| WWW,
FEBRUARY 2005 - In this in-depth interview
with Dr. Stan, Paul Collins goes deep into
the mind-set that led American soldiers
commit torutre and make photo's in Abu
Ghraip which went all over the world. Also
included is an in-depth article.
Elite
Thought and Iraqi Prisoner Abuse
by Paul David
Collins
The case of
prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib is the product
of ruling class thought, which has
metastasized and spread throughout America's
military establishment.
Lurking in the Hearts of Men
The Shadow, the fictional hero
of pulp magazines and classic radio shows,
used to begin every show with the rhetorical
question, "Who knows what evil lurks in
the hearts of men?" Recent reports of
prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib have had the
world asking the same question. According to
a United States Army report, the abuses
included:
a. Punching, slapping, and kicking
detainees; jumping on their naked feet;
b. Videotaping and photographing naked
male and female detainees;
c. Forcibly arranging detainees in
various sexually explicit positions for
photographing;
d. Forcing detainees to remove their
clothing and keeping them naked for several
days at a time;
e. Forcing naked male detainees to wear
women's underwear;
f. Forcing groups of male detainees to
masturbate themselves while being
photographed and videotaped;
g. Arranging naked male detainees in a
pile and then jumping on them;
h. Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE
Box, with a sandbag on his head, and
attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and
penis to simulate electric torture;
i. Writing "I am a Rapest"
(sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to
have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow
detainee, and then photographing him naked;
j. Placing a dog chain or strap around a
naked detainee's neck and having a female
Soldier pose for a picture;
k. A male MP guard having sex with a
female detainee;
l. Using military working dogs (without
muzzles) to intimidate and frighten
detainees, and in at least one case biting
and severely injuring a detainee;
m. Taking photographs of dead Iraqi
detainees (Taguba, 2004).
No doubt, the psychology that motivated
these atrocities will be examined for years
to come. Already, social psychologists have
drawn parallels between Abu Ghraib and the
famous simulated prison experiment conducted
by Philip G. Zimbardo at Stanford University
in the summer of 1971. Zimbardo wanted to
find out what happened when you put good
people in a bad place. Would humanity
overcome evil or would evil overcome
humanity? To test these questions, Zimbardo
recruited students in creating a facsimile
of a prison. Certain students were
designated "prisoners" while
others were designated "guards."
Initially intended to be a two-week
experiment, the project had to be aborted
after only six days. Why? The
"guards" became abusive and
sadistic while the "prisoners"
became seriously depressed. Faced with the
potential of worse abuses occurring,
Zimbardo prematurely halted the experiment.
While Zimbardo's case study is certainly
pertinent to understanding the tragedy of
Abu Ghraib, another case study might prove
more profitable. This case study, however,
does not involve overt abuse or simulated
prison experiments. Instead, as a whole,
this body of work constitutes a collective
psychological profile of a small, shadowy
segment of the population. That insular and
exclusive segment is the power elite.
Authoritarian Hierarchicalization
In his seminal book entitled The
Power Elite, sociologist C. Wright Mills
defines this wealthy and powerful stratum of
society:
The power elite is composed of men
whose positions enable them to transcend
the ordinary environments of ordinary men
and women; they are in positions to make
decisions having major consequences.
Whether they do or do not make such
decisions is less important than the fact
that they do occupy such pivotal
positions: their failure to act, their
failure to make decisions, is itself an
act that is often of greater consequence
than the decisions they do make. For they
are in command of the major hierarchies
and organisations of modern society. They
rule the big corporations. They run the
machinery of the state and claim its
prerogatives. They direct the military
establishment. They occupy the strategic
command posts of the social structure, in
which are now centered the effective means
of the power and the wealth and the
celebrity which they enjoy (Mills, pp.
3-4, 1956).
It should not be lost on the astute
reader that, in addition to running the
various other machinations comprising modern
society, the power elite also "direct
the military establishment." Because of
its firm grip on this institution, the power
elite plays a large part in sculpting the
paradigms that govern the military
establishment. This transformation from
within the military is the direct corollary
of authoritarian hierarchalization. In The
Architecture of Modern Political Power,
Daniel Pouzzner explains this concept:
When a superior determines to
encourage, discourage, demand, or forbid
among his subordinates a mode of action,
thought, or awareness, those modes will
tend to be encouraged or discouraged among
everyone below him in the hierarchy. If
that superior is a nuclear establishment
leader, then these modes will tend to be
encouraged or discouraged throughout most
of society. In this case, only those not
within the conventional hierarchy of
civilized society escape the brunt of the
behavioral tyranny (Pouzzner, p. 17,
2001).
