More Hadithas Are Likely With Stressed Military
In a scathing report on the aftermath of the massacre at Haditha, an Army general has concluded that Marine Corps commanders in Iraq simply didn’t value the lives of Iraqi civilians very highly. It took determination, the general pointed out, not to notice anything amiss about an encounter that ended in the deaths of 24 unarmed Iraqis, including women and children killed in their beds.
Three enlisted Marines have been charged with murder in the notorious incident, which occurred in restive Anbar province Nov. 19, 2005. Four officers have been charged with dereliction of duty because of their strange incuriosity following the episode.
It seems likely that there will be more Hadithas. The Pentagon has placed American troops in a miserable position: in the crossfire of a civil war, in urban combat where jihadists fire from civilian quarters, in a protracted conflict where their tours of duty grow ever longer. It’s no wonder some American soldiers are no longer careful to distinguish between friend and foe. (Similar strains are showing in Afghanistan, where Marines are likely to be charged with murder in the deaths of 10 civilians last month.)
In such settings, even well-trained troops are so stressed that anger and fear overcome their better selves. A critical ethic of the battlefield - don’t injure civilians - is not only forgotten but also resented. Last year, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki complained that the killing of innocent Iraqis by U.S. troops had become a “daily phenomenon” because the troops “do not respect the Iraqi people. They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion. This is completely unacceptable.”
The prime minister’s anger seems justified given the conclusions of a report on the mental health of combat troops seeing action in Iraq, completed last fall but released just recently. (Oddly, the report was kept under wraps while President Bush proposed the so-called surge, which inevitably meant longer tours of duty.)
The report found, not surprisingly, that longer tours and multiple deployments increase and intensify psychological problems in combat troops. It also showed that more than a third of troops endorsed torture in some circumstances, and most said they would not turn in a fellow service member for mistreating a civilian. One telling statistic: Only 47 percent of soldiers and 38 percent of Marines agreed that noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect.
That unsettling statistic underscores the folly of the U.S. enterprise in Iraq. According to Army Gen. David Petraeus, who literally wrote the book on fighting insurgencies, our troops must be committed to treating civilians with dignity and respect. The new counterinsurgency manual used by the Army and Marine Corps, written under General Petraeus’ supervision, says, “An operation that kills five insurgents is counterproductive if collateral damage leads to the recruitment of 50 more insurgents.”
Most U.S. combat troops would never deliberately kill civilians. But under pressure, they may fire indiscriminately at checkpoints and rain bombs down on houses with women and children inside. When soldiers and Marines are surrounded by insurgents who hide behind civilians, those tactics may seem necessary. But those tactics practically guarantee that survivors will hate U.S. troops and cooperate with those who want to harm them.
Petraeus’ doctrine might well have worked had the United States invaded Iraq with enough troops to do the job. According to sound counterinsurgency theory, he’d need hundreds of thousands more troops to control the violence and enable his personnel to deal with Iraqi civilians more amiably.
But the Army and Marines are already stretched way too thin. And the Bush White House is just as much in denial as those Marine Corps commanders who refused to see a massacre.
Cynthia Tucker is editorial page editor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Her column appears Mondays in The Sun. Her e-mail is cynthia@ajc.com.
Copyright © 2007, The Baltimore Sun
In 1967 William Paley, the President of CBS, had delivered to his office what was then considered a bombshell. Morley Safer, of 60 Minutes fame, had presented Paley with film footage capturing Marines in the act of using their cigarette lighters to ignite the thatched roof huts in which our peasant “enemy” resided in South Viet Nam. These soldiers referred to themselves as “Zippo Squads”, “Zippo” being the brand name of a popular inexpensive cigarette lighter. Paley spent three days frozen in Hamlet-like indecision, tormented by the decision as to whether to bury the story or air it, understanding that airing it meant risking the public slaughter of a sacred cow, namely, the sanctity and uprightness of American fighting men. To his credit he decided to take the journalistic high-road, a road which has since been dug up and replaced with strip malls. The reaction was everything he thought it would be and more. President Johnson exploded in rage and ordered the FBI to ignor their charter and pursue their investigation of Morley Safer (a Canadian by birth ) into the Great White North in search of any scrap of evidence, going all the way back into his childhood, with which they could choke the life out of Safer’s credibility and career. They found nothing. And, thus, Americans received their first baby-bite of education as to the realities of modern war as it relates to civilian victims. They were not pleased.
