Corruption and Credibility
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As I age, I fear that I grow more cynical and world-weary. When I was young, all politicians were honest, decent, and trustworthy. Now I am beginning to have my doubts.
I have heard stories, horrible tales, that enemy combatants in an guerilla war in the Middle East were handed over by the United States and imprisoned. Once these poor unfortunates were in prison, they suffered horrific psychological, physical, and sexual abuse. Torture and rape was rampant. The evidence became clear when the perpetrators provided it themselves with videos and photographs chronicling their own crimes.
I am, of course, writing here about Abu Graib, one of the dark moments of American history. The United States of America is a great democracy with one of the freest presses in the world. Even there, the government did everything in its power to suppress knowledge of the horrors that were perpetrated in Iraq.
By comparison with Afghanistan, the United States is Utopia or the New Jerusalem. George W. Bush might have “stolen” an election with a few hanging chads. Hamid Karzai’s henchmen stuffed hundreds of thousands, maybe a million, illicit ballots into the box to get their man democratically re-elected.
Transparency International regularly ranks countries according to a Corruption Perception Index. New Zealand stands at the top, scoring 9.4 out of 10. Sweden is 9.2. The United States is a respectable, but not admirable, 7.5.
What about Afghanistan? Afghanistan rates 1.3, the second lowest in the world, behind only the pirates of Somalia at 1.1. When people see your country as significantly more corrupt than Myamar, Cambodia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, you have an image problem. When you get 1.3 people can think that Robert Mubage’s Zimbabwe at 2.2 is less corrupt than you are, you have a real image problem.
However, it appears that there is one group of people who does not share this opinion of the trustworthiness of the Afghan leadership: the Conservative government and their military cronies. They look at the corrupt leader of the second most corrupt country in the world and they say: “We have no reason to believe that this great and noble man would behave as badly as the Americans.”
Besides, we were talking about, say 2005, Afghanistan’s corruption index was only 2.5, about the same as Libya, Uganda, Albania, and Papua New Guinea. Who would have concerns about fairness or the rule of law if a loved one fell afoul of the legal system of one of those countries?
When I think about credibility, I have two choices.
My first choice is to give credit to a career diplomat who told his superiors that one of the most corrupt regimes in the world was (or was likely to) behave even worse towards prisoners under its unsupervised control than a genuine democracy with a free press. Or I could believe a bunch of self-serving politicians and generals under whose watch Afghanistan has sunk even deeper into the more of corruption than anyone could have believed possible and who would be partly at fault that this happened.
It only takes one man to speak the truth and I believe Richard Colvin.
I have heard stories, horrible tales, that enemy combatants in an guerilla war in the Middle East were handed over by the United States and imprisoned. Once these poor unfortunates were in prison, they suffered horrific psychological, physical, and sexual abuse. Torture and rape was rampant. The evidence became clear when the perpetrators provided it themselves with videos and photographs chronicling their own crimes.
I am, of course, writing here about Abu Graib, one of the dark moments of American history. The United States of America is a great democracy with one of the freest presses in the world. Even there, the government did everything in its power to suppress knowledge of the horrors that were perpetrated in Iraq.
By comparison with Afghanistan, the United States is Utopia or the New Jerusalem. George W. Bush might have “stolen” an election with a few hanging chads. Hamid Karzai’s henchmen stuffed hundreds of thousands, maybe a million, illicit ballots into the box to get their man democratically re-elected.
Transparency International regularly ranks countries according to a Corruption Perception Index. New Zealand stands at the top, scoring 9.4 out of 10. Sweden is 9.2. The United States is a respectable, but not admirable, 7.5.
What about Afghanistan? Afghanistan rates 1.3, the second lowest in the world, behind only the pirates of Somalia at 1.1. When people see your country as significantly more corrupt than Myamar, Cambodia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, you have an image problem. When you get 1.3 people can think that Robert Mubage’s Zimbabwe at 2.2 is less corrupt than you are, you have a real image problem.
However, it appears that there is one group of people who does not share this opinion of the trustworthiness of the Afghan leadership: the Conservative government and their military cronies. They look at the corrupt leader of the second most corrupt country in the world and they say: “We have no reason to believe that this great and noble man would behave as badly as the Americans.”
Besides, we were talking about, say 2005, Afghanistan’s corruption index was only 2.5, about the same as Libya, Uganda, Albania, and Papua New Guinea. Who would have concerns about fairness or the rule of law if a loved one fell afoul of the legal system of one of those countries?
When I think about credibility, I have two choices.
My first choice is to give credit to a career diplomat who told his superiors that one of the most corrupt regimes in the world was (or was likely to) behave even worse towards prisoners under its unsupervised control than a genuine democracy with a free press. Or I could believe a bunch of self-serving politicians and generals under whose watch Afghanistan has sunk even deeper into the more of corruption than anyone could have believed possible and who would be partly at fault that this happened.
It only takes one man to speak the truth and I believe Richard Colvin.
Comments
And I for one believe Rick Hillier!
And that makes the vote a tie -since surely you and I are equally qualified to judge and comment.
I see no reason to blindly believe "career diplomats" -since I have watched Henry Kissinger and Kofi Annan for many years and observed them to be as "self serving" as pretty much anyone -and were they not "career diplomats"?
