Thank you Doug for your thoughtful comments.

I agree with all you said. We find that the current administration has been ambivalent about its attitude toward the Geneva conventions for how to treat prisoners and detainees.

How tragic to learn that we, too, have once again broken these rules of common human decency, as we did in wars past. And the fundamentalist, religious right thinking that infects this presidency is frightening. Rumsfeld's resignation is not going to do it - this administration has got to go!

We have long thought that the choice of running mate with Kerry should be John Edwards - but we are beginning to see the wisdom of someone like Wesley Clarke - because fixing this dismal mess will take all of the talent which we can bring to bear.

I recognize that you may not welcome such a partisan sounding political answer - but we are very alarmed and indeed fearful for the future of our country if a change at the top does not occur in November.

Janet Hovis

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Thanks, Doug, for your excellent summary of the salient points.

I, too, have preached about the revelations from Abu Ghraib. My text this Sunday was the lectionary text Acts 11:1-18. The stress was on our human intellectual and emotional constructs of "us" and "them" and the threat of "them" who are "not like us."

Several readers may have noted the article by John Schwartz in the May 6th edition of the New York Times: "Simulated Prison in '71 Showed a Fine Line Between 'Normal' and 'Monster." Schwartz describes a psychological experiment conducted by Dr. Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University back in 1971 - a study I remember well and which formed the background to my sermon. (I knew Dr. Zimbardo when he was a prof. at NYU before going to Stanford.)

It's worth looking up the article, which describes a mock experiment that divided 24 college students into "jailers" and "prisoners". Within days, the "jailers" replicated the same behavior EXACTLY as the American soldiers at Abu Ghraib. The experiment had to be terminated. Dr. Zimbardo is quoted as saying about the Stanford experiment and Iraq: "It's not that we put bad apples in a good barrel. We put good apples in a bad barrel. The barrel corrupts anything that it touches."

My sermonic points were these:

1. In scripture, God has always expressed concern for the treatment of the "other" in your midst (the stranger and sojourner);

2. In scripture, God has always declared that it is not what you profess but what you do that is important - particularly with respect to the powerless when you have power;

3. None of us is any less susceptible to abandoning our principles when under threat than the apostle Peter - who was not only a denier but an avoider of the visual consequences (after a brief glimpse of the gruesome horrors of the torture of Christ, not at the crucifixion site).

Barbara A. Renton

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Doug,

As disgusting and repugnant as the events disclosed from Abu Ghraib prison have been, there is a much larger issue that needs to be on the table for discussion. The abusive treatment of prisoners is not just somebody's idea of bad joke, done under cover of darkness, but part of an overall strategy of "aggressive interrogation" that has had clear U.S. government and military sanction. One apparent reason these activities often took place at night is because they were promoted, in part, as a particularly odious form of sleep deprivation--a way to insure prisoners had a "bad night." The larger question is whether such sleep deprivation, along with stress positioning, hooding, and other forms of "softening up" prisoners, amounts to anything less than torture. The aim is to break the will, to coerce human beings into betraying confidences, renouncing loyalties, divulging "useful" information, and thereby implicating other human beings and putting their lives at risk. If it were "only" a matter of being sexually abused and humiliated!

To be sure, such "aggressive interrogation" is done in the name of trying to root out terrorists, stop terrorist and other subversive activity, and save the lives of people who may be put at risk by such activity. But does such an end justify any necessary means? Does the goal of interrogation, however it is conducted, justify the means of destroying any human being's own sense of character, identity, and integrity? Or do we think that the enemy, ipso facto, has no character or integrity worthy of our respect?

I am disgusted but neither shocked nor surprised at what has been going on at Abu Ghraib prison. Perhaps that is because I've never thought that it was possible to engage in the kind of interrogation that the U.S. admits it undertakes without engaging in acts of abuse and torture. Any treatment sufficient to force a human being to betray others in order to be relieved of its torments strikes me as torture. The larger ethical question that needs discussion is whether driving human beings to the breaking point, by whatever means, can ever be justified.

The Bush administration also seems to think that the war on terrorism trumps due process and other legal protections of individuals suspected of crimes against the state. We must resist all the current abuses of state power for which war (against presumed evil) has become the implicit and often explicit justification. As I see it, the sexual abuse and humiliation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib is, unfortunately, not the worst of these.

Byron Bangert
Bloomington, IN

P.S. Have you ever wondered what has been happening to Saddam Hussein, Tariq Aziz, or any of the other captives who were pictured on the deck of cards before "mission accomplished?

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Doug King,

Thank you for the two communications. Here is a bit I wrote in a weekly family letter on Saturday:

What a week of crises one after another! Bagdad prison photos inflaming Arabs and shocking the world; unimaginable damage to the reputation of our nation which thinks of ourselves as a beacon of hope to the Arab world; President Bush explaining to a correspondent from two Arab language newspapers that the offenders do not represent American values, then, after meeting with King Abdullah of Jordan, apologizing to Arab people; Secretary Rumsfeld, being questioned by Congress, offering to resign "if it would do any good."