As modes of thought and behavior are
selectively encouraged or discouraged, those
who occupy the lower layers of hierarchical
strata begin to tangibly enact the vision of
those in the upper layers. In other words,
the world above shapes the world below. This
is accomplished through a Pavlovian system
of reward and punishment. The lower level
individual notices "whatever
characteristics favor ascension to higher
echelons" and adopts this mode of
thought or behavior (Pouzzner, pp. 17-18,
2001). After all, given the lowly conditions
of his/her current tier in the hierarchical
framework, who would not want to ascend. Oh,
and just who determines what characteristics
guarantee ascension? The elite above, of
course! Pouzzner explains:
The characteristics are arbitrarily
dictated by those who are already in the
upper echelons of the hierarchy, and once
those who exhibit them have ascended, the
characteristics are themselves efficiently
spread through society (Pouzzner, pp.
17-18, 2001).
Thus, a meme (a contagious idea) is
implanted and the status quo is born. The
military establishment, with its
hierarchical configuration and Pavlovian
system of behavioral control, is the ideal
transmission belt for memes. Abu Ghraib
represents the final product of memetic
metastasis. The characteristics exhibited by
the torturers of Abu Ghraib were
"arbitrarily dictated by those who are
already in the upper echelons of the
hierarchy." Who controls the upper
echelons of the military's hierarchy? As
Mills has already made clear, it is the
power elite.
As Above, So Below
Indeed, the military's hierarchy
seems to conform with the Hermetic dictum of
"As above, so below." This prompts
a very disturbing question. If the soldiers
below were so horribly cruel, what modes of
thought and behavior were promulgated from
above? To answer this question, one must
examine the collective psychology of the
elite a little closer.
In the book, Secret and Suppressed:
Banned Ideas and Hidden History, Jim
Keith reprinted a document that supposedly
records much of the criminal activities of
the elite throughout history. Of the
manuscript, which he referred to as simply
"The Franciscan Document," Keith
stated the following:
It purports to be a secret history of
Western civilization gleaned from secret
documents in the Vatican library by a
member of the Franciscan order. The inked
imprint of a Vatican library entrance chit
affixed to the original document and
duplicated at the end of the article is a
strong indication that the author does
have access to Vatican sources… (Keith,
1993, pg. 215).
While some of the document's findings
maybe inaccurate or disinformation, its
author does provide a very precise
description of the psychology of the ruling
class. He writes:
The elite are an insular, clannish
clique, given to raging idiosyncrasies and
immense deposits of superstition. Their
insulation from the rest of us, and from
the world which we inhabit, has rendered
them emotionally undeveloped, incapable of
loving, of caring, of giving - to them,
the sacrifice of an innocent is no more
noteworthy than swatting of an annoying
fly, and eminently more useful (Keith, Secret
and Suppressed, 1993, pg.234).
The Franciscan's words should not be
dismissed as hyperbole. Indeed, several
elitist tracts bear out this contention. One
such tract is Silent Weapons for Quiet
Wars, the manual for elite control
authored by Hatford Van Dyke. The document
states that, in 1954, an issue of chief
concern amongst the elite was the problem of
managing the masses. The unknown writer
claims that the hidden rulers arrived at the
following conclusion:
Although the so-called "moral
issues" were raised, in view of the
law of natural selection it was agreed
that a nation or world of people who will
not use their intelligence are no better
than animals who do not have intelligence
(Keith, Secret and Suppressed,
1993, p. 203).
The elite surmised that:
…the low-class elements of society
must be brought under total control, i.e.
must be housebroken, trained, and assigned
a yoke and long-term social duties from a
very early age, before they have the
opportunity the propriety of the matter
(Keith, Secret and Suppressed,
1993, p. 203).
Other elite treatises have expressed
identical sentiments and prescribed similar
methods. There is no more appropriate
example than Zbigniew Brzezinski's The
Grand Chessboard, which delineates the
geostrategy that he believes will insure the
Western elite's global primacy. The methods
and means prescribed by Brzezinski reflect
the elite's overwhelming disdain for those
they wish to subjugate. Painting a vivid
portrait of his geostrategy, Brzezinski
writes:
…to put it in terminology that
harkens back to the more brutal age of
ancient empires, the grand imperatives of
imperial geostrategy are to prevent
collusion and maintain security dependence
among the vassals, to keep tributaries
pliant and protected, and to keep the
barbarians from coming together
(Brzezinski, 1997, p. 40).
"Vassals?"
"Barbarians?" Indeed, such
terminology does recall a more brutal age.
