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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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