It is often said that these offenders are not "us," but rather outside the "true America." It would be more realistic to say that they represent the dark side of our history and character, in which we all have a part.

Lynchings, gang warfare, violent land grabbing are all part of "us." The World Council of Churches is in the midst of a "Decade Against Violence," and has selected the United States as the focus for 2004. The line between "good" and "evil" runs right through each society and through each one of us. The US military personnel and contract workers in the prison scandal are "us." It is appropriate for the head of state to apologize on behalf of us all to the world, and let me add, at the same time to be more modest about claims to national virtue and the unqualified right of the innocent victim to unilateral action.

John Hamlin,
Waverly, Ohio

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Within minutes of posting our reflections on the atrocities (or if you prefer, "abusive behavior by a few bad apples") we received this note from a prison chaplain in Australia. He makes the interesting point that even George W. Bush may one day "have to give account before the Judge of all the earth." We trust he is beyond the reach of our U.S. Attorney General.

From Bruce, prison chaplain Australia.

The debate over who has the mantle to bring true peace and justice in this world will I believe, only be solved when Jesus Christ Himself returns to rule, because His Kingdom is not of this world, but in the hearts of those obey Him. I agree that U.S.A. politics has in many ways brought great discredit on the true Christian church because U.S.A. claims to be a Christian nation, but to uphold any other teaching as truth that denies the truth that Jesus is the only Way to the only true God , is making a bad situation worse. I support the seperation of church and state because history proves that a state run religion is the worst form of despotism, be it christian muslim jewish hindu buddist communist or any other belief system. Religion is mans way of forcing other people to conform to what sinfull men believe. To follow Jesus Christ is to live what He taught in the Holy Bible, and only those who's hearts are open to truth will obey Him. This is why we see professed christians doing unchristian things. I for one pray that president Bush will see this, because he like us all who claim to follow Jesus Christ give a good or bad witness to the Christian Way. The western world has had the Bible for many years and therefore are more accountable to God. It is good that we can sometimes agree to disagree without hatred and trying to destroy each other, and in my mind this proves our true belief that one day we will have to give account before the Judge of all the earth. Hoping this may help someone. Bruce.

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[Posted 5-13-04]

5/11/2004

Hi, Doug, I appreciated your analysis. I was thinking much the same thing yesterday. How blithely we ignore international law. I was truly appalled when Bush told Rumsfeld yesterday he was doing a "superb job." I don't think that these incidents are anomalies. I think they are probably standard procedure now. I'm sure they're also going on at Guantanamo. We have become a lawless nation.

Suzan Ireland

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5/11/2004

Dear DK on Abu Ghraib:

It's good to be an American. I am very thankful for the fine men and women serving us and the world in Iraq today. I am thankful for an Army that liberated Iraq from a dictatorial regime that regularly slaughtered and tortured hundreds of thousands of its own people, A regime in which "rapist" was a job description. I am grateful that the billions being used by that regime to build over thirty palaces for Saddam and his perverted progeny are not being used to open thousands of schools and hospitals across Iraq, to bring the benefits of electrification and purification of water and sewage treatment to millions of Iraqis. I thank God that I live in a country where men and women are willing to go to a place as dangerous as Iraq is to make these things happen. I am thankful for the dedicated leadership in the armed forces that has, through training and foresight, created the world's finest and most capable military instrument. I thank God for moral leadership in the White House; for President George W. Bush who is not afraid to humble himself before the Lord and to ask for God's guidance in his daily life. Finally, although there is so much for which to be thankful, I am in awe-struck thanksgiving for the men and women who have given their lives in the Iraqi and Afghan theaters of World War IV.

I am also thankful that we are disgusted by the inexcusable actions of those men and women who disgraced themselves, their uniforms and the nation they are sworn to serve by their actions in Abu Ghraib prison. The moral outrage is justifiable. It reminds us that we are human and that for all our faults, we know there is a right and a wrong. The contrast with those Iraqis who danced in the streets while the charred remains of American contractors were being dragged to their display rendezvous--the girders of a bridge--is amazing. The contrast with those throngs who danced in the streets of many Arab capitals as the Twin Towers fell is likewise amazing.

Certainly good hearted people are enraged by the photographs coming from Abu Ghraib. But where is the rage at the Koreans being killed or worked to death in the North Korean gulag? Where is the righteous indignation when Muslims kill black African Christians in Sudan or when Africans kill Africans in Rwanda? Where is the rage when Palestinian terrorist Yasir Arafat sends young men, even boys and young women, to blow themselves up at bus stops in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv? Where was the rage at the murderous acts of Pol Pot in Cambodia?

