Does President Bush understand the magnitude of the disaster at Abu Ghraib? We’ve lost whatever ability we had to maintain that we were occupying the high ground. We have given our enemies a powerful recruitment poster. We have handed them the rejoinder to those who want to argue on our behalf. Our country is at substantially greater long-term risk today. And our president treats it as something that is personally troubling, a matter of conscience rather than an issue of policy. He continues to talk about how we ended the “torture rooms” in Iraq, as if unaware of how hollow his words sound to the world.

All that is PR and perception, and it counts for an awful lot. But we also have to ask whether we as a nation are responsible for the torture of the prisoners. Of course every American is outraged – aren’t we? – but was it anything more than an isolated incident? And I’m afraid that the answer is yes. Even if it is the only time we’ve beaten prisoners, we are responsible for hiring mercenaries to mask the true cost of the war. Mercenaries are the second-largest force in the Coalition of the Willing and the Paid. Some of them have high security clearances from our government. We are outsourcing our dirty work. In the 21st century, the secret police work have corporate IDs. This is scary as shit.

What can we do about it? I’m not an expert in foreign relations, war, security or diplomacy, so I don’t know. But here are some things that make sense to me as a citizen:

Announce a full investigation. Punish those who are responsible. Treat it as a big deal. Show the world what the rule of law looks like.

Fire the mercenaries. Bring charges against them and the companies they work for. Don’t use mercenaries any more.

Bring the Guantanamo prisoners to trial and release the ones who are found innocent (or who can’t be charged).

Fire Ashcroft for not protecting our Constitution.

Re-think how we can make our country safer. Being a bully is going to get our cities blown up. What can we do in addition to hunting down terrorists? In twenty years, what is our vision of the world?

The use of mercenaries to do our dirty work is a turning point. We should treat it as such and go back…conspicuously and quickly.

MoveOn.org has a petition you can sign calling on our government to support a full investigation of the events.

And here’s a great op-ed by Bruce Schneier, and the usual brilliance from Krugman.

Categories: Uncategorized dw