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Why Does Distance Ameliorate a War Crime?
NEW YORK - One aspect of the modern sense of war, be it delusional, duplicitous or both, was palpable in two articles paired at the top of the front page of The New York Times toward the end of September. The headline of one said "Drug Use Cited In Killings of 3 Civilians"; the headline of the other, "CIA INTENSIFIES DRONE CAMPAIGN WITHIN PAKISTAN."
One had to do with old-fashioned murder by infantrymen on the ground, the other with ultramodern murder by electronically operated vehicles in the sky. Those involved in the former sometimes face charges of war crime. Those involved in the latter face no such bother - though they may be at times "criticized" for their incompetence.
The main points of the first story are these: Five soldiers in a U.S. Army unit in Afghanistan are investigated by a military court in Washington State for killing three unarmed Afghan civilians on three separate occasions earlier this year, for "no apparent reason." They are provided with defense lawyers to raise some fuss.
"The soldiers are accused of possessing dismembered body parts, including fingers and a skull." Some were photographed with the heads of dead Afghans.
One of them may or may not have been under medication for battlefield trauma. In any case, the use of "illegal drugs" was rampant among the soldiers of the unit - on "bad days, stressful days, days that we just needed to escape," as one of them said.
The higher echelon of the U.S. Army is concerned that the case against the five solders "will undermine efforts to build relationships with Afghans in the war against the Taliban." But even as the army officials talk about "the military justice process," they do not want to have evidence detrimental to their cause made public.
The principal target of "investigations" is a specialist - an enlisted rank in the U.S. Army with certain technical qualifications - who may face "a court-martial and a possible death sentence."
Here are the main points of the second article: In the month of September the Central Intelligence Agency more than doubled the monthly bombings by drones in Pakistan, "an ally," to 20 attacks, for a total of 74 so far this year.
The target of the "campaign" is not just the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida but also the Haqqani fighters ("a Pakistan-based offshoot of the Taliban with ties to al-Qaida," as one news report has put it). In just two weeks from September to October, U.S. and NATO forces killed more than 100 of these fighters.
The redoubled bombings were meant to "stem the rise of American casualties before the Obama administration's comprehensive review of its Afghanistan strategy set for December."
U.S. President Barack Obama has "enthusiastically embraced the CIA's drone program, an ambitious and historically unusual war campaign by American spies." In less than two years in Obama's presidency, the spy agency "launched nearly four times as many attacks as it did during the final year of the Bush administration."
The Sept. 27 New York Times article on a "drastic" expansion of drone deployment did not mention it, but the carnage resulting from bombings and missile attacks by the drones necessarily include a large number of people who have nothing to do with anything except that they happen to be in the wrong place, be it Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iraq, in each of which the U.S. does as it pleases.
In 2007, for example, a drone missile struck a wedding party in Afghanistan, killing 30 people. In August this year, a drone missile that hit a house of "suspected militants" in Pakistan also destroyed a neighboring house, killing 20 people.
"Drones" are what Tom Engelhardt, the author of "The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's," calls "another kind of American fever dream": robotic aircraft with their pilots "sitting in front of consoles 7,000 miles away from where their missiles and bombs are landing." Though I cannot tell whether it is real footage made at the drone command center in Nevada, you can see a video of a couple of such "pilots" at work on the Internet, one of them a young woman in a half-sleeve shirt.
With the routine use of drones, the "Star Wars" aspect of U.S. warfare that enthralled many TV-watching Americans during the Persian Gulf war two decades ago has become a solid reality.
These aerial weapons of destruction are so "cruel as to be beyond the pale of human tolerance," Lord Bingham, one of Britain's most senior judges, said last year. Yet, Hillary Clinton denied that the use of drone attacks was an act of terrorism when she visited Pakistan last fall and a female TV anchor put that question to her. Would the U.S. secretary of state offer the same denial if similar assaults occurred in Chappaqua, N.Y., where she lives?