Those with the slightest modicum of moral
compunction would gasp with outrage at such
words. Yet, they are more than words, as is
evidenced by America's military expedition
into Afghanistan shortly after September 11.
Returning to The Grand Chessboard,
Brzezinski refers to an area known as the
"Eurasian Balkans," a region that
must be controlled in order to insure
American primacy. Afghanistan is nestled
comfortably within the "Eurasian
Balkans," thus making her a nation of
geostrategic significance (1997, pg. 124).
The transmission of Brzezinski's virulent
strain of thought to the military
establishment was tangibly evidenced by
America's invasion and subjugation of
Afghanistan.
As for the "barbarians" of
Afghanistan, the devastation visited upon
them could very well keep them from
"coming together" for many years.
No target was spared in the attempt to
capture or kill Bin Laden, civilians
included. In an article in the Toronto
Sun, Eric Margolis described some of the
results of the "war on terrorism":
To date, the U.S. has dropped 10,000
bombs on Afghanistan, killing sizable
numbers-in the range of 1,500-2,000,
according to Afghan sources. U.S. bombing
of cities, towns, and villages has driven
over 160,000 people into refugee camps
(pg. 1).
Inflicting such massive losses also
carries a psychological effect for the
"barbarians." It was the Western
elites' hope that, after sufficient
suffering had been induced, the average
Afghan would become tractable enough to be
"housebroken, trained, and assigned a
yoke and long-term social duties from a very
early age." Indeed, a new duty had been
assigned to the "vassals" of
Afghanistan… planting and harvesting
opium.
In 2000, Taliban leader Mullah Omar
decreed that opium production was illegal
(Harding, 2002). At the time, Afghanistan
was the largest producer of heroin and the
Taliban reaped enormous profits from the
trafficking of the drug (Harding, 2002). Any
number of motives could have underpinned
Mullah Omar's decision to ban opium,
including Islamic tradition, appeasement of
the international community, or increase in
heroin prices (Harding, 2000). Whatever the
case may be, much of the available data
suggests that opium production declined
significantly:
United Nations officials last month
confirmed that poppy production in
Afghanistan fell by 91% last year - from
82,172 hectares to 7,606, with most of
that grown in areas controlled by the
Northern Alliance (Harding, 2002).
Yet, with America's invasion of
Afghanistan and the installation of the
Northern Alliance as the dominant regime,
this trend has come to an abrupt halt:
One senior UN official based in
Kandahar said: "The Taliban ban was
implemented almost 100%. Already we
know that farmers are planting opium
again. Without any proper
enforcement, advocacy and assistance from
the donor community, the problem won't go
away" (Harding, 2002).
In the minds of the elites, Afghanis were
"barbarians" who were neglecting
their duties as loyal "vassals" on
the global drug plantation. Through
authoritarian hierarchalization, this
virulent strain of thought was promulgated
within America's military establishment. The
final result is a paradoxical one indeed.
Soldiers of a free constitutional republic
subjugated another country and enforced a
feudal form of control. The characteristics
of those in the upper echelons are made
painfully evident by the actions of their
surrogates on lower levels of the hierarchy.
As above, so below.
MacNamara and the "Moron
Corps"
There are even more examples of
when the elite have eagerly practiced what
they have preached concerning the masses.
These examples are almost too voluminous to
document. However, one case should be cited
to demonstrate that this mentality precedes
the post-September 11th world. This is the
case of Robert MacNamara and his "Moron
Corps."
MacNamara's practice of the elitist
tradition is plainly illustrated by his
approach to the question of military
recruitment. This Secretary of Defense
devised "a cynical recruitment gambit
aimed at the underclass known as ‘Project
100,000'" (MacPherson, 2002). Myra
MacPherson describes this dubious project:
Under his direction, an alternative
army was systematically recruited from the
ranks of those who had previously been
rejected for failing to meet the armed
services' physical and mental
requirements. Recruiters swept through
urban ghettos and Southern rural back
roads, even taking at least one youth with
an IQ of 62. In all, 354,000 men were
rolled up by Project 100,000. Touted as a
Great Society program that would provide
remedial education and an escape from
poverty, the recruitment program offered a
one-way ticket to Vietnam, where "the
Moron Corps," as they were
pathetically nicknamed by other soldiers,
entered combat in disproportionate
numbers. Although Johnson was a vociferous
civil rights advocate, the program took a
heavy toll on young blacks. A 1970 Defense
Department study disclosed that 41 percent
of Project 100,000 recruits were black,
compared with 12 percent in the armed
forces as a whole. What is more, 40
percent of Project 100,000 recruits were
trained for combat, compared with 25
percent for the services generally
(MacPherson, 2002).