Also -since Canadian Forces were not allowed or mandated to set up their own prison system to whom were they to turn over their prisonners?
Indeed we saw some pretty sad examples of degradation in Abu Ghraib photos -but neither of us saw any "rape and murder" -just misguided attempts at frat-style hazing.
If Richard Colvin had been as disturbed at what he saw as he now claims -I suspect that he could have taken more serious and successful action.
I would describe "self-serving" as waiting until you are out of danger and then playing the whistle-blower to the public.
Timing is everything when speaking the truth. I suspect Mr Colvin was just a touch late.
Lord knows I am not supporting the Conservatives in this -but you do the guys who put their lives on the line a disservice when you dismiss them as self serving when we failed to give them the options they required.
Unless you can show me what valuable work you were doing in the area at the time -I will put my money on our troops -two of whom are my sons.
Jock Williams Yogi 13
I actually suffered through this article twice looking an indication that this was tongue in cheek or was an attempt at a marvellous satire.
All I found however was material for which the author would, in most other countries in the world, be tarred and feathered, stoned or whatever the current local equivalent is.
Calling captured Taliban and their supporters “poor unfortunates “is perilously close to sedition.
When he suggests that, in his youth, politicians were all honest and he now finds it requires being a “career diplomat” to achieve such a degree of honesty I am quite in awe at the level of his naivety. I suspect he also, by extention, thinks the United Nations -which is composed primarily of career diplomats- is doing an honest first –rate job. Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia et al notwithstanding of course.
According to Colvin, he has been trying to reveal the detainee issue for years. Amazing how such “atrocities” could be concealed from the omniscient and omnivorous media or the rapacious opposition party. Not one eager reporter or back-bencher could be convinced by Colvin to reveal such “atrocities”? Truly amazing. Just a voice crying in the wilderness.
Mr. Williams had a salient valid point. What would Mr. Christian have our troops do with those captured-those “poor unfortunates” who kill and maim NATO troops, terrorize their own countrymen and commit terrorist acts world-wide?
Does Mr. Christian propose a “Catch and Release” policy along the lines of sustained -yield sport fishing? Even a world- weary bleeding- heart must realize that this is a military operation with the inherent risks to both sides of such a venture .
I do not think we could get a current Canadian consensus on the value of this mission in Afghanistan, however I suspect that the majority of Canadians would say those “poor unfortunates” reaped a mere fraction of what they sowed.
I have heard no one but Mr. Christian prioritize the rights of terrorist thugs over the safety and lives of NATO troops and of citizens of countries afflicted by Jihadist Islamics.
No more Abu Ghraib? No more Guantanamos? Fine. The Jihadists first . No more Daniel Pearls,no more televised beheadings,no more USS Coles,no more IED’s, no more Balis, no more suicide bombers ,no more truck bombs,no more Beirut Marine Barracks, no more World Trade Centers. No more .
2. If they did not, and if they knew that the prisoners they were handing over to the Afghan authorities were going to be tortured or had a high likelihood of being or, if they were recklessly indifferent to whether they were tortured, they were acting not just in contravention to international law, but common humanity.
3. If they thought that there were reasons of high public policy that justified this behaviour, they could have defended it now,rather than, as ministers seem almost certainly to have, systematically tried to cover it up, and lie to the house of commons.
4. Their cover-up implies that their know that what they were doing was either shameful or illegal or both.
5. The Canadian military presumably knew, when it went to Afghanistan that it would take prisoners. It had a responsibility to ensure that those prisoners were kept securely and humanely, since the war was justified to the Canadian people as a war waged by a democratic people meant to spread democratic values. If the Canadian military did not treat prisoners in a manner consistent with the values held by the vast majority of the Canadian people, they violated the trust the Canadian people put in them.
6. Human beings torture, but torture, is never right, pace Dick Cheney. The village idiot who loves God is wiser than Aristotle, because the village idiot who loves God know that torture is never justified. Aristotle might reason by degrees and circumstances. He might, as he does, say that what makes a good citizen in a democracy are different virtues than what makes good citizens in oligarchies and aristocracies, but he cannot say unequivocally that torture is wrong. The village idiot who loves God know unequivocally that torture, in all times and in all places, is wrong. That's which he is wiser that Aristotle, and Dick Cheney, and Rick Hillyer and Peter McKay.
I would also be reluctant to say what the military should or should not do -were I -as very apparently Mr. Christian is -utterly without understanding of the rules under which the military operates.
The military was ordered by its civilian masters (The Government of Canada) to turn all prisonners over to the Afghan government.
Our government apparently issued this order to show support for the Afghan authority.
That this trust and support was misguided now appears obvious.
That the military was obligated to adhere to the instructions of the Canadian government is equally obvious.
I neither know nor care what the `village idiot`might have done in these circumstances.
Our military followed its legal orders.
Parliament, the Conservatives, or the Minister of Defence may be at fault here -but our military certainly isn`t.
Jock Williams Yogi 13
William
The other truly appalling aspect of this whole incident is the governing party's attempt to smear the reputation of the messenger. This seems to be a pattern with this government, whether it's around nuclear energy, the RCMP, or - in this case - our obligations under the Geneva Conventions relative to the treatment of prisoners of war.