THE RISING EAST
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TOKYO — An American on a return visit to Japan is reminded that tradition here demands that senior leaders resign to take public responsibility for the serious misconduct of subordinates who bring dishonor and shame to their institution.
A Japanese leader is no longer expected to don a white kimono and take a short sword to do himself in, but custom demands that he commit symbolic seppuku, also known as hara-kiri, meaning "to slit the gut."
Associated Press
Perhaps so it should be in America when rogue soldiers have disgraced the nation with their appalling abuse of prisoners of war in Iraq. Those unthinking Army renegades have embarrassed the American people and humiliated their comrades who serve with honor, courage and pride in today's armed forces.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, center, accompanied by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, right, commander of the prison system in Iraq, and Gen. Richard Myers, left, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, takes a tour of Abu Ghraib prison shortly after his arrival in Baghdad on Thursday.
The thugs posted in the prison at Abu Ghraib have severely damaged the reputation of the United States among Muslims who leap at any excuse to hate Americans. They have weakened the faith that the Japanese and other allies have placed in America. They have given aid to critics here and everywhere who do not wish the Americans well.
The foreign minister of Italy, Franco Frattini, was quoted here: "This torture is a disgrace to the coalition of which we are a part and which is supposed to help the rebirth of a free Iraq." Japan's foreign minister, Yoriko Kawaguchi, has told the Diet, the national legislature, that the abuses may have violated a Geneva convention on treating prisoners and that Japan had conveyed its dismay to Washington. German, Swiss, and Kuwaiti spokesmen have delivered similar condemnations.
The tepid response of President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, with their obvious efforts at damage control, show little promise of turning back the tsunami of criticism that is swamping America.
Drastic action is needed if America is to return to the moral high ground to which it aspired before the shame of Abu Ghraib.
Starting at the top, Secretary Rumsfeld should resign because all this happened on his watch and no amount of twisting and turning will obscure that fact.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, second in command to Rumsfeld, should follow his boss out the door.
A candidate to replace Rumsfeld would be Sen. John McCain of Arizona and rival to President Bush for the Republican presidential nomination four years ago. Sen. McCain is a leader of unquestioned integrity, a warrior who flew Navy fighters in Vietnam, and a patriot who would burnish America's tarnished reputation.
The senator also knows something about prison camps, having been a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for more than six years. To this day, he literally bears the scars and pain of that experience. Surely that would inform him in his new duties.
It may take some time to sort out the generals and colonels who ought to be sacked for failing to train and supervise the soldiers who evidently broke all sorts of rules at Abu Ghraib.
News reaching Tokyo from Washington suggests that senior officers in the reserves, intelligence and military police have been pointing fingers at each other to avoid blame.
Any officer drummed out of military service for gross negligence or unbecoming conduct could demand a court-martial if he or she thought the punishment was unfair.
For the soldiers at Abu Ghraib, courts-martial would be in order with their requirements for evidence and legal process. Given the photographs speeding around the world, that evidence would seem to be irrefutable.
Even so, the Uniform Code of Military Justice should be followed meticulously, even if only to show the world that the United States has not stooped to the level of Saddam Hussein.
The outline of a defense has started to take shape: "We were just following orders." That argument is nonsense; the war crimes trial after World War II affirmed the principle that a soldier is not only not obliged to obey an illicit order but is obliged not to obey an illicit order. Every American soldier is taught that early in his or her enlistment — or should have been.
Lastly, the military police and intelligence units caught up in this scandal should be stricken from the Army's roster and their colors burned and buried, their identities forever stained by the dishonorable and thoughtless behavior at Abu Ghraib.
Only this way can America begin to make right something that has gone terribly wrong.
Richard Halloran, a Honolulu-based freelance writer, was a military correspondent for The New York Times for 10 years.
