The first view followed Politiken’s and Jyllands-Posten’s positions that this was a question of values and that the allegations of torture showed that so-called Danish values could not be maintained in fighting the Iraqi insurgency. The ‘torture scandal’
prompted Herbert Pundik to argue in Politiken that the Danish battalion should be withdrawn from Iraq.
‘It is not possible to conduct the effective intelligence work necessary to minimize Danish casualties during the operations in Iraq if this is to be based on “Danish values”. One cannot compromise on “Danish values” according to the circumstances that put them to the test. It is the responsibility of the
21 Rasmussen, 2004.
Minister of the Defence, his staff and the Chief of Defence. It is their responsibility. One must respect their choice. But it means that the risk to the lives of Danish soldiers on duty in Iraq is growing.’22
Pundik probably took his cue regarding ‘Danish values’ from the letter of complaint that started the case, in which an army interpreter of Palestinian descent complained that the captain’s behaviour towards Iraqi prisoners was not in accordance with
“Danish values”.23 Mentioning ‘Danish values’ was by no means a politically innocent act, since the government and the right-wing press had being waging their own Kulturkampf in the name of ‘Danish values’ in opposition to the values of Muslim immigrants, the cosmopolitan values of European integration and so forth.
Writing in a left-leaning paper, Pundik did not use the term without irony. At the same time he wanted to point out that Danish identity does in fact have unique features and that Danish troops can only be successful in their military operations in Iraq by betraying the very values that define them and their country.
Pundik does not make it clear (and this is probably intentional) whether the discrepancy between Danish values and Danish military engagements shows the unworldly impracticality of Danish values, or whether it shows that the war in Iraq is an enterprise unworthy of Denmark. In light of his general view of the war in Iraq, the latter interpretation is probably his own conclusion, but that has little relevance for his general argument. His main point is that if Denmark is to become the interventionist military power envisaged in the Defence Agreement, then the values that define the Danish community will also have to change. Danish values cannot, in this view, change without Danish society itself changing. What is at stake in Camp Eden is thus nothing less than the future of Denmark.
Military necessity will change ‘Danish values’, Pundik argues, and therefore it becomes a social necessity to withdraw Danish troops. Now, one might argue that change is not a bad thing in itself. Most anthropologists would argue that cultural values change all the time and that culture itself is defined as ways of dealing with change, whether in individual lives or in the history of societies. Pundik does not see
“Danish values” this way: rather, his argument is based on the premise that “Danish values” are enduring and that Danes are simply not able to compromise them while still remaining Danes. This is why the government’s decision to stay in Iraq, while operating under rules of engagement that are meant to safeguard Danish values, is reckless in Pundik’s view. Not only is it putting the soldiers’ lives at risk because
22 Pundik, 2004.
23 Thye-Petersen, 2004.
Danish values are not the values of war, it is also putting Danish society at risk of being ‘polluted’ by ‘the values of war’.
According to this view, the allegations of torture prove the hypocrisy of the government’s claim to be fighting a ‘good war’. The need to resort to ‘torture’
proved to the leader of the opposition, Mogens Lykketoft, that ‘the situation in Iraq is locked into a spiral of violence, hate, mistrust, religious fanaticism and internal opposition.’24 There is little prospect of introducing democracy and ‘Danish values’
under these circumstances. Some take this view further, arguing along with Pundik that war itself is ‘un-Danish’. In an op-ed in Politiken, Jens Asbjørn Olesen concluded that ‘war is torture. Anything else is a lie.’25 Thus the government is denying the nature of war as well as the nature of the Danes. In addition, the pundit Carsten Jensen found this kind of hypocrisy to be the prevailing state of mind in Denmark and the root cause of all that is ‘rotten in the state of Denmark’. ‘We are at war, but call it something else,’ Jensen argues; ‘We do not want to know what we do.’26 But the allegations of torture shows what war, any war, enables us to do.
Torben Jørgensen, a researcher at the Department of Holocaust and Genocide, thus told Berlingske Tidende:
With the previous torture scandals in mind, this case invariably calls for some soul searching: are we Danes in fact as morally uncompromised as we think?
Especially when we go to war? Not quite. Because the nature of war banishes any feeling for the enemy as a human being with certain rights.27
It is in itself significant that a journalist should ask an employee at the Department for Holocaust and Genocide Studies to comment on what happened in Camp Eden.
However, Jørgensen seems quite ready to explain to the readers of Berlingske Tidende that war itself dehumanises people. Thus by describing the ‘dehumanising’ effects of war, Jørgensen is in fact dehumanising Danish soldiers, who seem unable to choose whether to commit torture or not, because Jørgensen, apparently agreeing with Olesen, claims that war itself is torture. Soldiers cannot be human beings, nor indeed can they be Danes. Thus according to this definition of Danish values, the
‘torture scandal’ is the regrettable result of an ‘un-Danish’ defence policy.
24 Lykketoft, 2004.
25 Olesen, 2004.
26 Jensen, 2004.
27 Nielsen, 2004.