Abu Ghraib

I watch television reports and read the news from Iraq with great sorrow and a sick feeling. And little surprise. Maybe I just have low expectations. I see rebellion rising there, with Shiites and Sunni militias — strange bedfellows — tactically united by the blunders of an occupation army that shouldn’t be there in the first place. A unique website, www.iraqbodycount.net/, has documented Iraqi civilian deaths ranging between 9,100 and 11,000 as of May 8. Our own military losses close in on 750.

Now I am ashamed to see the degradation of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. military. I have to look away from photographs of bright-faced young Americans gleefully performing acts of human debasement. And I know we are seeing the tip of the iceberg. Contrary to public pronouncements, I fear that these young men and women in our military — probably well-bred and ethically raised in the States — are not an aberration but an expression of U.S. values. War is necessarily a process of dehumanization. Violence rather than high mindedness is the usually order of the day in war, quite aside from whether brutality and torture are a matter of policy. In this case I believe that the treatment we are seeing is policy, consistent with the whole course of this war. For insight on this policy I strongly recommend Seymour Hersh’s articles “Torture at Abu Ghraib,” “Chain of Command,” and “The Gray Zone” in recent issues of the New Yorker.

Why don’t these events surprise me? Perhaps because the United States is waging a war that was unnecessary, ill-considered in its execution, and seemingly unplanned in its outcome. It is an imperialistic land grab ten years in the making, and it painfully echoes other wars in American history. I have little or no sympathy for Sadam Hussein, but the genie of civil dissolution that the U.S. has loosed for self-serving reasons in Iraq will not soon go back in the bottle. Each week it looks worse. Recently, the wildfire of ethnic/religious violence flared up in the majority Buddhist nation of Siam (Thailand), and more than a hundred Muslim youth were gunned down by Thai police. Without defending the actions of these youth, I believe their activities very directly flow from hostilities incited by the war in Iraq.

Buddhist principles of Dependent Origination and of karma — or action — are available as analytical tools here. The Buddha’s simple explanation of Dependent Origination is: When there is this, that is. When this arises, that arises. If one visits violence on another, reciprocal violence is likely to arise. Hence rebellions and uprisings in Iraq and around the world. When violence and brutality are adopted as international policy, it is logical that it flows right down the chain of authority to soldiers in the prisons and in the field. In a government like ours, where president, vice president, and cabinet officers lie about their actions and even the facts on which they presumably base their actions, what moral authority is available to those below them? This does not absolve any individual of responsibility for acts of torture and degradation. Each will also harvest the painful fruits of their karmic activities. But responsibility and consequences surely flow back up the chain to the sponsors and authors of such actions. And, of course, the same iron law of karma applies to all who carry out horrendous violence in the name of national, tribal, religious, or economic principles.

I also know that the seeds of such violence exist within each of us. Given the essential nutrients, causes and conditions, such seeds could germinate in me just as they did for some of our soldiers at Abu Ghraib. Within historical memory, we have seen in Germany, Rwanda, Kosovo, and elsewhere how ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances can be capable of unimaginable harm.

I worry about the fruits of karma, which will arise in the near or distant future. I worry for myself, our children, for all citizens of this country, as well as others around the world on all sides of this conflict. It seems likely that the fruit of our occupation of Iraq, of our all-too-visible mistreatment of Muslim detainees in Iraq and Guantanamo, of our restoration of brutal Afghan warlords, will be more violent attacks on Americans everywhere outside and inside our borders. Terror begets terror.

What can we do? First of all, remove our consent from the Bush administration (not that it had much consent in the first place). Between now and the November elections, we must work determinedly to remove him and his clique from office. As sentient beings they are doing their best. But their best is not good enough, not even close; it is not grounded in human principles of generosity and interdependence. The electoral alternatives are not ideal, but we could hardly do worse.

Secondly, we should call for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, to be replaced by the United Nations and by an international consortium of nonviolent peacemakers. Along with our withdrawal we can seek a policy of massive reparations to both these countries, perhaps to the tune of 30% of our planned military outlay for the next two years. These funds — $50 billion of aid — could be administered jointly by the U.N. and locally elected representatives. Reparations on this scale might have a positive effect on the enormous U.S. deficit, meet virtually all the material needs of beleaguered Afghan and Iraqi people, and win friends rather than kill them.

There are other practices we would do well to cultivate: the paramitas or perfections of patience (ksanti), effort (virya), and wisdom (prajna). To the limits of our abilities, we will need patience to endure injustice and the national consequences that will touch all our lives, effort to persevere in bringing about an awakened and nonviolent society, and wisdom to know the right path as we walk.