Now consider the “quaintness” of Paley’s concerns and America’s reaction vis a’ vis today’s America. Each day those with internet access to actual reportage and to some mainstream media outlets, are treated to atrocities at the hands of American soldiers. A Marine who rapes a fourteen year old Iraqi girl, douses her with gasoline and immolates her, then murders her family to eliminate witnesses. There are others, many others.
Much can be said of this, and from many different angles. The fault of the Bush Administration could not be clearer. Ditto, the incredible low-mindedness of the Pentagon hierarchy. But my point concerns not the issue of guilt but the reaction of the American public to this endless stream of atrocities. “Frontline” aired interviews with numbers of G.I.’s fighting in Iraq who’s hatred for Iraqis and Muslims was unabashed. Viewers were exposed to American soldiers speaking unreservedly of their readiness to kill innocent civilians for “revenge” or simply out of racist rage at any and all “sand-niggers” and “camel jockeys”. One wonders whether the white-out by military censors, of the Falluja holocaust, was even necessary.
Question…do we know what the real effects of hard and brutal truth are on passive consumers of media? Are we, over time, made more or less indifferent to the suffering of others? Our pentagon/media complex hides the truth of war as best it can. But when it seeps out, what are it’s actual effects? Are we prepared to face the fact that many people may simply no longer be emotionally or intellectually equipped to “rationally” react to brutality and slaughter? We all want to believe that every problem has a solution. That fixing the media will allow light to shine on every problem and disinfect it. But what if the the sunlight fails to disinfect? What if we are no longer capable of playing our assumed role in this standard scenario? Ater all, how shocking is it to learn that Americans once set peasant villages aflame after, in the majority of cases, evacuating the inhabitants? Not very, wouldn’t you say? What does this tell us about our national character? our species?, our overall modern predicament?
Americans obviously accept what their soldiers are doing in their name. Just as they have done since the beginning of our country when our soldiers slaughtered the Native Indians. But don’t blame the soldier. He starts off honorable, thinking he is justified. But after a while the reality of war will get to him, and he will lose his honor and become capable of horrible things. Instead blame the politicians who started the war.
Hoa binh
namvet67: I would really love to believe what you say, but I just cannot because we do not live in a world where “leaders” can be trusted and we live in a country where young people often believe that America is the greatest country that ever was, that America is the “biggest kid on the block” and therefore has a right to take anything, anywhere, anytime.
I resent that these deluded kids are threatening our future. I resent that their illusions about “protecting the nation” actually endanger us all. I resent the fact that they are the ones who are implementing a vicious occupation that is bringing untold suffering to hundreds of thousands of innocent people whose only “crime” is that they live in a geographical area with resources that we want.
While I would like to believe that these young soldiers are honorable, I really do not. In fact, I resent that they have volunteered for this, because they are not “preserving” my freedom, they are threatening it. This occupation, and the actions of some of these soldiers and marines will create new generations of people who rightfully hate our guts. The individual choice of each of these young people to participate in this occupation is something that everyone of us will have to pay for for a long time.
I agree with JP that karma comes full circle and violence begets violence; however, much is also attributable to a cultural climate that glorifies the military, power as articulated through forceful means, sporting events that champion brute force, and other factors like mainstream media and its thick c limate of lies in support of this war… thus to the kid who comes of age in a community where few other choices exist, or contact with that truth that would set him/her free, the miitary path is presented AS an honorable option. Often the young person caught in that maelstrom realizes the truth once s/he’s signed the equivalent pact with the modern devil.