Like it or not we are engaged in a war of worldviews. One worldview holds that a loving God created man in his own image, but that man wanting to become like God, fell. That God loves us so much he became man to provide a perfect sacrifice for our sins. That God of love wants us to share the good news of salvation with the world. This worldview, rising from the Judeo-Christian tradition, under girds a Western culture that has given mankind notions of equality under law and human dignity.

Opposing us are Islamic fanatics like Osama bin Laden, Yasir Arafat and other criminals whose hatred of the West is implacable. Their goal is to first humiliate then subjugate the United States and the rest of the West. Eventually they plan to destroy us.

Face it. Abu Ghraib is "a story d' jour" driven by the politically-obsessed press and an American left desperate to find something that resembles My Lai with which to tarnish the image of America. Believe it or not, most Americans are not only sickened by the photos from Abu Ghraib, we are sick of look of looking at them. When the major networks get that picture, the picture will change. Furthermore, this story feeds on the evidence turned up by the Army during an investigation that began in January. It's a blip in human events. Get over it. We are a great country full of good people and we are at war with an evil foe.

Very Respectfully,

Earl H. Tilford, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor of History
Grove City College
Grove City, PA

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Jonathan Justice comments (in part responding to the letter from Dr. Earl Tilford, just above) on the broader dimensions of the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib. He sees the US military effort as seriously inadequate for the huge task (including cultural and religious conflict) assigned to them.

Note sent on 5/15/2004, and posted here on 5-17-04

As bad as the soldiers' behavior at Abu Ghraib may turn out to be, the bottom line is that it is one more measure of the extraordinary level of hubris which characterizes so much of what the current Bush Administration has done. The assumption that what they wanted to do in Iraq could be done quickly, efficiently, and effectively, to praise that would be nearly universal before the middle of 2004, was not well founded. In the present instance, some folks, very likely the Secretary of Defense and the Vice President, pushed so hard for their idea of efficiency that troop levels were not adequate to police Iraq after the "end of major combat operations." Among other evils, this resulted in imprisoning a lot of Iraqis who had not done much wrong at all. Staffing levels at the prisons were also not adequate, either to process the prisoners, or to manage the staff, and then there turned out to be a big agenda about getting military intelligence; so how much of a surprise is it that things went really badly wrong?

One might argue that the individual soldiers might have been wiser to have refused to do work they were not trained or equipped to do, but the primary responsibility has to go to those who put them there to begin with.

We should also consider that a lot of the Iraqis knew a lot more about this than an awful lot of Americans, including, so he says, the aforementioned Secretary of Defense, for several months. Serious and informed arguments may properly be developed elsewhere about the degree to which this knowledge contributed to the ferocity displayed by the various Iraqi insurrectionist groups, but it is not unreasonable to consider it a likely factor in the rate at which Americans, our allies, and Iraqis continue to die.

Carefully nuanced critical discussions have already covered the issues that Earl Tilford appears to think he is prophetically raising. What we need to see is that he is trying to limit the discussion so that it does not address the laughable mismatch between the problems of cultural conflict and the means the people he wishes to defend choose to address them with. That makes his discourse a sideshow that I would summarize as: "Gosh! The world is such an awful place that we should just shut up and pay the bills so that these wise and powerful ((Oz)) folks (whom I happen to approve of) can get on with the work God has given them." Unfortunately, this approach also suffers from a severe case of bad fit.

Jonathan Justice

Click here for Earl Tilford's reply.

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One more contribution to our conversation on the atrocities at Abu Ghraib
[Both of these notes were sent on 5-18-04, and are posted on 5-19-04]

Prof. Earl Tilford argues back at the comments by Jonathan Justice.

Jonathan Justice mentions "a severe case of bad fit." Here's an even more severe case of a bad fit. On the one hand we have a naked guy handcuffed to bunk bed with panties on his head. On the other hand we have a gang of Islamic terrorists butchering Nick Berg while they bellow "Allah Akbar." The difference between the two is the difference between the sick silliness of pornography, something on the order of "Elsa, She Wolf of the SS" and the horror depicted in photographs the Nazis took of concentration camps. The former reflects the perverse antics of a handful of out-of-control Army Reservists making their own version of "Baghdad Bad Boyz and Gyrlz" and the other depicts the implacable and immutable evil endemic to the Islamic terrorists who aim to destroy the Judeo-Christian West.

Indeed, the Army did go into Iraq with too little force. I, too, would favor the replacement of Secretary Rumsfeld with someone who better understands the human dimensions of warfare. Instead of liberating the Iraqi people with a force that was outnumbered 4-to-one on the ground, it would have been better to have gone in with an overwhelmingly preponderance to find, fix and annihilate the more capable elements of Saddam's military; the Republican Guard and Saddam Fedayeen. Unfortunately, the current leadership in the Department of Defense is too entranced with high-tech approaches that seek a quick and relatively bloodless end to war.

Earl H. Tilford, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor of History and Humanities
Grove City College
Grove City, PA 16127

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