[Peace-discuss] Support our troops

[C. G. Estabrook]

<http://billmon.org/>:

When the Abu Ghraib horror show first aired on 60 Minutes, I
remember wondering whether it would prove to be the Iraq War's
version of the My Lai Massacre -- with the photo of the hooded
man on his box, arms spread in a crucifix, as the enduring
image of a military machine run amok, just as a photo of
murdered Vietnamese women and children, sprawled in the middle
of a muddy road, became the Americal Division's permanent
badge of shame.

To a degree, that's what happened -- with the hapless sadists
of the 184th Infantry Regiment serving as the collective
stand-ins for Lt. William Calley, and Colin Powell reprising
his earlier role as the bullshit artist telling everybody what
they want to hear.

But now it appears that instead of a symbolic My Lai, we have
the genuine article:

    "A Pentagon probe into the death of Iraqi civilians last
November in the Iraqi city of Haditha will show that U.S.
Marines 'killed innocent civilians in cold blood,' a U.S.
lawmaker said Wednesday.

    "From the beginning, Iraqis in the town of Haditha said
U.S. Marines deliberately killed 15 unarmed Iraqi civilians,
including seven women and three children . . .

    "On Wednesday, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said the accounts
are true.

    "Military officials told NBC News that the Marine Corps'
own evidence appears to show Murtha is right . . .

    "Murtha, a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, said at a
news conference Wednesday that sources within the military
have told him that an internal investigation will show that
'there was no firefight, there was no IED (improvised
explosive device) that killed these innocent people. Our
troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they
killed innocent civilians in cold blood.'

    "Military officials say Marine Corp photos taken
immediately after the incident show many of the victims were
shot at close range, in the head and chest, execution-style.
One photo shows a mother and young child bent over on the
floor as if in prayer, shot dead, said the officials, who
spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity because the
investigation hasn't been completed.

    "One military official says it appears the civilians were
deliberately killed by the Marines, who were outraged at the
death of their fellow Marine.

    “'This one is ugly,' one official told NBC News."

Ugly? That doesn't even begin to cover it. Dick Cheney is
ugly. The Pentagon is ugly. An Abrams tank is ugly. Executing
helpless women and children while they're huddled on the
floor, praying to their God, is a war crime committed by
terrorists. It's Lidice and Rwanda and Srebrenica and, of
course, My Lai. The men who committed this crime aren't really
human any more -- they shed their humanity like a snake sheds
its skin when they walked into those houses and started
shooting. All that's left of them is a dark pit at the center
of their reptilian brain stems, a place that knows no pity or
remorse or even self-awareness. They're lost souls -- lost to
the world and to themselves.

I don't know if it's better or worse that this atrocity seems
to have been committed by a military unit completely out of
control, instead of one that was following orders, as was
clearly the case at Abu Ghraib. One one hand, you can argue
that it's simply a reminder that Americans are as capable of
being beasts as anyone else: Germans, Japanese, Russians,
Serbs, Arabs, Afghans, Israelis, Somalians, Afrikaaners,
Salvadorans -- the list goes on and on. There's nothing
exceptional about us, even in our war crimes.

On the other hand, the fact that U.S. Marines -- the few, the
proud, etc. -- were capable of such bestiality says something
ominous about the psychological state of the American military
after three years of being stretched to the limit. These
weren't draftees or Guardsmen or pathetic losers like Calley.
These were professionals, supposedly the best of the best, and
yet they threw away their training, their code and their
honor, and drenched themselves and their flag in the blood of
innocents. They simply snapped, in other words, and it makes
me wonder how many more like them are out there -- one IED or
ambush away from going beserk.

There is a wiff of genocide in the air, and not just in Iraq.
While the keyboard warriors still talk in slightly coded terms
about waging war with the "ferocity" required to win, some of
the real warriors aren't bothering to conceal what those terms
really mean. A few days ago I came across a diary at Daily Kos
(can't find it now) in which the diarist relayed the gist of
his recent conversation with a Marine Corporal -- an MP, of
all things, currently stationed at Quantico -- who was eager
to get to Iraq so he could "kill some sand niggers."

I'm guessing that if Corporal Homicide ever actually reaches
Iraq, he'll quickly start to wonder why he was so goddamned
eager to get there, however I don't suppose that will dampen
his bloodlust -- just the opposite, probably.

It's not entirely fair to blame these guys for being
enthusiastic killers -- after all, that's what the Marines
train them to be and what we pay them to be. But when you put
their ferocity together with the thinly disguised signals
being broadcast by the pro-war media, and the growing racial
and religious hatred of the "sand niggers," and the repeated
rotations, nightmarish conditions, poor equipment and
insufficient manpower plaguing the U.S. military in Iraq --
i.e. the Donald Rumsfeld experience -- it's a surprise we
haven't seen more atrocities like My Lai . . . I mean, Haditha.

Unfortunately, that doesn't mean we won't see more -- perhaps
many more, perhaps many times worse -- before this wretched
nightmare is over.

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