Meanwhile, the issue of the My Lai massacre had gotten the attention of President Nixon. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird briefed Nixon at his San Clemente retreat. The White House proceeded with caution, sensing the potential of the incident to embarrass the military and undermine the war effort. The President characterized what happened at My Lai as an unfortunate aberration, as "an isolated incident."
An Introduction to the My Lai Courts-Martial
By Doug Linder
Allegations that U.S. soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners don't increase the popularity of the U.S., Powell said, according to the e-mailed transcript. Pictures of prisoners being abused are ``totally despicable,'' Powell said.
``We will deal with this by telling the people of the world that this is an isolated incident,'' he said. Muslim countries including U.S. allies Jordan and Turkey have condemned the mistreatment and urged action against those responsible.
Powell Says U.S. Enduring `Rough Spot' Due to Actions in Iraq
Bloomberg
LAUER: Real quickly, Mr. Secretary, if you will, would you support a congressional hearing into this? Would you testify before that hearing? And would you issue a formal apology to the Iraqi people for these abuses?
RUMSFELD: Well, anyone who sees the photographs does, in fact, apologize to the people who were abused. That is wrong. It shouldn't have happened. It's un-American. It's unacceptable. And we all know that. And that apology is there to any individual who was abused. It seems to me that these things have occurred. The task for me, as the responsible person in the Department of Defense, is to see that if it's an isolated instance that it's punished under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. If it's systemic, if there's something broader than that, obviously we have to undertake the kinds of investigations we're taking to see if other individuals conceivably have behaved that way.
LAUER: And real quickly - I've only got 10 seconds left, Mr. Secretary - you say if it's an isolated incident. There are some 20 other investigations ongoing now about possible cases of abuse. Are you convinced it's an isolated incident?
RUMSFELD: Of course not. We wouldn't be conducting these investigations if we thought we knew the answers. We don't know the answers. And that's why, starting last January, at the first indication of this, these investigations were initiated.
I was reading the My Lai account (via Steve Gilliard) and was struck by the phrase "isolated incident." That's been a talking point for obstructionists over the last week, the whole "actions of a few bad apples" meme.
When we're talking about crimes against humanity committed during a war, there is no such thing as an "isolated incident." This is one of many reasons I believe in pacifism. Once you hand someone a gun and the "authorization" to use it, you have potentially created a monster. Even assuming for the sake of argument that 99% of the soldiers in a war zone are good, decent, honorable people, there are still enough of them that horrible things will happen to nonparticipants. It is simply inevitable.
Our leaders continue to insist that there is no "systemic" encouragement of the commission of war crimes, despite the fact that War, by its very nature, makes such crimes impossible to avoid.
It is one of my deepest, most basic beliefs that just as humanity slowly and painfully outgrew slavery, we can (slowly and painfully) outgrow war. We can move beyond the idea that engaging in violence will somehow be less terrible than the alternative. We must evolve beyond the idea that war can even be considered as an option open to governments worldwide. It is precisely this unspoken assumption--war is something that sometimes must be done, no matter how unpleasant--that enables wars to continue to happen. How many more millions must be raped, tortured, and murdered before we, as a species, are able to see that War only accomplishes destruction?
Eliminating armed conflict would be a monumental achievement, easily as historic as the Apollo program, and at least as difficult. But I sincerely believe that it is an absolutely necessary step for homo sapiens. I doubt it will happen in our lifetime, but I hope this can become a new American goal.
Peace is not something that happens between wars.
A disclaimer: please note that this is not intended as a calumny against soldiers, who are in an impossible situation. Trying to do the right thing while under fire and thinking about your wife and kids is possibly the most difficult thing a human being can accomplish. It is no wonder that some of them fail. The true dishonor is reserved for those who choose to conduct foreign policy via violence, and whose violence is conducted via proxies, and whose proxies are subjugate and removed by layers and layers of bureaucracy. The net effect is an enabling dissociation between the word and the deed. Policy makers are so cloistered (who is the most protected man on earth?) that decisions affecting the fates of millions for generations are stripped of connection to reality and instead resemble slow-motion chess. It's an abstraction to the order-givers, but a very concrete reality to the order-takers (and of course, bystanders). This is what makes Abu Ghraib, My Lai, the Holocaust, the Trail of Tears, Wounded Knee, and innumerable other atrocities possible, all committed in the name of something lofty and rhetorically defensible.
One further disclaimer: I am not interested in talking about Hitler, Nazis, WWII, or anything related. Those are legitimate points to make, but they miss my larger argument, which is that war is a species-wide meme, and the way to achieve world peace is to counter that meme. Having militaries around simply guarantees conflict.