As for the five soldiers being put through the U.S. "military justice process": Why single out these poor men when the CIA, Department of Defense and "private military contractors" such as Xe (formerly Blackwater) have been doing the same thing on a much larger scale, with impunity, as Karen Kwiatkowski, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, has pointed out ("War Is Murder")?
When it comes to the slaughtering of human beings, the question is this: Why make a distinction between the killings on the ground and the killings from the air? Why let the users of aerial means, be it a manned bomber, a missile or a drone manipulated thousands of miles away, go scot-free? Whether a soldier on the ground takes body parts of the murdered as a trophy is irrelevant. That's what a soldier was expected to do until recently. A bomber pilot or a drone operator behind a computer console simply doesn't have the chance to do the same.
A war crime is an artificial construct hatched in the "advanced" Western mind. Take a look at the Hague Convention of a century ago and consider the weapons described. For a war crime to have any meaning, no distinction should be made between the means of killing.
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Show AllThe absurdities have more to do with adjudicators than distance. Robert McNamara said in his "Fog of War" interviews, that he and Curtis LeMay would have been war criminals for their incendiary bombing of Tokyo, IF THE US HAD LOST THE WAR. The infantry and aerial murders described in Mr. Sato's essay, take place in the context of the US government convicting a child (Omar Kadhr) of murder and war crimes for allegedly throwing a hand grenade when US special forces in Afghanistan attacked him when he was age 15. Kadhr has just been convicted of that. The US military are the adjudicators. Hence the absurdity of it. If the US had lost WWII, who would have been charged for war crimes and murder by Japanese and German military tribunals? McNamara for sure. Probably all of the pilots in the Doolittle Raid. Probably Winston Churchill and General Eisenhower.
This illustrates the fundamental principle of the Great Nürnberg Kangaroo Court: Only the losers are guilty.
Really? Then why wasn't Kaiser Billy hanged when he surrendered in 1918?
We keep losing track of the Fact that both wars or should I say all the current wars are Crimes against the Peace, therefor War Crimes.
The USG/Pentagram has for decades envisioned USG wars without American casualties for the purpose of keeping the American public from protesting the empires warmongering agenda. The reasoning being that if their are no American casualties the American public won't complain and their endless wars could indeed be endless. The rational being that the Terminator Drones are amoral and no one would be responsible. The "I'm not responsible god told me to do it and/or Satan made me do it" is the false doctrine[babel] of the pretend christians[harlots] and the "I'm not responsible........" is institutionalized by government, business, churches thereby by giving "I'm not ......."legitimacy. This is the appeal of the pretend christian doctrine, institutionalized not responsible.The politicians love it most. The next declaration will be that the Drones are god inspired and directed.
The military brain washes EMPATHY from its members psyche.
Its part of the fraternal oath to be uncaring for the so called enemy. The term "rules of war" is a joke.
Killing someone with a drone missile from 30,000 feet is the ultimate cowardly act...like being struck by lightening.
These brainless folk that man these drone sights are emotionally dead themselves and those in command are in service to an evil empire that will come to no good end.
Is it any wonder why suicides are at an all time high in the armed services ...shattered minds can no long live with themselves.
cuckoo cuckoo cuckoo, time for ur meds
"Why Does Distance Ameliorate a War Crime?"
_____________________________
Out of sight, out of mind.
the war criminals and the war profiteers can make all the distinctions they want.
people of the world know it's all bullshit.
Bring America Back !!!!
mes
***just for info of mr sato, in brattlesboro vermont
and berkeley california there are outstanding
warrants for the arrest of King w bush and prince
dick cheney for war crimes.
***when prez obama willingly adopted the wars of bush,
he then assumed the liability and responsibilities
for an illegal, immoral, pre.-emptive war crime.
**he has willingly proliferated the war crimes rather
than ending them as he promised the american people
who elected him.
Obama has become part and parcel of the DC culture of
corruption==and his silence has betrayed consent on the
war crimes of our little sister Israel and its
Genocide campaigns as well !!!
