Untitled Document

07 May 1980

Privates

Secretary Rumsfeld is being summoned to the Hill to talk about the horrors of Abu Ghraib. He is in deep kimchi with some members of Congress, and is expected to get a tough grilling from the Armed Service Committees in extraordinary Joint Session.

Uncle Don will probably get through this, and some of the outrage is not about this, but about turf and jobs and base closures. And the actions of some private soldiers, of course.

It is also an extraordinary day for another couple reasons, largely forgotten. The commentators have mentioned the fiftieth anniversary of the French defeat at Dien bien Phu. Silence fell over the hills the French called Dominique, Béatrice and Isabelle. The Legion, what was left of it there, marched off into captivity.

The French lost 60,000 men in the battle to retain Indochina, more than the Americans would in our part of the mini-series.

The round number of the anniversary is one of the reasons they are talking about what the martyred correspondent Bernard Fall called "Hell in a Very Small Place." The other one is of course the subtext of the current conflict in Iraq, and the nature of occupation and colonialism.

It is like Uncle Don's appearance on the Hill. It is supposed to be about one thing and it is really about getting even with him for a variety of other sins. This is just the one they think they can nail him on.

As best I understand it, the controversy is about the violation of the Geneva Convention, which may or may not apply to the prisoners, who at best are irregulars and at worst, war criminals themselves. The countervailing argument is that some of them are completely innocent, and this treatment, which appears analogous to an egregious fraternity initiation.

Kids die in those, too, when the tormentors are out of control.

The French recognized that sometimes extraordinary measures are called for in dealing with an implacable enemy. They rolled up the leadership of the Algerian revolutionaries quite efficiently.

We embarked on that course right after 9/11, and some of the people responsible for conducting the hunt for the Bad Guys were quite candid about it at the time. Hell, the Washington Post published the Top Secret Presidential Finding that took the leash off the CIA and anyone else going after Osama.

I am not surprised that young people like Pfc. Lynndie R. England got the wrong message. She is the pert little woman who is holding the dog leash on the humiliated young Iraqi. She is a slight woman in camouflage. How she came to be a guard in the most feared of Saddam's abattoirs is one of those banal stories from the heartland.

She is from a place very much like the one that Pfc. Jessica Lynch is from. Rural, proud and poor. Off to see the world, get some college benefits and become an adult.

Now she is the lightning rod for war crimes, some of which may be as vile as the ones perpetrated on Pfc. Lynch. Which is no justification, just an observation about a couple private soldiers. The controversy is quite rightly about human rights, but it is about a lot of other things as well.

I am ashamed of the leadership that permitted those reservists to play with the prisoners. I am sorry that some of them got hurt, and will apologize to anyone I see today about the dishonor they have brought ot my profession.

But Osama is still with us. He released a tape today offering a reward in gold for the heads of senior American officials. And a reward in Paradise for those that die in the attempt.

They have been talking about The List for a couple months. There are some names on it you would expect, and others you wouldn't. I haven't seen it, and I assume that I am not on it or someone would have called me.

I'm optimistic that I will not get caught in the frag pattern if someone takes Osama up on his kind offer. But I am equally confident that we will get smacked again here in the homeland, and I may or may not survive. I am surveying my office, figuring out escape routes and avoiding the subway.

I believe the abuses are the result of a pendulum swing of policy that will, in the course of time, be corrected to some middle ground that is humane but efficient. And under control.

I am old enough to remember that the extraordinary methods of the French did not work, and in fact bred a new and larger crop of terrorists.

Or Patriots, rather. I forget sometimes it is the victors that get to write the history.

But the thing that I will carry out of my little apartment this morning with my briefcase is that this is the anniversary of VE Day, the final triumph over the Nazis. The day that Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, the temporary Fuhrer, pleaded for mercy for the monsters of his dying regime.

We executed them and moved on. I am not surprised that we have forgotten the great triumph for humanity that occurred on this day so long ago. It is not about that. It is about something else altogether.

Our media remembers what it wants, and if today it is about privates and the small place of French humiliation, that is OK with me. There is a certain fetish appeal to the idea of the Viet Minh leading the once-proud colonialists off on dog-leashes.

We know the image is powerful.