Kevin Collins: Neo-con ideology the cause of Abu Ghraib

In a 1971 Stanford study, college student volunteers not so different from you and me assumed the roles of prisoners and guards in a mock jail. Even though all participants were carefully screened for personality disorders, the planned two-week experiment had to be called off after only six days because of abuses committed by the guards -- abuses that Stanford Professor Philip Zimbardo (who ran the study) has admitted are disturbingly like those alleged in Iraq. You may have already heard of the Zimbardo prison experiment. But in the wake of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, its lessons have never before been so relevant as they are today.

In the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib scandal, the dominant question is that of who bears responsibility for the crimes. The soldiers who perpetrated them are already being court-martialed, and their immediate supervisors will surely also face consequences, as is certainly proper. President Bush and many in his party would like to see blame stop there, but others are seeking blame higher in the chain of command.

While some have tried to portray the abuses as the work of a few evil men and women, the Zimbardo study showed that descent into depravity depends not upon the personality types of those involved, but rather upon the situation into which they are placed. The situation in the study was one of near-absolute power, with few instructions on how to wield it. The matter is now to determine the nature of the situation in Abu Ghraib.

There has been outrage from both sides of the Congressional aisle, and investigators of all sorts are inquiring into who, if anyone, ordered the abuses and what responsibility the administration bears. Some trace the blame to Maj. Gen. Geoffery Miller, formerly in charge of military intelligence at Guant namo Bay where Taliban and al-Qaida suspects are being detained. The Army's internal report, written by Maj. Gen. Anthony Taguba, quotes Maj. Gen. Miller: "Detention operations must act as an enabler for interrogation." Instructions to "soften up" detainees for interrogation are where some find blame for the soldiers' conduct.

Others trace responsibility higher up the ranks, even to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Reporter Seymour Hersh wrote recently in The New Yorker that after interrogators had failed to get useful intelligence from prisoners at Abu Ghraib, administration officials decided to treat prisoners there the same way they treated unlawful combatants in Guant namo Bay, who were deemed not subject to the Geneva Conventions, despite the fact that prisoners at Abu Ghraib are clearly prisoners of a conventional war. Hersh and others have argued that this policy set the stage for prisoner abuse.

Whether the administration authorized the torture at Abu Ghraib is a question for further inquiry. But in the end, it does not matter whether the soldiers were acting on orders or were left to their own devices. Either way, the Bush administration must be held accountable for something else, for while we may not know yet what specific instructions were given to the 372nd Military Police Company, we do know what instructions the soldiers were not given: how to run a prison.

The soldiers charged with abuses are from a reservist unit that from nearly all accounts did not receive specific training in operating a prison or in the rules and regulations that normally govern treatment of prisoners of war. While their individual actions are inexcusable, given the results of the Zimbardo study, it perhaps should not be surprising that a group of soldiers, stressed by war, given near-absolute power and provided few instructions, would behave the way they did. The abuses at Abu Ghraib are the direct result of inadequate training of soldiers who were hurriedly called to duty because of lack of planning for necessary troop numbers, and this is surely the fault of administration officials.

Moreover, this is not an isolated problem. Instead, it is symbolic of a systematic lack of planning for the post-war in Iraq. The neo-conservative belief in the righteousness of American global hegemony led many, even some old-fashioned conservatives, to believe that our tanks would roll down Baghdad streets lined with Iraqis waving American flags. This fantasy has faded as the reality of an insurgent campaign has set in. In the wake of Abu Ghraib, even writers like David Brooks and Andrew Sullivan -- conservative stalwarts who supported the war -- have conceded that these beliefs were nothing more than idealistic delusions. However, President Bush has yet to perform such soul-searching, at least not publicly.

There is plenty of blame to go around for the abuses in Abu Ghraib. Yes, the seven military police standing trial should be held accountable for their actions, and the administration itself may deserve some share of the blame. But come November, what the American people need to ask is not how to divide responsibility for a scandal that may have already fatally wounded our standing in the Arab world and promises to worsen still. Rather, America must ask whether we want to keep in charge of our foreign policy an administration guided by an ideology that has blinded our policy planners to reality, an ideology that even conservatives have conceded was and is dead wrong.

With even conservatives critiquing the administration's ideology, it is still possible that President Bush could embrace a more rational foreign policy. However, such a possibility would require a radical departure from his current course, and as the President has declared his support for his Secretary of Defense, there is no sign that such a change is coming soon. At least, that is, until November.

Kevin Collins is a junior political science major from Milwaukee, Wis., and editorial page editor of The Summer Pennsylvanian.

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