Thomas Ricks. Fiasco

[Abu Ghraib] was a tragic moment for a military with a long and proud heritage of treating its prisoners better than most--especially one that had come to Iraq thinking of itself as a liberation force, again solidly in the American tradition. During the Revolutionary War, the historian David Hackett Fischer noted, Gen. George Washington had "often reminded his men that they were an army of liberty and freedom, and that the rights of humanity for which they were fighting should extend even to ther enemies." This compassion toward prisoners was extended by Washington expressly in the face of the cruel British handling of American captives. Washington ordered Lt. Col. Samuel Blachley Webb, in a passage quoted by Fischer, "Treat them with humanity, and Let them have no reason to Complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British army in their Treatment of our unfortuante brethren." The United States Army was a long way from home in Iraq (p. 297).

Notably, this list of complaints found little fault with the front-line soldier but much with top officers and the civilian officials leading them. In this respect, the U.S. military in Iraq looked a bit like the British army in World War I, a force so poorly led that German generals mocked it as "lions led by donkeys." Looking back at the winter of 2003-4, one active-duty general said, "Tactically, we were fine. Operationally, usually we were okay. Strategically--we were a basket case" (p. 308).

When he deploys [Marine Maj. Gen. James] Mattis always packs the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman who was both a Stoic philosopher and an emperor. 'It allows me to distance myself from the here and now,' and to discern the connection to the eternal verities of warfare, he explained. Mattis also objected to the Rumsfeld Pentagon's emphasis on 'net-centric' warfare built around the movement of data. "Computers by their nature are isolating. They build walls. The nature of war is immutable: You need trust and connection." He dismissed the net-centric emphasis as "a Marxian view--it ignores the spiritual" (Thomas Ricks. Fiasco. New York: Penguin, 2006, p. 313).