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The September 11, 2001 attacks on the world trade center and the pentagon by the Al Qaida proved to be a watershed moment in the history of America as well as general warfare. In his Address to the Joint Session of the 107th Congress on 20th September , 2001, President Bush blamed the Al Qaida for the attacks and entreated Americans as well as people from all over the world to wage a war against terrorism. He argues that the war against terrorism was unlike any conventional war and that it would be protracted. This war against terror by the US and it allies saw the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and the toppling of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. The US and its allies relied heavily on intelligence reports on the terrorists to prepare itself for more attacks and to safeguard its interests in the region. Detainment of terrorists, Al Qaeda activists and suspects helped provide intelligence for the US and its allies. The president justified the imprisonment of these people and certain methods designed to extract information from them as being the only means to get information about the terrorist outfit. However within a couple of years, reports and photographs from Guantanamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison exposed incidences of violence and torture on the inmates. Although a few soldiers were court martialed, imprisoned and warned, this raises certain important questions of whether the torture carried out in these prisons were the acts of a few deranged soldiers or if it was the outcome of policy framed at high levels. This paper argues that the torture of the prisoners were not just the actions of a few soldiers or ‘bad apples’ but the result of a combination of official speeches, memorandums, national policy and strategies as well as CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) orders.
Wars are waged and rationalized through historical precedents and thoughts. By calling the attack against Al Qaida and framing the retaliation as a war against terrorism and not against one particular terror group, country or organization, the Bush administration not only defended its decision to go into a war (without an unforeseeable end) but also rewrote international law as well as the country’s military rules and regulations. This was done to override any restrictions that could be placed on the US and it allies regarding its conduct during the war. “Many limits were erased that regulated the status and conduct of noncombatants and occupying forces; regular soldiers and the military police (MPs); MPs and military intelligence (MIs); MIs and civilian interrogators from Other Governmental Agencies (OGAs) or private contractors (Tung, 2010).” As a result of the unbounded nature of the war on terror and the ‘preemptive, just cause’ attached to it, rules that normally apply such as the Geneva conventions were violated. Even though the government and the president announced that torture was not endorsed, certain memos, orders and new policies suggest that the torture of the detainees did happen with governmental order and consent for in this war the means justified the end. The legal advisors of the White House named the detainees in these prisons as either unlawful combatants or security internees and not prisoners of war so that the normal rules and conventions that apply to POW’s do not apply to them and domestic as well as international laws on torture and mistreatment of prisoners can be circumvented. Through the discourse of just war, the Bush administration justified its actions (moral, ethical transgressions and extraordinary securitization) and gained support through a combined rationale of fear and righteousness.
Targeting civilians has become a part of global warfare. Andreopoulos in his work, On the accountability of non-state armed groups, says that in the new conflicts that involve state as well as non state actors, both the sides account for“the deliberate targeting of civilians, who often constitute the principal aim rather than the unintended consequence of otherwise legitimate military operations” (Andreopoulos, 2006). Although the invasion of Iraq started off as a war between the US and Iraq, Abu Ghraib was the result of the military focusing on individuals and not the state. In the case of Abu Ghraib, the civilian identity merged with that of the terrorists and thus they became the principal aim of military actions. The Abu Ghraib prison was originally built and used by the Saddam Hussein regime to house prisoners. After the American invasion of Iraq, the US forces took over the prison to detain terrorists and interrogate them. The torture and inhuman conditions at the Abu Ghraib prison came out in 2003 and 2004 through the reports by Amnesty international, associated press and the New York Times. These reports showed that the prisoners at Abu Ghraib were exposed to different levels of torture. The torture included rape, sodomy, murder, sensory deprivation, 30-day isolation, non-injurious physical contacts and much more. As the reports and the pictures were released to the word, the US government was quick to condemn it, calling these isolated incidents. However organisations such as the International Red Cross, Amnesty international and other reports by the American military officials state that such torture was not isolated but general practice in the prison complex.
Although individuals engaged in the torture of the prisoners, the orders to do so came from their superiors. James Pfiffner in his chapter Torture and Public Policy argues that although torture of the detainees for gaining sensitive information about the terrorist networks was not a policy of the US government per se, there were nevertheless governmental actions that made torture a working policy in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. He cites “formal decisions that denied non-legal combatants the protection of Geneva conventions, memoranda that narrowed the definition of torture and operational changes in the handling of prisoners” as the reasons that contributed to the torture in Abu Ghraib (Pfiffner, 2005). A memo written by Alberto Gonzales, counsel to the president on the 25th of January 2002 recommended that the Geneva conventions do not apply for the war on terror as this was a different kind of war. This recommendation was accepted by the president based on the reasoning that Al Qaeda was not a signatory to the Geneva convention. A 2002 memo by Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee went contrary to the UN definition of torture by narrowing its definition and raising the threshold of pain. It also stated that if the torturer’s sole intent is not inflicting pain, the action could not be termed as torture. Various high level visits by US generals to the prison facilities also ensured that the torture continued without any condemnation. After the photos and reports about torture in Abu Ghraib was published in 2004, the American government sent Major General Antonio. M. Taguba to investigate the allegations. However it must be noted that his investigations focused on the guards at the prison and not on the military personnel or any high level officials. His report was damning, identifying certain guards of kicking, punching, sexually abusing naked prisoners and using military dogs to intimidate and scare prisoners. The report also mentioned that Janis Karpinski, the commandant of the 800th military police brigade was lax in her management and follow up of the complaints and that such incidents could be prevented if she had taken more care.
There is no doubt that the torture in the Abu Ghraib prison was carried out by the guards and soldiers who were stationed there. However it was the relaxation of rules by the US government regarding treatment of prisoners, torture methods used and the safety provided to them that led to them acting with such impunity. The torture at Abu Ghraib was not an action of a few ‘bad apples’ as the government claims but was the result of a systematic policy that the US government applied to the war on terror and the detainees. Intelligence about the terrorist organizations was given primary importance over everything and thus torture was justified as a necessary evil to gain more information. The lax sentences given out to the soldiers involved in the torture and the pardoning of many high officials with just demotions also go to show that the government had a role to play in the torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib.
References
Pfiffner. P. James. (2005). Torture and Public Policy. Public Integrity, 7 (4), 313–329.
Andreopoulos, G.J. (2006). On the accountability of non-state armed groups. In: G.J.Andreopoulos, Z.F.K. Arat, & P. Juviler (Eds.), Non-State Actors in the Human Rights Universe (pp. 141–163). Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press.
Tung, Toy-Fung. (2011). Just War Claims: Historical Theory, Abu Ghraib, and Transgressive Rhetoric. In George Andreopoulos, Rosemary Barberet and James P. Levine (Eds), International Criminal Justice: Critical Perspectives and New Challenges. New York: Springer.
Selected Speeches of President George W. Bush 2001 – 2008. (n.d). Retrieved from: https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/bushrecord/documents/Selected_Speeches_George_W_Bush.pdf.
