Let's talk Accountability

So very briefly, I’d like to consider the role of accountability in our current government. Frankly put, there seems to be very little, if any at all. I’ll start the discussion with the reality of prison abuse at both Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and US prison detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

I’m quite sure the average person has seen plenty of instances where employee incompetence has led to the termination of their Supervisors. Any sports fan knows that sub-par play amongst teammates can cause a great Coach to be fired, often unjustly. This just seems to be the way things work. If you’re in charge, and your unit of workers fails in their mission, then both you and your workers are responsible for the failure of the whole. And as the figure-head, it is highly likely that your workers failed because they weren’t given the proper guidance by you. So you get the blame and the pink slip.

Let’s take, for example, the recent corruption scandals at companies like Enron, Tyco, and WorldCom. At the end of the day, accountability and responsibility for corruption didn’t fall on the shoulders of the lay-workers who had first-hand contact with the customers, but rather at the feet of the CEO’s. The question is then, why doesn’t this “common-law” logic of responsibility work with high-ranking officials in the Armed Services and in the White House.

In the past few days, judgments have been handed out concerning the heinous acts of prison abuse at Abu Ghraib. And of all the people to punish for the crimes that took place there, the only significantly high-ranking military official punished was a woman, Brigadier General Janice Karpinski. (As a sidenote, it never ceases to amaze me how a minority is seemingly always to blame for major criminal acts, whether minority by race or by gender.) You mean to tell me, that with that ominous humiliating circus going on in that prison, the only person who knew about it was this woman? You mean to tell me that the only person that should be castigated for these crimes is Karpinski and a handful of low level Army Private’s? How criminally unjust!

And with respect to Guantanamo, where is the outrage? I could write volumes about the label of “enemy combatants” given to the detainees there, which essentially allows the USA to forego the Geneva Conventions with respect to treatment (I mean, did we forget that enemy combatants are human too?), but maybe I'll tackle that another time.

However, we should not overlook the reality of the reports we have heard (those of us who dig through the news like a dog searching for a bone) coming from there. And to be kind, I won’t be very graphic about some of the things I’ve read. But to give you an idea, apparently female officers there are using their “female cycle” against the Muslim men at Guantanamo to offend them, in a sick attempt to pry information out of them. And Newsweek just reported that a copy of the Qur’an was desecrated at the base, which obviously infuriated Muslims in several countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Palestine.

And that brings me back to the original point: Who is going to take responsibility for these criminal missteps in detainee treatment? Who will take the blame for such lack of international integrity? Apparently no one with the power to change these things.

In my opinion, whether or not Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and company knew about all of these atrocities, there should still be serious reprimanding. If they didn't know about it, then that indicates that there is a lack of good management skills. And if they did know about these things, then there is some very serious corruption amongst high ranking military officials.

How can we in this great nation allow the weak and defenseless to be charged with these crimes? Why do we allow Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez (who helped author laws that lend themselves to prison abuse) to skirt around the reality that they are the guilty parties? It's truly a shame that low ranking officials have to take the fall for their pusillanimous and incompetent management of a fatally costly war.

As Spiderman’s Uncle Ben pointed out, “with great power comes great responsibility.” So those in positions of power have to bare the responsibility of deviant actions by those that they have power over. And why not, they take the credit when things go right?

-Maelstrom