Part 4 of a series on the McCain amendment

Overview

Part 4 examines the image of the United States in the context of torture and cruel and inhuman treatment of prisoners. Here is a summary: prisoner abuse damages our image, and a failure to support a proposed law which would ban such conduct makes us look even worse. Moreover, that damage to our image hinders greatly our efforts in Iraq and in fighting terrorism.

And through it all, the Bush administration has shown once again that it does not care what people around the world think about the U.S. Instead, the Bush administration's overriding concern is its image here in the U.S. I probably will save this topic for another time, but just keep in mind that this is part of the Bush S.O.P.

Once again, the Bush administration misses the point.

As will be explained in more detail in Part 5, the Bush administration based its opposition to the McCain amendment in part on the argument that 1) we need to be able to use "enhanced techniques" to fight the war on terror, and 2) use of these techinques has produced useful information about possible terrorist plots. On the surface, this sounds like a good argument. However, another look reveals it to be flawed at best, and in any event, the Bush administration has missed the point--again.

So what is the point? Well, the lead paragraph from Terry Neal's November 15, 2005, column "A Dangerous Veto Threat" does a good job of describing it:

It would be an understatement to say the war in Iraq has done little to bolster the perception of the United States around the world. But the administration's opposition to a provision that would ban the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody abroad risks sending the image of this country over another cliff--as well as losing yet another opportunity to win the hearts and minds of people in the Middle East.

Ah yes, "hearts and minds." There's another catchphrase from the Bush administration. It is just a shame that they have done little to win hearts and minds (in ways that might have reduced all the problems that exist today), and it is a further shame that the Bush administration's opposition to the McCain amendment showed further disdain for "hearts and minds." As McCain wrote in the November 21, 2005, issue of Newsweek:

To prevail in this war we need more than victories on the battlefield. This is a war of ideas, a struggle to advance freedom in the face of terror in places where oppressive rule has bred the malevolence that creates terrorists. Prisoner abuses exact a terrible toll on us in this war of ideas. They inevitably become public, and when they do they threaten our moral standing, and expose us to false but widely disseminated charges that democracies are no more inherently idealistic and moral than other regimes. This is an existential fight, to be sure. If they could, Islamic extremists who resort to terror would destroy us utterly. But to defeat them we must prevail in our defense of American political values as well. The mistreatment of prisoners greatly injures that effort.

(emphasis added). On November 13, 2005, McCain appeared on CBS's "Face the Nation," and described this matter in another way:

[L]iterally everybody who's been involved in combat, in conflict and understands that--and others who understand that we've got two wars going on--one, a military one in Iraq and then we've got a war for public opinion, for the hearts and minds of all the people in the world. It's obvious that bin Laden and others are engaged in their ideological struggle. And if we are viewed as a country that engages in torture and abuse of human rights, then I think that as one of my colleagues said that any possible information that we might be able to gain is far counterbalanced by [the] effect of public opinion. After the abuses at Abu Ghraib, public opinion about the United States in the Arab world and throughout the world plummeted.

(emphasis added). For those of you tired of McCain, I offer the following comments from a Congressional aide who, according to a November 15, 2005, Washington Post report, was close to discussions between the White House and Congress regarding the McCain amendment: "Unfortunately, we're in a situation now, post-Abu Ghraib, where restoring our image abroad is just as important as winning victories on the battlefield." And now the last quote in this section, from Terry Neal's column:

"This is supposed to be a war for hearts and minds, and a war to show the world that the we have standards," said Katherine Newell Bierman, counterterrorism counsel for the U.S. Program of Human Rights Watch. "Otherwise, we have the same means-to-an-ends approach, and it is not who we are as the American people.

(emphasis added). Indeed, that is not "who we are" in terms of the ideals and principles we profess to follow as a nation, but others will evaluate us by what we do, not by what we merely say. And actively working to prevent the enactment of a law prohibiting torture is not living by our supposed ideals and principles. Instead, the Bush administration focused on trying to find ways to get those principles. This is in part why the Bushies "missed the point." I will elaborate on this in the next two sections, but for now I will also say that further evidence of missing the point is contained in Part 3, which explains that torture and "enhanced techniques" do not produce reliable information.

So why should we be concerned about our image?

We should be concerned about our image because 1) it affects how the rest of the world thinks of us, and 2) that has a direct impact on what we try to accomplish in the world. This should be obvious, but in the event it is not so apparent to all, here are some explanations. As Katherine Newell Bierman asked, "How many recruiting posters for al Qaeda have a picture of what was happened at Abu Ghraib? And what does it do to America's ability to effectively counter a long-term threat?" And how should we counter the damage caused by Abu Ghraib? Well, it seems to me that taking steps to show by our actions that we do not condone and will no longer engage in such conduct is essential. The Bush administration's opposition to the McCain amendment sent just the opposite message to the world.