But, Sato is correct--war crimes are war crimes !!!!
There are international efforts underway to prosecute these war crimes.
See International Initiative to Prosecute US Genocide in Iraq
http://usgenocide.org/
Spread the information.
All the bombs are in the hands of terrorists.
David Broder in the Washington Post wants US to attack Iran for economic gains , for economic recovery.
The same thing is happening with slavery as it's getting slowly reinstated. Instead of doing it here, this nation has it all done overseas so that the American people won't notice except for a few.
"Yet, Hillary Clinton denied that the use of drone attacks was an act of terrorism when she visited Pakistan last fall and a female TV anchor put that question to her."
On what grounds could she possibly deny that the drone attacks are acts of terrorism?
No doubt if the families retaliated blowing up the whitehouse and it inhabitants that wouldnt be terrorism either.
"Whether a soldier on the ground takes body parts of the murdered as a trophy is irrelevant. That is what a soldier was expected to do until recently." - Hiroaki Sato
What?
When I got drafted during the Vietnam War, I paid close attention in basic training. There were indeed some very bizarre things taught as fundamental infantry skills (like how to properly slit an enemy sentry's throat when sneaking up from behind, or the field manual-approved technique to kick to bayonet or kick an enemy soldier in the balls when attacking from the front) but at no time did any of my drill instructors at Fort Knox, Kentucky pass along any sort of officially sanctioned US Army protocol concerning the harvesting of enemy body parts. I sure as hell would have remembered such a training session if head hunting, chopping off fingers, scalping, or the like of was "something a soldier was expected to do".
What time frame, what military culture, is Sato talking about?
I recall nothing in my high school or college textbooks about George Washington's troops mutilating the corpses of British redcoats for keepsake souvenirs, or how General Lee and General Grant authorized such ghoulish practices during the great unpleasantness of the Civil War/War Between the States. Did Pershing, or Harry Truman's artillery unit, or the Prussians of Kaiser Wilhelm's army give wink-and-a-nod approval to such butchery in World War I? How about Ike, or Patton, or Omar Bradley, or Rommel, or Field Marshall Montgomery during the worst of the savagery of World War II? I think not. If this was "expected" behavior of properly trained, properly commanded soldiers engaged in combat, there should be some historical record of it.
The desecration of the remains of those who died on the battle field has always been a gory aberration that was officially frowned upon, something taboo rather than a standard operating procedure. True, in Vietnam there were individual American soldiers (and reportedly a few whole infantry units), who reportedly kept severed ears in order to corroborate the all important body count, back when body counts were in vogue with the Pentagon and the politicians. And it's also true that killing people in combat very often psychologically desensitizes those engaged in it. And it can be a slippery, short descent indeed from bravery into depravity and barbarism.
Sato is right on his main point of course. Drone attacks are war crimes. But enough with the mumbo jumbo about soldiers routinely taking home body parts as war trophies.
Bill from Saginaw
[ But enough with the mumbo jumbo about soldiers routinely taking home body parts as war trophies.]
The body parts of Japanese soldiers were taken as 'souvenirs' by US soldiers during the Pacific campaign. Reports of atrocities committed by German forces marching into Belgium in 1914 were encouraged by the German Government of the day. Reports from the trenches of the first world war do have accounts of the soldiers interacting with the body parts of the dead. Wars have always been savage, but, almost always, the soldiers drop the souvenirs long before they return home.
That is not to say that all soldiers are inhuman, but it does imply that war is a ghastly practice. It is the root crime of the elite against those whom they believe are the 'lower' classes.
During 'Nam I was an artilleryman not, thank goodness, posted there. I often reflected however that blowing up people whom I'd never met and who were 15 miles away seemed awfully cold-blooded and criminal, and I've since been awfully happy I didn't have to do it.
Any first-hand description of a WWI or WWII artillery barrage will convince the reader that these, too, were war crimes. In fact, as I decline to the grave, I think war is a war crime, and all who precipitate one need hanging at Nuremberg.