2 June 2006 - 5:32pm
No good can come from putting our troops in such a bad situation
It's shocking and appalling and frustrating.
With US commanders still struggling to contain the fallout from the alleged Haditha massacre, the US military announced it was investigating charges that American soldiers rounded up and shot 11 unarmed civilians, including five children — one six months old — and four women in the town of al-Ishaqi in March.
Yes, this is yet another atrocity involving US troops overseas.
Last night US military defence lawyers, speaking anonymously to the Associated Press, said that the American soldiers had been cleared of any wrongdoing in al-Ishaqi....
...But the video shows at least five children dead, four of whom appear to have bullet wounds to the head. Local Iraqi police officials say that the US troops kept an entire unarmed family handcuffed in a room for an hour, before spraying them with bullets. They then blew up the building.
Our troops are in an impossible situation. How many people do American forces have to kill before the politicians have decided that's enough?
The Bush Administration used to get their jollies attacking opponents, saying they believed Iraqis could handle democracy. Yet now this same administration refuses to let the Iraqis take charge of their own democracy.
And our troops continue to be thrown into the middle of a civil war with a mission of keeping the peace using instruments of death.
The New York TImes reports that Rumsfeld is defending the training of the troops, but field commander Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli is ordering new training:
In Baghdad, the top American ground commander in Iraq ordered that all 150,000 American and allied troops in the country receive mandatory refresher training on "legal, moral and ethical standards on the battlefield."
...as if that will make a stitch of difference. Armies are trained to kill, to blow the crap out of the enemy. Placing them into civilian neighborhoods as heavily armed goon squads is not going to yield anything but high-tension situations. These are soldiers, not cops. And they're not on their own streets, they're in a foreign country that is in the middle of a civil war based on hatreds that go back over a dozen centuries.
This is what short-sighted, anything-but-strategic planning gets you. I'm only surprised that anyone is surprised. The whole invasion was set up as a no-win situation from the start.
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Comments
Unfortunately, we should not be shocked that atrocities occur in Iraq. There are atrocities in every war, which is why you do everything you can to avoid war in the first place. The vast majority of the troops are good, hard-working men and women who would not commit these crimes. However, much like any society, there are decent people and bad people. It should not be a reflection on the whole military if there are a few incidents of murders.
I don't consider it a reflection on the whole military.
I consider it a reflection on the Bush Administration and its incompetent policies and planning.
A trouble with incidents like Haditha is that while the small group responsible shouldn't be a reflection of the military, a growing chain of people are tied to covering up, making excuses, and outright denying. While I don't see this incident as an out-and-out reflection of our soldiers, it's beginning to look like a reflection of our decision-makers (much as the Abu Ghraib situation was).
Or sickened or shocked? I think the fact that we aren't is why it continues. People must react from the gut and say this is not who we are, not who we must be as a first world power. If we don't separate ourselves from the atrocities, we will be considered a part of it.
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