The Moderate Republican

Column Fodder By Michael Edwards

Michael Edwards lives in Houston, Texas. He writes an occasional journal entry called "Column Fodder" on Livejournal. Here is his latest on the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American troops.

Column Fodder: Aberrant Practices Start At Home

Many years ago, when I was first joining the fraternity, I was questioned, reprimanded, and humiliated as I sought to join. I was also blindfolded, paraded around and forced to continue standing under interrogation. For many who've joined a fraternity, or a secret society, this is known as "paying the dues". There were several rituals, both acknowledged and not that one would have to go through to reach membership. In some ways, it was considered the active member's privilege to give back some of what he or she went through to the pledges attempting to join.

At that time, I thought I had it good. When I failed my first time to finish pledgeship, I found the second time was much easier. No, not in the projects, or the learning, but in the mental and physical abuse we took as pledges. The fraternity, along with the state had gotten much more strict in enforcing hazing rules, eliminating several former requirements. When I had been inducted anew, my first instinct was to go quickly to greet every active and dignitary in the room with a quick, but degrading greeting, telling them that you were a lowly pledge. I was quickly told that we didn't do that anymore, not only couldn't we be called pledges, by an edict of the national office, state law forbade the mad dash greeting as hazing, since the actives didn't have to do the same.

It was just one of many changes that came over the next few years, forcing fraternities to make a choice, clean up, or drive your hazing deeper underground. Things that I thought were right when I was candidate trainer have been knocked out of the program, but yet I still recall the hidden box of photographs, kept deep in the fraternity room that showed pledges in the 1960's being stripped to their underwear, honeyed up, and feathered, before being made to run across campus. I remember when I started college in the eighties there were still pledges forces to dress alike, and walk in lines across campus, and you'd always be able to check their lines, because the shirts were numbered. Often they were forced to chant or sing as they went along. As the years went by, the lines vanished.

The argument was always that we wanted to join, so we would put up with this bull, and in many cases, it was the truth. those that fell out, or were cast out were unworthy, and couldn't take the heat. Today hazing is frowned upon, but every year there's another chapter of my own fraternity that's under investigation for it. Last year I spoke at a fraternity conference, and I went on after the now obligatory hazing discussion. Sure, it's boring, but every year I find something new has been added to the list, and as I go through the checklist, at least half i've either had done to me, or done to someone else, and this is the mild stuff. Things like scavenger hunts and skits and demerits. There's harrowing tales of abuse, mutilation and even death from hazing. in a perverse way, the talk would be funny if it wasn't so damn necessary.

Hazing costs fraternities good people, revenue, and college campuses. Colleges take risks every year, wondering if they are doing enough to stop hazing from the fraternities and sororities to the sports teams or corps of cadets. Insurance companies are raking in millions from all of them, in order to pay for huge lawsuits when students get hurt or even die. States, putting up the tab for much of higher education in America pass laws to try to limit their liability as well. Hazing costs.

It's that thought of "they had it comin'" that fuels hazing. It's easy to marginalize the new guy, easy to say they aren't one of us, that they are less than us. It's very easy to do something that will humiliate someone when you de-humanize them. Fraternities, sports teams and cadets add the years of tradition as a justifier for the acts. "I had to do it, and so will you," is a argument used for years and years to continue acts of idiocy, just for the amusement of those who are holding the keys. It's bad behavior, it's flawed thinking and it's time it was over.

Then in the news for the last week, we've been subjected to pictures of imprisoned Iraqis subjected to the same sort of childish acts that you would expect of frat brothers. Stripped naked and put in humiliating positions, wired up and placed on a box, being told you will be electrocuted if you jump, having patrol dogs attack you when you are helpless to defend yourself. Hazing is alive and well in our armed forces, and what easier way to justify it than saying these men and women are prisoners, they are our enemy, and "look what they've done to us."

It's interesting how some have tried to justify such blatant stupidity. I heard the argument from Laura Ingraham the other day that Iraqi soldiers during the first round of fighting maimed, sexually abused and killed our soldiers, like that was an excuse. Rush Limbaugh, who usually thinks out what he's going to say a little more, wrote that the guards were just "blowing off some steam". Even Army officials didn't deal with the problem for over two months, hoping to bury the incident in a memo with little or no disciplinary actions until pictures of the deeds end up all across the world.

So now we're left holding the bag, where the actions of a few have colored the opinion of millions. The war, already under constant scrutiny the world over, is now drawing fire from folks on all sides of the fence. Where we went into Iraq under at least the notion of ousting a despotic ruler, we now have little room to talk about moral high ground. We use a prison already known to be one of Saddam's torture chambers,and it seems that no-one was trained in proper jailing techniques. Why make an already notorious place even worse? Perhaps it was out of a sense of tradition?

