Military Review English Edition September-October 2013 | Page 65

SOLDIER MYTHS

response: just because the media may have a bias to focus on sensational “bad news” does not make such news untrue. The soldier and torture. As discussed above, objectifying others and treating them as commodities, as less than human, can lead to serious abuse. Compounding this problem is another delusion— the belief of leaders that such dehumanization can be controlled. Consider the role that “enhanced interrogation techniques” and military Survival, Escape, Resistance, and Evasion (SERE) schools played in the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. When EITs were formally promulgated via policy memoranda, one assumption was that they would be used only under strict supervision. After Rumsfeld approved EITs for use at Guantanamo Bay (“Gitmo”) in December 2002, this assumption largely held true at that location. There, the relatively high interrogator-to-detainee ratio and the presence of supervisory psychologists and, even more importantly, of large numbers of law enforcement personnel all helped limit occurrences of EITs evolving into worse crimes. Tragically, this was far from the whole story. Soon after their approval at Gitmo, EITs migrated via formal policy memoranda to Afghanistan and then, shortly after, to Iraq.31 At places like Bagram, Abu Ghraib, Mosul, and al Qaim, relatively minor detainee abuse turned into horrific crimes that shocked the world. However, more widespread and just as damaging was the informal, unsanctioned promulgation of harsh detainee treatment that grew from the set conditions. This occurred via the transfer of interrogators from one facility to another. Also, service members applied tactics they had learned or heard about at SERE schools.32 Most commonly, soldiers applied the same physical “corrective training” they themselves sometimes received to their prisoners.33 Such informal promulgation occurred despite SERE cadre regularly briefing their trainees that they were not to treat detainees like they themselves were being treated and despite the assumption of some noncommissioned officers that their subordinates would realize that corrective training was only intended as a disciplinary measure for soldiers, not prisoners. It seems that, once the impulse to dehumanize and degrade the other is set free, putting the genie
MILITARY REVIEW ? September-October 2013

back in the bottle is nearly impossible. The result in the ongoing conflicts has been a steady boon for recruiters of America’s enemies.34 Thus it is that another form of self-deception—the idea that we can control how, where, and when we dehumanize others—has greatly damaged our nation’s recent war efforts. Better to completely avoid the selfdeception and insist detainees and adversaries be considered the human beings that they are. A failure of accountability. The scale at which detainee abuse took place during the first few

It seems that, once the impulse to dehumanize and degrade the other is set free, putting the genie back in the bottle is nearly impossible.
years of our conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq is disturbing. The military’s abject failure to hold offenders accountable for their crimes is almost as bad. Of the 100 detainees who died in U.S. custody between 2002 and 2006, 45 are confirmed or suspected murder victims.35 Of these, eight are known to have been tortured to death.36 Only half of these eight cases resulted in punishment for U.S. service members, with five months in jail being the harshest punishment meted out.37 This is only a summary of the most extreme cases. During the last decade, the military opened hundreds of investigations concerning detainee abuse. Investigators closed most of these quickly, not because there was nothing to them, but because investigators lacked the resources, command support, or willpower to meaningfully investigate them.38 Even in those cases where investigators found criminal negligence, military juries and commanders consistently chose not to punish wrongdoers. Of the hundreds of cases of alleged abuse the under-resourced “Detainee Abuse Task Force” investigated in Iraq, not one went to court martial: “It didn’t accomplish anything,” John Renaud, the warrant officer who led the task force later said. “It was a whitewash.”39 A 2006 report by three human rights organizations found, “Of the hundreds of personnel implicated in detainee abuse, only ten people have been
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