http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/04/07/EDGV5C3MQ61.DTL
follow the above link to read the article by General Karpinski Army commander of military police forces in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
My commentary, written April 8, 2005
Does a breakdown in morale result in a breakdown of morals?
April 7, 2005, Opinion piece “What went wrong at Abu Ghraib”
I am disturbed by some of the points the general makes in her article. Despite outlining what to do about Abu Ghraib and what to do in the future to prevent a similar occurrence, where, oh where, was the leadership during all this? Where was her leadership and the leadership of those under her, or around her?
General Karpinski’s article starts off with how morale broke down. Reserve units forced to work shorthanded as there is no personnel replacement system, stop-loss orders, and tour extensions affected troop morale. Does this mean that it is ok to loosen your morals because your morale is low? Even if the top-most leadership, our civilian government, makes decisions that result in poor planning, or no planning, for running the invasion and stabilization of Iraq, there was fundamental breakdown in leadership. After a proud tradition of being the best of the best, it is a sad and disheartening thing to see.
It is too easy to blame it on the civilian contractor interrogators. Do I believe the regular and reserve Army individuals who took photos, and set up those photos, were being directed to humiliate their prisoners? Yes, I think they had some direction from others and apparently similar techniques to “soften up” prisoners have been used in other locations. Do I believe that, at times, the worse of the worse acted on their own? Absolutely. General Karpinski’s assertion that the soldiers didn’t have sufficiently sophisticated knowledge of the Arab culture to degrade the prisoners in the most effective way doesn’t hold up. The acts were mean spirited and any people in any culture would have felt humiliated, the soldiers didn’t need specifics.
Back to that leadership issue. Leadership has many components, one of which is accountability. Leaders are accountable and they must hold those under their authority accountable. If the mission was clear, and by what the general wrote, it seemed clear, there would be clear objectives, goals, and methods to reach them. There is always a code of conduct and it must be reviewed with the soldiers so they understand how to conduct themselves while reaching the objectives and goals of their mission. Was there a breakdown at this point? Didn’t anyone make it clear to the soldiers what conduct was allowed and what was off-limits?
Information comes to leaders from various methods. It is common knowledge, taught in leadership courses, with countless books written on the subject, that “management by walking around” is a valuable way to gain the knowledge you need to effectively lead a command. When you are responsible for the actions of others, you best be sure that you know what is going on. The general’s article claims she wasn’t directing the soldiers’ actions and she didn’t know it was going on. The theater in which she operated was large, having command over detentions all over Iraq. Her span of control was definitely spread out, but she had subordinate officers. If General Karpinski didn’t know about the abuses, then shame on her. Personal attention to accountability and to the troops under her command would make it impossible to be blind-sided by the abuses. The general’s indignation would be more credible if she hadn’t claimed her head was in the sand. Hoping a “see-no evil” approach would give her, and too many others, plausible deniability.
What if the general and her staff had been ordered to keep “hands off?” Then this may have been the biggest sin against leadership. General Schwarzkopf once said if one was placed in charge, then be in charge. Fearing career-ending meddling when one is under orders to stay away, or told that a portion of the detentions were not her concern, is also a fundamental break-down of moral leadership. All officers, no, make that all persons, who see an injustice or inappropriate behavior, have a responsibility to speak out. “Hands-off” doesn’t cut it. Plausible deniability, or the need for it, is not leadership. How can leadership allow for immoral or unethical acts because morale is bad? How can leadership allow for immoral or unethical acts because it isn’t any of your business? It comes down to a lack of leadership, but more to the point, moral courage.