My father, who's been a jailer for the last ten years, tells of training and safeguarding to prevent these types of events from happening in our domestic jails. While many have lamented the "luxury" life that many prisoners get these days, again it's lawsuits and legislation to prevent abuses in the system that have lead us here. Millions have been spent to insure we treat people with dignity and respect, it's something that we sometimes have to be dragged, kicking and screaming to put in reforms, but we do hold ourselves to some standards. Our track record on human rights is not as good as some, but better than most.

When we come into a country, and tell them, we have a better way, there's going to be scrutiny. We've already lost points by invading and occupying the region. We're the outsiders bringing our ideals, or notions and morality to a different land. There's bound to be skepticism at best, hatred at worst. Knowing that this challenge exists, shouldn't it be emphasized to your troops that they should be acting with the utmost caution? When in the last few days we haven't flattened Fallujia, even though it's in our power to do so, when we've attempted to bridge gaps between the differing peoples of the region, where we've looked for local leaders to fill in power and security gaps, how do you let a group of Animal House jailers ruin what already is the most difficult PR effort in the world?

The Arab world is outraged, and the Western world is following suit with condemnation. While the West may eventually forgive when the mission is finished, the Arab world will not. People who were already not viewed with trust suddenly a perceived to be worse than the dictator before them, and people who already held so many grudges just got another match for the fire. Even in this country, where over half of the people support the war, as I do, there is a tarnish to the whole thing. It will now be a lot more difficult to finish this operation.

Where Iraqis talk about the torture punishments doled out by Saddam, here we have incidences of nudity and humiliation, and it's caught on camera. Where most Iraqis would understand the physical torment, a region that is sexually repressed, and involved in such a patriarchal system, this is devastating. Here women are pointing at male genitalia and laughing. One man who had been in the prison under both American and Saddam's watch said he would rather be shot between the eyes by his former tormentors than have to be humiliated again by his county's liberators.

From my own experience, the psychological mind games were always worse than the physical challenges. As I was pledging, the women joining the sorority always seemed to have it worse. For some reason the sisters could always come up with tricks that hurt much deeper than any bruise one might get. Telling them that their projects were destroyed, challenging them on their appearance, openly questioning their motives. I was always wondering how they reconciled the damage to the trust that was needed between the actives. Sometimes you could tell that some of those wounds never healed, and it made the sisterhood a lot weaker than it could have been.

There's a cost to hazing, whether it's in good will, insurance money, or an entire global operation. Right now the actions of a few, a few who said, it's not important, they aren't like us, are creating a backlash. those who set them selves up as holier-than-thou need to know that they are being watched. The world watches for the chink in your armor, the hole in your argument, the hypocrisy in your morality. If we say we're going to free Iraq, we need to do it. If we say that we are better than what went before, then we have to prove it. We aren't perfect, but it's surprising that we haven't even learned the simple lessons we preach at home.

So where does that leave us? We have a problem that hasn't been dealt with quick enough, nor with the look that we actually take this seriously. With so much of the war's questions, the answers never seem to come, the accountability never seems to be addressed. If we seriously think we're there to at least finish up by doing something positive for the world community, like I do, then we have to mete out punishment quickly and appropriately. The only way to show the Arab world that we're serious, that we do practice what we preach is to condemn the actions of these people, and deal with it like a democracy does it, with trials and punishments. People should be held accountable. These people should have been two months ago when the Army drafted the document on the hazing. If found guily, they should be in prision - and they should already be out of the army. These people aren't fit to serve, and stain the reputation of hundreds of thousands of service men and women who do stand for us around the world.

Of course, President Bush's words to Arab television earlier today seemed to be more of a slap on the wrist, than taking any definitive action, or really trying to prove that we're serious about stopping hazing. He stated that that's not the America that he knows, that these are "aberrant practices", but yet the building blocks of hazing, those little things that keep people in their place. It keeps people as less than human. Allows people to think these acts of violence are OK. They are still here, lurking in the shadows, and there's little more done than talk and looking away, just like a college president that doesn't deal with a problem until it's already been thrown into disaster. It's something we must not allow to take place in Iraq. It's the same type of attitude that ends up letting this type of foolishness get swept under the rug year after year.

It's what empowers stupid fratboys to say there's no harm done. After all, who does it hurt?

Posted by Dennis at May 6, 2004 09:48 AM