‘Honor, Duty, Country’
Reconciling West Point and Abu Ghraib
Elliott Brown
Landing at Newark--- — New York City’s dowdy New Jersey sibling — I caught my first glimpse of Manhattan. The island’s skyline is difficult to mistake, with its tiers of skyscrapers shrouded in the smog that is the only evidence of human activity among the colossi. But the Manhattan in my porthole was missing the twin towers of the World Trade Centre.
This hole in the skyline is a tangible reminder of the burning amendment 9/11 made to the American psyche. The belief among Americans that “everything changed on 9/11” is not uniform, but it is ubiquitous. The post-9/11 debate has addressed those changes and what they mean for the United States, its people and its policies. This debate was at the forefront of my mind as I arrived at the United States Military Academy (USMA), better known as West Point, for a conference on “U.S. Responsibility and the Global Community: Interests, Opportunities and Ethics.”
If you were to put all of the students and much of the faculty at a sizeable liberal arts college in uniform, you would get something like West Point. The U.S. Department of Defense spends about $25 billion per year on education and training, which is between five and six per cent of its total planned budget. The Academy is a remarkable symbol of the investment in human capital that has, with the parallel investment in military technologies, made the United States armed forces the most formidable in history.
These dollars do more than train future officers to organize convoys and command posts. It also ensures that they can form and articulate their own opinions about American leadership and policies. Some cadets thought the occupation of Iraq was integral to the “Global War on Terror”; others called it the wrong war at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons. At West Point, America is not beyond criticism, or even satire. In the halls of the barracks I could often hear cadets singing along to Green Day’s “American Idiot,” or “America, Fuck Yeah,” the anthem from “Team America: World Police.”
USMA is still a military academy: cadets may think for themselves, but they follow orders. USMA’s motto, emblazoned on most available surfaces, is “Honor, Duty, Country,” a reminder that judgment follows obedience. But honour and the duty to obey do not always coexist comfortably, and nowhere is this made clearer than in the case of Abu Ghraib.
I have heard a cadet’s voice raised in anger once, when the discussion turned to the torture of prisoners by American soldiers. To him, Abu Ghraib was an aberration, a mistake, which, though egregious and regrettable, had been dealt with, and one from which the world should move on.
However, it is not clear that the world is so willing to trust in American good intentions. Photographs of the appalling prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, including those revealed last week, are difficult to forget, and there is other evidence to consider. Frontline has revealed that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld authorized the use of dogs and “stress positions” to break detainees. The detention of prisoners without formal charges or legal recourse continues, and there have been reports of “extraordinary renditions” and CIA-operated “black prisons” in Eastern Europe.
Although the Bush administration recently agreed to define and prohibit torture by U.S. armed forces members, its long-standing opposition to such restrictions and its refusal to extend the provisions to include CIA and other government personnel provide little reason to hope that these practices will end in the near-term.
The reality is that torture is an ineffectual method of obtaining information that demoralizes and denigrates its practitioners. In a long war to win the “hearts and minds” of some Muslim people away from violent extremism, this is not an auspicious beginning. Every time an American soldier engages in torture or pushes the envelope of interrogation practices, he or she betrays the professional ethos of the U.S. military. What is worse, it seems that in many cases soldiers have been ordered — implicitly or explicitly — to do so.
West Point and the other service academies represent the best hope that the American armed forces can salvage their ethos and their credibility from the shadow of Abu Ghraib. “Honor, Duty, Country” does not allow soldiers to choose where and when each of the three applies, notwithstanding shameful efforts by the current administration to argue otherwise. Islamic public opinion — particularly the sort that appears on Al-Jazeera — should not determine what is right practice for America’s military. That responsibility rests with Americans themselves.
But Donald Rumsfeld and his ilk would do well to remember that American power rests on the will and ability of its citizens, soldiers and leaders to use it. Without the sense and reality of right conduct, America ceases to be a “hyperpower” and becomes just another country. Without ethics there can be no responsibility. Without honour, duty becomes farce. There will be no second chance in the “war on terror” — America must get this right.
Elliot Brown is pursuing a master’s degree in political studies.
