A Failure to Understand
Two developments took place this week that did not get connected by popular media, but arguably should have been. First, we learned that the Pentagon is probing into whether the death of Iraqi civilians in Haditha at the hands of U.S. Marines took place “in cold blood.” Second, a U.N. Panel announced that U.S. practices at Guantanamo violated the 1984 Convention Against Torture, which the U.S. ratified.
The reason these stories connect is that both the stories themselves, and especially the way the administration and conservative thought leaders reacted to them, present the wrong picture to the world about American objectives in the war on terror and the war in Iraq. The stories themselves suggest that America may not be living up to its principles in being a benevolent and fair superpower. But, worse, the reactions to the stories suggest that some leaders do not even care.
Instead of taking the probe in Haditha seriously, the Washington Times decided to focus its editorial on criticizing Murtha for even raising the issue, calling his actions “an egregious violation of ethical conduct.” The Bush administration’s response to the U.N. panel similarly attacked the messenger rather than taking the message seriously. Without going into depth, the administration called the U.N. report riddled with errors and said it had improved its treatment. “We acknowledge that there were serious incidents of abuse. We’ve all seen Abu Ghraib,” the State Department’s top lawyer, John B. Bellinger III, told reporters. But “clearly our record has improved over the last few years,” he said.
Underlying the response by conservatives from the Washington Times to the Bush administration is a sense that “we know what we’re doing is right and so we should not have to answer to domestic reviews or the international community.” But this is precisely the false logic that led us down the wrong path in Iraq.
In analyzing the failures in Iraq more than two years ago, David Brooks made the following observation:
“There was, above all, a failure to understand the consequences of our power. There was a failure to anticipate the response our power would have on the people we sought to liberate… There was a failure to understand the effect our power would have on other people around the world. We were so sure we were using our might for noble purposes, we assumed that sooner or later, everybody else would see that as well.”
Reading the news this week, I cannot help but feel we are again making this same failure to understand. There’s no doubt about the patriotism of American soldiers in Iraq or those who are working at Guantanamo, but we need to think critically about what types of decisions at the leadership level may be creating an environment conducive to wrongful conduct. If we do not take these issues seriously, it is unlikely the world will take our objective of being a benevolent and fair superpower seriously.
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