It should be noted that MacNamara put
this plan together after privately declaring
that there was no way of winning the Vietnam
conflict (MacPherson, 2002). Project 100,000
took place in 1966, a time when the civil
rights movement was beginning to gain
momentum. Even with the cry for equality
going out everywhere, elite MacNamara was
still willing to wage class warfare.
Peters' "Warrior"
Thesis: Indoctrinating the Military
Establishment
Recall C. Wright Mills' contention
that the power elite wields a substantial
amount of control over the military. With
the exercise of this control, elitist
thought has gradually permeated the armed
forces. No doubt, many individuals have
acted as conduits for the instillation of
the ruling class paradigm within the
military establishment. Perhaps one of the
best examples of the elite's meme
transmitters is Ralph Peters, a particularly
smug Army Major with a penchant for
unabashedly elitist rhetoric. Peters'
elitist evangel is most thoroughly
delineated in his article entitled "The
New Warrior Class." The article can be
found in Parameters Magazine, the
official publication of the Army War
College. He begins the tract with the
following remarks:
The soldiers of the United States Army
are brilliantly prepared to defeat other
soldiers. Unfortunately, the enemies we
are likely to face through the rest of
this decade and beyond will not be
"soldiers," with the disciplined
modernity that term conveys in
Euro-America, but
"warriors"--erratic primitives
of shifting allegiance, habituated to
violence, with no stake in civil order.
Unlike soldiers, warriors do not play by
our rules, do not respect treaties, and do
not obey orders they do not like. Warriors
have always been around, but with the rise
of professional soldieries their
importance was eclipsed. Now, thanks to a
unique confluence of breaking empire,
overcultivated Western consciences, and a
worldwide cultural crisis, the warrior is
back, as brutal as ever and distinctly
better-armed (Peters, 1994).
Who are the "erratic
primitives" that constitute the
"new warrior class?" Peters
states: "Most warriors emerge from four
social pools which exist in some form in all
significant cultures" (Peters, 1994).
He proceeds to enumerate the four social
pools and their respective warrior
offspring:
First-pool warriors come, as they
always have, from the underclass (although
their leaders often have fallen from the
upper registers of society). The archetype
of the new warrior class is a male who has
no stake in peace, a loser with little
education, no legal earning power, no
abiding attractiveness to women, and no
future. With gun in hand and the spittle
of nationalist ideology dripping from his
mouth, today's warrior murders those who
once slighted him, seizes the women who
avoided him, and plunders that which he
would never otherwise have possessed
(Peters, 1994).
In other words, the
"first-pool" of "erratic
primitives" is composed of unattractive
and patriotic males who suffer the
misfortune of occupying a lower layer of
socioeconomic stratum.
Peters proceeds to examine the
"second pool warriors":
…as society's preparatory structures
such as schools, formal worship systems,
communities, and families are disrupted,
young males who might otherwise have led
productive lives are drawn into the
warrior milieu. These form a second pool.
For these boys and young men, deprived of
education and orientation, the company of
warriors provides a powerful behavioral
framework (Peters, 1994).
As the elite co-opts traditional
institutions, Peters foresees the emergence
of youthful dissenters. These younger
"erratic primitives" are potential
recruits for the "warriors." They,
too, must be expunged. Reiterating his
globalist Weltanschauung, Peters proceeds to
identify patriots as the next class of
"warrior":
The third pool of warriordom consists
of the patriots. These may be men who
fight out of strong belief, either in
ethnic, religious, or national superiority
or endangerment, or those who have
suffered a personal loss in the course of
a conflict that motivates them to take up
arms (Peters, 1994).
This particular variety of
"warrior" would probably oppose
the amalgamation of its respective
nation-state into the elite's world
dictatorship. Therefore, it must be
eradicated as well. Finally, Peters reveals
the fourth "pool" of
"warriors":
Dispossessed, cashiered, or otherwise
failed military men form the fourth and
most dangerous pool of warriors. Officers,
NCOs, or just charismatic privates who
could not function in a traditional
military environment, these men bring
other warriors the rudiments of the
military art--just enough to inspire faith
and encourage folly in many cases,
although the fittest of these men become
the warrior chieftains or warlords with
whom we must finally cope (Peters, 1994).
These soldiers of the "obsolete
military paradigm" have no place in the
elite's military establishment. The duty of
the new soldier no longer involves the
protection of nation, family, or the
traditional way of life. These are outdated
constructs embraced only by the
"warriors" awaiting their coming
extermination. Thus, the soldier of the past
also constitutes a threat.
