imperialism, Stalinist Russia and Maoist China is pointless. So is harping on about Vietnam and attrocities there (killing fields was Cambodia by the way). We are in the 21st century and we are talking about current perceived US interaction. The US does not give a benign appearance to the world.

How many times must I also stress that there WAS outrage of the treatment of American prisoners. The abhorrent way 4 military contrators were killed and treated in Falluja was condemned across the globe. It was condemned in Iraq by the moderate Iraqis. Convenient of you to forget that and use a 'everyone is against us' mentality. Everyone is not against the US. Most people condemned mistreatment fo Americans and likewise condemned mistreatment of Iraqi pows.

America's problem at the moment is not that a few soldiers mistreated pows, but that it was systematic and the government did not stop it a year ago when the red cross first reported it. If the US could have turnwed around when the pictures were first released and said, 'This occurred last year, the soldiers responsible are in prison, the supervisors have bneen disciplined, the international red cross has inspected the prison many times since and no torture is going on. It was a once off' then they wouldn't be in the mess they are now in. The fact is they can't do that because they didn't care about the torture. They care now, but probably only because of the negative publicity.

That lack of care about the torture is a prime eample of WHY the US is not benign. Just look at how easily Americans justified and were willing to accept Guantanemo bay. You don't care about the means only the result, so torturing a few prisoners to get them to talk is considered acceptable.

Paul.

Solitair - if you're not willing to speak in a relative sense then the discussion is meaningless.

How does one define what a benign power is if one cannot reference other world power examples?

Americans ARE outraged by the abuse of POWs in Iraq.  I'm outraged by it. Sickened. I think those responsible should be tried and punished to the severest extents allowed.

Brad,
I am happy with relative comparisons, just not with comparisons across history. Morals have changed very dramatically over the past 100 years. What was acceptable in WW2 times is often not acceptable today. What was acceptable in Vietnam times is often not acceptable today. Indeed many of the human right requirements of todays conflicts stem from the lessons learnt in these earlier periods. The same is true of empires. What was acceptable during the British empire is not acceptable today what was acceptable in Russia during Stalin's time is not acceptable today.

This refusal to accept comparisons across history does indeed make comparisons difficult as there is no other super power. What's harder still is that the modern world has far higher expectations of what benign is than even 20 years ago. What we can still compare though are the individual segments of it's policies. We can compare it's human right record against current human right treaties. We can compare it's foreign policy against current international treaties and current norm of international behaviour.

So to conclude I believe the US can be compared relative to other countries. It's foreign aid spending, willingness to assist others, human rights record, respect for international treaties can all be compared against other countries or blocks of countries. These are the criteria against which people now measure benign.

Paul.