McChrystal, Afghanistan, and what we should do.

The United States under Barack Obama is getting ready to ramp up its commitment to Afghanistan, after years of neglect by the Bush administration. Part of that effort has resulted in the firing of General McKiernan by Obama as the head of the US efforts there, and his replacement by Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal. The story I've linked to notes that there are two main issues that have some people in the US concerned about McChrystal's appointment: the coverup around the friendly-fire death of Pat Tillman, and detainee abuse in Iraq.

The first is pretty much an internal scandal that was big in the US, as Tillman quit a pro football career in the NFL to volunteer after 9/11. When he was shot by one of his colleagues, the Bush administration decided to make propaganda lemonade by portraying his death as a heroic one in battle, similar in principle to the way they "rescued" Jessical Lynch from the hospital where she was being treated for her injuries after crashing the truck she was driving. This is interesting in the sense that it helps show the mendacity of the Bush administration in their ongoing attempts to sell the US public on a war of choice in Iraq. However, it is the second that is far more relevant to us here in Canada, as we have soldiers operating within Afghanistan, in one of its most troubled provinces.

While the NPR article only mentions detainee abuse once, it appears to be far more serious than detainee abuse would describe. Here's part of what Bloomberg has to say:

McChrystal’s background is in overseeing special forces, including counter-terrorism units such as the Army’s Delta Force. From September 2003 through August 2008, he led the Defense Department’s Joint Special Operations Command, which manages units in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

He orchestrated the manhunts that led to the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003 and the air strike in June 2006 that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The Joint Special Operations Command was a special unit that was separate from the usual services (Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force) in the US military. Seymour Hersh has reported on how it was organised and on where they got their orders from.

Seymour Hersh says that Dick Cheney headed a secret assassination wing and the head of the wing has just been named as the new commander in Afghanistan.... According to Hersh, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) was headed by former US vice president Dick Cheney... On July 22, 2006, Human Rights Watch issued a report titled "No blood, no foul" about American torture practices at three facilities in Iraq. One of them was Camp Nama, which was operated by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), under the direction of then Major General Stanley McChrystal.

Camp Nama (the name is Iraqi, but the US military there have taken it to mean Nasty Ass Military Area) is particularly deserving of attention, because of the potentially terrible consequences it could have for Canada's efforts in Afghanistan. To give a general idea of what Nama was all about, I've placed an image of a placard that was known to hang there. Earlier this month, a US soldier, now retired, who served with McChrystal in Iraq had this to say:

Obviously writing from the seat of retirement, and with absolute respect and gratefulness for LTG McChrystal’s aggressive leadership, personable demeanor, and unwavering mentoring, I envy the guys that are soon to find themselves sharing the same mess hall, weight room, and helicopter as The Pope. The man is unstoppable. Demonstrably more committed than most. More open, in fact insistent, on creative and innovative ideas from his subordinates to fight the war on terror. From my perspective, our rules of land warfare, our respect for human life, and our strategic constraints handcuff us to the point that the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable. But, with LTG McChrystal at the helm now all bets are off.

I really like how he figures that only by removing rules of war, respect for humans, and strategic constraints can their handcuffs come off and victory be assured.

From the same article:

The black room was 12 by 12 [feet]. It was painted black floor to ceiling. The door was black, everything was black. It had speakers in the corners, all four corners, up at the ceiling. It had a small table in one of the corners, and maybe some chairs. But usually in the black room nobody was sitting down. It was standing, stress positions, and so forth. The table would be for the boom box and the computer. We patched it into the speakers and made the noise and stuff. Most of the harsh interrogations were in that room. . . . Sleep deprivation, environmental controls, hot and cold, water.

...

He was stripped naked, put in the mud and sprayed with the hose, with very cold hoses, in February. At night it was very cold. They sprayed the cold hose and he was completely naked in the mud, you know, and everything. [Then] he was taken out of the mud and put next to an air conditioner. It was extremely cold, freezing, and he was put back in the mud and sprayed. This happened all night. Everybody knew about it. People walked in, the sergeant major and so forth, everybody knew what was going on, and I was just one of them, kind of walking back and forth seeing [that] this is how they do things.

The following is from a Human Rights Watch interview with another soldier who spent time in Camp Nama:

• HRW: Was there any discussion of the Red Cross coming?
• Yeah, they said that the Red Cross would never be able to get in there at all.
• Abuse.184 HRW: Why would somebody bring that up?
• I think because the Red Cross and a couple other agencies were going around different places around Iraq, different facilities, and they were getting access. So somebody brought it up to somebody else. I think the colonel, or somebody in charge. You know, will they come here? It was the colonel, yeah. And he said absolutely not.

Jeff explained that the colonel told them that he "had this directly from General McChrystal and the Pentagon that there's no way that the Red Cross could get in." Jeff did not question the colonel further on how these assurances were given to those in command in CampNama.

He explained that they were told: "they just don't have access, and they won't have access, and they never will. This facility was completely closed off to anybody investigating. Even Army investigators."

Jeff said that he did see Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. Joint Special Operations forces in Iraq, visiting the Nama facility on several occasions. "I saw him a couple of times. I know what he looks like."

I'm sorry, but I don't have a link for that particular passage. I got it from Andrew Sullivan's blog, The Daily Dish, at The Atlantic's website. Those that know him know that he's not what you call a lefty radical... I disagree with him on a lot of things, but the simple truth that since it became clear to him that the Bush administration was using torture widely and indiscriminately in pursuit of their international and domestic political goals he broke with them... which makes him a person with whom I can both disagree and respect.

Let's make sure we're very clear on what really was going on there... stress positions, sometimes for days, waterboarding, temperature extremes (hypothermia as well as baking), and physical abuse that violated even the barest restraint enumerated in that poster (no blood no foul). Furthermore, it's also known that at least two of their prisoners died under questioning... in short, they were strung up, beaten, frozen, baked, and waterboarded until they died... they were tortured to death.

So, what are we to make of all this? Obama has basically appointed Cheney's chief torturer and executioner to helm the American war in Afghanistan. Here is what I think will have to happen.

1. Our PM must make it very clear to his counterpart in Washington that we will not tolerate those kinds of activities in a theatre of war of which we're a part.
2. He should make it very clear that at the first sign that any torture is going on, that we'll be gone... and that we'll make it very clear to the tribal leaders in Kandahar why we're leaving; that we have to leave because we've learned that the US is doing things that we cannot countenance and that we must leave to maintain our own moral standards of what we think is right.
3. We won't wait until some ridiculously high evidentiary bar is met to make that decision, nor will we wait until the Federal Court of Canada rules that our forces must leave to maintain our own obligations under the Geneva Conventions nor under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
4. Then, if we in fact find out that those techniques are being used to elicit false confessions and justify using aerial drones to kill people in villages without regard to their status in the conflict, he has to stick to it.

Any less will be a betrayal of what our (and my) ancestors fought for in conflicts in the past.