According to Peters, the "erratic
primitives" that comprise this emergent
"warrior" class represent a global
epidemic:
Worldwide, the new warrior class
already numbers in the millions. If the
current trend toward national dissolution
continues, by the end of the century there
may be more of these warriors than
soldiers in armies worthy of the name.
While exact figures will never be
available, and statistics-junkies can
quibble endlessly as to how many warriors
are really out there, the forest looks
dark and ominous enough without counting
each last tree. And perhaps the worst news
comes right out of Macbeth: the
trees are moving (Peters, 1994).
Peters predicts a period of protracted
conflict with these "warriors":
The US Army will fight warriors far
more often than it fights soldiers in the
future. This does not mean the Army should
not train to fight other organized
militaries--they remain the most lethal,
although not the most frequent, threat.
But it would be foolish not to recognize
and study the nasty little men who will
haunt the brutal little wars we will be
called upon to fight within the career
spans of virtually every officer reading
this text (Peters, 1994).
To counter this threat, Peters recommends
the following prescriptive measures:
Although there are nearly infinite
variations, this type of threat generally
requires a two-track approach-an active
campaign to win over the populace coupled
with irresistible violence directed
against the warlord(s) and the warriors.
You cannot bargain or compromise with
warriors. You cannot "teach them a
lesson" (unless you believe that
Saddam Hussein or General Aideed have
learned anything worthwhile from our
fecklessness in the clinch). You either
win or you lose. This kind of warfare is
a zero-sum game. And it takes guts to play
(Peters, 1994).
In other words, campaigns of propaganda
and brutal aggression are the solutions to
the "warrior" problem. Doesn't Abu
Ghraib conform to this "two-track
approach"? As is painfully evidenced by
his reference to Saddam Hussein, Peters
contends that one of the regions infected by
the global "warrior" epidemic is
Iraq. Because the alleged
"warrior" problem is widespread,
Saddam is not alone. No, the Iraqi people
are "warriors" as well.
According to Peters' criterion, which is
vigorously promoted within the military
establishment, the prisoners being held at
Abu Ghraib were not soldiers. They were
"warriors." Thus, the possibility
of prisoner rehabilitation was automatically
precluded. After all, Peters himself opines:
"You cannot ‘teach them a
lesson.'" Following Peters' prescribed
approach, the American soldiers at Abu
Ghraib acted with "irresistible
violence directed against the warlord(s) and
the warriors."
If Peters is right about anything at all,
he is correct to call this war a
"zero-sum game." However, the war
is not between soldiers and
"warriors." It is between the
elite and the rest of humanity. Yes, it
takes guts to play. However, something else
is required to give the player the ultimate
advantage. That pivotal element is the human
spirit. Given the elite's history of
parasitic usury and brutal suppression, it
is safe to say that they have forsaken this
crucial attribute.
Sources Cited
Brzezinski, Zbigniew, The
Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and
Geostrategic Objectives, Basic Books,
1997.
Harding, Luke,
"Afghanistan's Deadly Crop Flourishes
Again," http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n354/a03.html,
February 28, 2002.
Keith, Jim, Secret and
Suppressed: Banned Ideas and Hidden History,
Feral House, Portland, Oregon, 1993.
MacPherson, Myra,
"MacNamara's ‘Moron Corps'," http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2002/05/29/mcnamara/,
May 29, 2002.
Margolis, Eric,
"America's New War: A Progress
Report", http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1209-02.htm,
2001.
Mills, C. Wright, The
Power Elite, Oxford University Press,
London/New York, 1956.
Peters, Ralph, "The
New Warrior Class," Parameters, http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/1994/peters.htm,
1994.
Pouzzner, Daniel, The
Architecture of Modern Political Power: The
New Feudalism, 2001, http://www.mega.nu:8080.
Taguba, Maj. General
Antonio, "U.S. Army report on Iraqi
prisoner abuse," http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4894001/,
May 4, 2004.
Paul D. Collins has
studied suppressed history and the shadowy
undercurrents of world political dynamics
for roughly eleven years. In 1999, he
completed his Associate of Arts and Science
degree. He is working to complete his
Bachelor's degree, with a major in
Communications and a minor in Political
Science. Paul has authored another book
entitled The Hidden Face of Terrorism:
The Dark Side of Social Engineering, From
Antiquity to September 11. Published in
November 2002, the book is available online
from www.1stbooks.com/bookview/13401,
http://www.barnesandnoble.com, and
also http://www.amazon.com. It can be
purchased as an e-book (ISBN 1-4033-6798-1)
or in paperback format (ISBN 1-4033-6799-X).
He is also the co-author of The Ascendancy
of the Scientific Dictatorship
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