"AND THAT'S THE VERY BEST KIND OF ORDER I KNOW"

The Abu Ghraib prison scandal has all the earmarks of a world class military SNAFU-incompetence, cover up, sadism, and yes, possibly conspiracy. The conspiracy concerns the possible involvement of non US citizens, without security clearances, though with interrogation training, in the command structure of the prison. The involvement of these individuals points potentially to a number of figures in the Pentagon closely identified with the War on Terror strategy itself, in particular the Deputy Secretaries in charge of Policy (responsible for ensuring the compliance with prisoner treatment standards throughout the chain of command) and Intelligence.

Those civilians have been directly implicated in the abuse, as have been the Military Intelligence officers who had tactical command of the prison, and ordered MP's to "set the conditions" for "exploitation" of intelligence. These euphemisms have all the unsavory redolence of countless other abuses and atrocities, precisely in virtue of the degree of complicity they elicit from unwitting subordinates.

The situation resembles nothing so much as the scene from Brideshead Revisited in which the subordinate officer is induced to complicity in his superior officer's abusive treatment of another junior officer with the injunction "it is your commanding officer's wish, and that's the very best kind of order I know."

Waugh's acid insights into military fecklessness and incompetence are so trenchant precisely because he marries them to his relentless indictment of modernity. The CO's incompetence and bluster are directly related to his allegorical significance as another herald of a horrible age of neo-barbarism and inanity. But the clandestine evil of this structure of elicited complicity is fleshed out in one of the more memorable passages of C.S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength.

Deputy Director Wither never commands, he merely suggests that certain courses of action may be more advantageous to someone desirous of advancing his standing in the esteem of significant person:

"But what do you want me to do, Sir?"

"My dear young friend, the golden rule is very simple. There are only two errors which would be fatal to one placed in the peculiar situation which certain parts of your previous conduct have unfortunately created for you. On the one hand, anything like a lack of initiative or enterprise would be disasterous. On the other, the slightest approach to unauthorized action--anything which suggested that you were assuming a liberty of decision which, in all the circumstances, is not really yours--might have consequences from which even I could not protect you. But as long as you keep quite clear of these two extremes, there is no reason (speaking unoficially) why you should not be perfectly safe."

As we head into this new age of Global Wars on Terror, and Benevolent Global Hegemonies, one might well reflect on the likenesses of these events to themes which those on the cusp of the horrors of the 20th century as augurs of evil.

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[Anonymous]

Al,

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