Last week’s Gallup Poll numbers indicate that a shift has occured among Americans, and the majority now reject the "stay the course" policy of the Bush administration for Iraq and also believe the invasion was a mistake.
Record numbers of Americans are registering their disapproval of the Bush administration’s "stay the course" policy on Iraq. A clear majority of Americans now say sending U.S. troops to Iraq was a mistake, and two-thirds disapprove of the job President Bush is doing on Iraq. Nearly as many are ready to start withdrawing troops. The reason behind the latest shift on Iraq is unclear, but escalating rebel attacks and concerns about the costs Hurricane Katrina has created are both plausible explanations.
Yesterday’s protest march in Washington DC was the largest anti-war demonstration since just before the invasion in early 2003. Die Netzeitung reported on the demo:
In Washington haben etwa 100.000 Menschen gegen die Irak-Politik der Regierung Bush auf die Straße gegangen und haben den Abzug der US-Truppen gefordert. Es war der größte Protestmarsch in der amerikanischen Hauptstadt seit Beginn des Krieges vor zweieinhalb Jahren. Die Demonstranten zogen am Weißen Haus vorbei.
One of the speakers at the Washington DC event was Cindy Sheehan – Mother Courage – who galvanized the anti-war movement in the US with Camp Casey in at President Bush’s vacation ranch in Crawford, Texas. Here is a partial transcript of her speech (via Daily Kos):
I also find it ironic and heartbreaking that my son, Casey, who was a brave person, tall and proud, who loved his country and was honest beyond measure, could be sent to his death by someone who is even too cowardly to meet with a broken hearted mom, let alone go and fight in the illegal and immoral war of his generation. We are losing our best and our brightest in a country that we are destroying that was no threat to the United States of America. Iraq was and still is no danger to our safety and security, or to our way of life. The weapons of mass destruction and mass deception reside in this town: they are the neocons who pull the strings and the members of Congress who have loosened the purse strings with reckless abandon and have practically given George and company a blank check to run our country into monetary and moral bankruptcy. We are out here in force today to take our country back and restore true democracy and sanity to our political process. The time is now and we are here because we love our country and we won’t let the reckless maniacs destroy her any further.
All wars lead to the worst atrocities. A war launched on lies leads to unnecessary atrocities. Time Magazine has a sickening story of prisoner abuse by the 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq:
Prisoners were designated as PUCs (pronounced "pucks")—or "persons under control." A regular pastime at Camp Mercury, the report says, involved off-duty soldiers gathering at PUC tents, where prisoners were held, and working off their frustrations in activities known as "F____a PUC" (beating the prisoner) and "Smoke a PUC" (forced physical exertion, sometimes to the point of collapse). Broken limbs and similar painful injuries would be treated with analgesics, the soldiers claim, as medical staff would fill out paperwork stating the injuries occurred during capture. Support for some of the allegations of abuse come from a sergeant of the 82nd Airborne who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch quotes him as saying that, "To ‘F____ a PUC’ means to beat him up. We would give them blows to the head, chest, legs, and stomach, pull them down, kick dirt on them. This happened every day. To ‘smoke’ someone is to put them in stress positions until they get muscle fatigue and pass out. That happened every day. Some days we would just get bored so we would have everyone sit in a corner and then make them get in a pyramid. This was before Abu Ghraib but just like it. We did that for amusement.
Report in German available here.
It would be nice to think that public sentiment has turned against the war and its consequences because of some moral revulsion against the killing and inhuman abuse. But, as Andrew Sullivan has repeatedly pointed out on his blog, there is very little outrage over this:
I have been trying to raise the alarm about what has really been going on for a while. But the abuse and torture claims have been dismissed or ignored. But even the torture-denialists will be unable to ignore this new material. It beggars belief. That this could be America.
No, I believe it is the economic concerns about the reconstruction of the gulf region after the devastation of Katrina and Rita that finally has Americans thinking about the cost the war. So it is treasure, rather than blood, that is causing the shift. More on this over at the Atlantic Review.
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When the Abhu Ghraib revelations first surfaced I was inclined to believe that a minority of boneheads were behind it and I also felt a lot of the “torture” allegations were being hyped. However the recent revelations that have surfaced suggest a deeper and more prevasive problem.
It now appears that torture was used as a tool to humiliate others in a random and completely gratuitous fashion – for reasons of power and control basically. This is quite different from applying pressure to a suspect who has knowledge that within an hour a bomb will detonate in a mall killing and wounding hundreds. In such a case I would say do whatever it takes to extract information about the whereabouts of the device.
To suggest that American methods can’t be compared to the very real torture of regimes such as Iran isn’t the point. Given the apparent extent of this problem we can’t off-load responsibility by simply saying “its worse over there”.
Recently Hitchens in fact used the term “moral Chernobyl”.
When the Bush administration presumes to be an exporter of “freedom and democracy” to other countries it better make damn certain that its representitives are above this type of mass descent into moral idiocy.
I would like to add that my views on the torture issue have evolved over the past year.
When the Abhu Ghraib story first surfaced it seemed to be an unfortunate aberration. Some of the “torture” depicted was even satirized on comedy shows. At that time I really took exception with those who tried to lump this American mistake with the torture methods of Saddam’s secret police.
However, comparisons are no longer appropriate now that it is clear there was in fact an extensive problem.
There are Republican voices who are urging that photo evidence should be buried, citing fears of an explosion of rage in the Arab world. I don’t agree. I think we have a moral obligation to expose this. Any anger in the short term that occurs on the Arab street, will later give way to the acknowledgement that the Americans were prepared to do the right thing. This will enhance American credibility and demonstrate that they are willing to hold themselves to the highest standards.
I admit being biased, since I’ve been a fan of war literature and war movies for a long time…. but it’s hard for me to understand why Abu Ghraib is so shocking or is considered such an abberation. Given the dehumanization of the enemy required by modern warfare, this kind of thing is bound to happen. Rather than phony moral outrage after the fact (without a serious effort to change the policies directly endorsing torture!), the American media should do a better job of making the public aware of war’s psychological implications before conflicts begin.
As for America’s “higher standards”…this rhetoric has been out of date since (at least) the daily napalming of civilians in Vietnam. What a joke. Let’s have an end to illusions of some sort of enlightened American imperialism.