Blame the Iraqi prison scandal on a failure to command
The senior person charged thus far is Ivan L. Frederick, a staff sergeant. In an MP company, a person of his rank is normally placed in charge of a squad of 11 soldiers. I refuse to believe that no leader above Frederick was aware of or complicit in the abuses that were apparently widespread throughout the prison. While certain officers were relieved of their commands and other leaders were given letters of reprimand, the failure of unit leaders, from company to brigade, is stunning.
- James Villa
It's becoming clear that the Abu Ghraib scandal is now a full-blown exercise in damage control. "What can we do to make the public outrage go away?" seems to be the prevailing m.o. Along these lines, it's much easier to find a few minor players to sacrifice on the altar of public outrage than to actually deal with is most likely the real problem here.
A military prison is a difficult place to work under the best of peacetime cirucmstances. In wartime, it can be chaos unlike anything you might imagine. I know this because during my time in the Army Reserve, I was a 2LT in a Military Police confinement facilities unit in Rochester, MN. In a different time, my unit could well have been at Abu Ghraib or a similar confinement facility. While I never served in combat, I am familiar with the mission of the 372 MP Company, because my unit's mission was the same. This accounts for why this controversy is something that hits particularly close to home.
In any confinement facility, there are many times more inmates than soldiers and command staff. The key to effective management is a strong and efficient command and control structure. Without that in place, chaos is sure to follow, and Abu Ghraib is an excellent example of that. James Villa commanded the 372nd MP Company, the unit at the center of the Abu Ghraib scandal, from 1989-1992. His point of view is one that deserves to be heard.
The 372nd has approximately 150 soldiers and is divided into five platoons, four of which consist of MPs. The company commander is directly responsible for all actions taken by his soldiers, or those that they fail to take. The 372nd's commander and the relevant platoon leader either knew or should have known of the actions of their subordinates, as should have their noncommissioned officers. All these leaders failed in their most basic responsibilities of supervising their soldiers in the performance of their duties.
Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, commander of the 800th MP Brigade, which ran the prison, has spent most of the past week on television telling the same story: that she never knew about this, that her MPs were working for military intelligence people, that she was not to blame. Had she spent as much time leading her troops as she apparently has preparing for appearances on MSNBC (with her lawyer in tow), the Army might have stemmed these incidents early on. I was taught in ROTC that a leader is responsible for what his or her unit does or fails to do. I was also taught that a leader takes responsibility for his or her soldiers. Either by commission or omission, Karpinski and her chain of command have failed those soldiers in her brigade and, ultimately, this country.
Of course, individual soldiers are certainly responsible and must answer for their own illegal and unbecoming conduct. If they obeyed orders they knew to be illegal, they bear significant responsibility. To suggest, however, that the knowlege of this behavior did not extend up the chain of command is ludicrous. Even on the odd chance that this was somehow a "contained" operation, it happened on Karpinski's watch. As any officer (or, as in my case, former officer) knows, you are ultimately responsible for everything that either does or does not happen within your command.
In a combat situation, a Military Policeman is responsible for ensuring the safety and segregation of enemy combatants under international conventions governing the conduct of war. It's not a particularly onerous set of rules.
Like all MPs, the soldiers in the 372nd have received basic instruction on handling enemy prisoners of war. The most essential instruction regarding prisoners is the "Five S's": search, segregate, silence, safeguard and speed to the rear. These simple directions clearly state that an MP must ensure that a prisoner is disarmed and, once rendered harmless, protected as a noncombatant and moved back for processing. While serving in Kuwait in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, my soldiers took Iraqi prisoners, and our responsibility was to safely transport them to camps in Saudi Arabia and protect them from vengeful Kuwaitis.
This is a basic function of an MP unit on the battlefield.
Certainly, the few soldiers implicated to date are not indicative of the professionalism displayed by most of the 372nd, and indeed all Military Police personnel serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have, however, succeeded in tarnishing the reputation of every soldier who has served in both of these theaters of operation. They must be held accountable- and if they are to be held accountable, then their chain of command must be as well. To do less would be to sacrifice the few for the sins of the many. While this may be politically expedient and save a few high-ranking careers, it will in the end solve nothing.
