is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.

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Because Rumsfeld was at the top, he should now be at the bottom.

Gus and I saw Standard Operating Procedure yesterday afternoon, the new Errol Morris documentary about Abu Ghraib. If I had to think up some boring adjectives to describe it I guess I�d say that it was interesting, but not good. It is inherently horrifying to sit through the stories that must be told if one is going to narrate the events at Abu Ghraib under American control� as bad, perhaps, as it would be to sit through an account of events of Abu Ghraib under the lead of Saddam Hussein�and what a sad truth it is that both stories are so dire.

So it was interesting� to see all the key players tell their own stories, and meet some of the bystanders, see more of the photos, and so on. But it wasn�t �good.� The documentary fails to do anything. My guess is that most people who go to see the film will already know everything that the film reveals. The set of facts covered was all over the news, unavoidably, after all. But what about the things that the American public could stand to learn more about? Like how the military chain of command works, why it works that way, why that form of command is necessary and often not a bad thing, and how it changes our ideas about who is responsible for what happened. Another thing we could stand to spend some more time considering: we have a bunch of young powerless scapegoats in jail instead of the people whose commands lead to their behavior. All that stuff, if covered at all, was done so obliquely that you could fail to get the point. And since that, to me, IS the point, I was disappointed by the film.

In the military there is a chain of command. Military personnel are socialized into a form of order where commands are followed without question. This isn�t because the military wants a bunch of dopes around. It�s because the military operates in times of war and threat, and it wouldn�t be safe for each individual to make his or her own decision about a battle plan. The chain of command saves military lives and wins battles. Classically, it is always only the commanding officer who is at fault for ethical lapses.

Don�t get me wrong. I do think that most (but not all) of the lower level people who ended up in jail deserve to be in jail. Even if it is true that they would have ended up in jail for disobeying orders, even if it is true that they would have had their lives made miserable for reporting abuses, even if it is true that they were young and na�ve and trusted that commanders knew what they were doing� it is fitting that they spend some time in military jail to pay for what cannot NOT be thought of as an ethical lapse. It is permissible to refuse to obey a criminal order. But it is not always so easy to tell the difference between a difficult job and a criminal order when you are in the business of war. Sometimes it is perfectly fair and just for someone who couldn�t be sure to end up paying for an error in judgment.

Of this I am certain: Donald Rumsfeld should be in jail. And so should every commander between him and the crew of scapegoats who did end up in jail. If that had happened, we�d have a better picture of what went wrong at Abu Ghraib. The story communicated to us by the way things ended up is: what happened at Abu Ghraib was a mistake made by a bunch of dumb racist military underlings who embarrassed �America� by somehow failing to understand that all human beings have dignity. But what really happened at Abu Ghraib was that various people in the Bush administration wanted information about Saddam Hussein no matter what the price, and that pressure was passed down the chain with a furious force, with the end result that a bunch of dumb possibly racist people were left in charge of �softening up� prisoners for interrogation, without oversight, with vague instructions about what was and was not allowed, and all the while it was known all around the facility that most prisoners would end up being tortured anyway.

You know what is really embarrassing? That the country that at least used to be famous around the world for being based on an ideal of freedom and equality for all is being run by a bunch of bigoted short-sighted people who apparently do NOT believe that all human beings should be treated with dignity. It is embarrassing for all of us because what they do defines, in part, who we are.

Lynddie England was 20 years old. She was coached into being in some of the key photos by an older man she was in love with. The photos were cropped to leave out some other people who were involved. And so on. She deserves to be in jail. But her story isn�t the story we think it is.

If I were in my office right now I could post a scan of the declassified memo where Rumsfeld signs off on some of the torture policies. One of the guidelines is that individuals should not be made to stand up for more than four hours at a time. At the bottom of the page, next to his signature, is a handwritten notation from Rumsfeld, saying: �why only four hours? I routinely stand for eight hours a day.� He is an idiot and a criminal who shouldn�t have power over an ice cream truck let alone a military operation.

After we left the film we ran into Heather and Homay, who had been at the film at the same time. It was a lovely spring day in Philadelphia, so we decided to go get an outdoor beer. We sat around discussing law and politics and academia, spiced up with funny stories about old parties and the like. Then Gus and I came home and made a yummy tofu/vegetable coconut curry over rice. All in all a good day. We didn�t really speak about the documentary until this morning, when we decided it had failed, and then I wrote my tirade.

I did think it was good at the end of the film that Morris put together a bunch of photos, had an interrogation expert look at them, and differentiate between which photos showed criminal acts and which showed standard operating procedure. Gus said that maybe the film tried to do too much and so it didn�t do anything particularly well. That�s a mistake of focus, and of editing, that is easy to make. But it is a lethal mistake, and usually Morris errs on the other side of the line between focus and chaos.

Today we�re going to get me some birthday cake. Tomorrow it�s back to New York for meetings and work.

12:18 p.m. - May 26, 2008

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