Terry Neal's column contains a more detailed explanation from Deborah Pearlstein, director of the U.S. Law and Security Program at Human Rights First, a nonprofit international human rights organization.

"The Pentagon itself recognizes itself that it has a huge problem" related to treatment of U.S.-held prisoners abroad[.] "That's why you see so many retired military voices coming to the fore. This conduct, whether you think it's deliberate at worst, or at the least, civilian leaders failing to monitor what others are doing, this has been incredibly damaging to U.S. security interests.

"It's putting our troops oversees at even greater risk than they are already. It's badly damaged relations with allies. And it's made it harder to get cooperation on counterterrorism agreements because people are concerned that we're going to mistreat prisoners. And it has clearly inflamed our enemies or people who otherwise wouldn't be our enemies overseas."

(emphasis added). Pearlstein went on to talk about harm to a specific program designed to win hearts and minds.

Pearlstein coauthored a comprehensive report on this subject, called "Behind the Wire: Ending Secret Detentions." Among other things, the report details the extensive effort of the U.S. government to win hearts and minds in the Middle East. The report says, for instance, that the State Department and U.S. Board of Broadcasters, which oversees non-military international broadcasting, is spending some $42 million on pro-U.S. radio and television in the region. But those efforts are undermined by reports of torture and prisoner mistreatment at U.S. facilities around the world.

"The United States' ability to deploy these tools effectively depends critically on visible demonstration that the United States' deeds match its words in supporting democracy and human rights," Pearlstein and colleague Priti Patel wrote in the wrote. "In Indonesia, a spokesman for the Foreign Affairs Ministry stated: 'The U.S. government does not have the moral authority to assess or act as a judge of other countries, including Indonesia, on human rights, especially after the abuse scandal at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.'"

(emphasis added).

In addition to discussing a specific program, Pearlstein also mentioned danger to our troops. She has not been alone in this concern. USA Today reported on November 9, 2005, that Rep. Jack Murtha wrote a letter to members of the House which in part said that the absence of a clear policy against torture "endangers U.S. servicemembers who might be captured." In his statement before the Senate, Mc Cain said that his amendment was needed because "mistreatment of our prisoners endangers U.S. troops who might be captured by the enemy--if not in this war, then in the next." How ironic is it that the administration that says it supports our troops took a position that could have exposed them to harsher treatment?

More on why we should be concerned about our image

In order to win the war on terror and prevail in Iraq, we need help. Assuming that it would even be possible to ultimately win the war on terror through force, we cannot, alone, win that fight. See, the vast bulk of our military is in Iraq, and that is not going to change anytime soon (despite what Rumskull recently said about force reductions). We simply do not have the physical and logistical capability to militarily fight the war on terror by ourselves. And as far as Iraq goes, we have had the vast bulk of our military there for almost three years, and there still is a need for them to be there. From a purely physical and logistical element, we could use some help from other countries.

Since we cannot, by ourselves, win the war on terror through military force, we have to rely on other means. Can we do it with only our money? No, we cannot. We cannot even pay for the relief efforts for the recent hurricanes. We have record deficits, and we are lowering taxes. Also, we have to pay for things such as the new Medicare prescription benefit and Social Security. Clearly, we cannot simply buy--by ourselves--victory in the war on terror. By the way, that holds true for Iraq as well. (How 'bout all that oil revenue paying for everything? There's yet another delusional pre-war claim by the Bush administration, but that needs a separate discussion.)

Can we win simply by our own diplomatic efforts? Suffice it to say that most of the rest of the world views the U.S. as arrogant, uncooperative, hypocritical, and selfish. Moreover, that view has a basis in fact. And while many likely would argue that such an image is inaccurate and unjustified, it is beyond dispute that that is indeed our image around most of the world. And as long as we have that image, our efforts at diplomacy face many obstacles.

Also, that image will not change if we simply say it is wrong. Our actions will be the determining factor, and on this issue, the Bush administration's actions did not match it words (more on this in Part 5).

The bottom line is that we need help from other countries. However, other countries are not likely to want to help us if they have a bad image of us. And we can't try to make them help us. That is why our image is so important. We have to live up to and live by what we claim our values to be. The Bush administration's opposition to proposed legislation which would prohibit the use of torture and inhuman treatment went against what we claim to be our values and principles. The fact that the Bush administration apparently failed to 1) recognize this fact, 2) understand that's it's opposition to the McCain amendment hurt our image, and 3) understand that we need to have a positive image in the world shows an extreme lack of sense.