The One Story You Ever Need to Read to Demand and End to All Wars

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/culture/one-story-you-ever-need-read-demand-and-end-all-wars



U.S. Army Pfc. Steven Dale Green was found hanging in his cell at the federal maximum security prison in Tucson last week. The name may mean nothing to you, but his crimes probably ring a bell: He’s the guy who raped and killed a 14-year-old Iraqi girl in 2006 after shooting and killing her parents and younger sister. Then he and some other soldiers from a nearby U.S. Army checkpoint set the girl’s corpse on fire.

For a long time, several soldiers attempted to cover up this horrific crime by blaming the act on “insurgents.” Finally, the truth came out and Americans reacted will collective shock. Even though the United States had been systematically invading and occupying multiple Muslim countries for years, and committing all kinds of destructive acts, the Green incident was considered particularly heinous, and he ultimately received five life sentences in prison.

However, even though Steven Green’s name was plastered across headlines, he didn’t commit these crimes alone. He explained in disturbing detail during his testimony at the federal trial in Kentucky that he and fellow soldiers specifically targeted the Iraqi girl, Abeer Kassem Hamza Janabi who they “watched from the checkpoint as she performed household chores.” Sitting around day after day, Green said he and his buddies abused alcohol and drugs and came up with a plan to rape the girl.

However, even though Steven Green’s name was plastered across headlines, he didn’t commit these crimes alone. He explained in disturbing detail during his testimony at the federal trial in Kentucky that he and fellow soldiers specifically targeted the Iraqi girl, Abeer Kassem Hamza Janabi who they “watched from the checkpoint as she performed household chores.” Sitting around day after day, Green said he and his buddies abused alcohol and drugs and came up with a plan to rape the girl.


Steven Dale Green [Source: AllisonKilkenny.com]

[orpupilofnature57]

1. MIC = Evil .

[JustAnotherGen]

2. I'm pasting a few more paragraphs

Because we need a jobs and infrastructure and green energy bill now. Time to create, develope and innovate - enough of of this blood sacrifice and destruction.

Maybe if Steven Green had been born somewhere else, to a different family, his life would have turned out differently. According to a 2007 AP analysis, “nearly three-fourths of [U.S. troops] killed in Iraq came from towns where the per capita income was below the national average. More than half came from towns where the percentage of people living in poverty topped the national average.”

All future wars will be fought by Steven Greens because only the Steven Greens of the world are desperate enough to join the military. That’s not to say all troops rape and kill 14-year-old girls, but taking Green’s pre-military situation into account, in addition to his likely PTSD, it’s clear the horrific crime committed against Abeer and her family isn’t an anomaly. If anything, it’s the direct result of unending war fought by soldiers trained to become unfeeling machines of destruction.

When a guy like Green dies (or commits suicide, as it looks like he did), a common reaction is to shrug and say, “Oh well. Good. He deserved it,” and I get that reaction. I really do. But casting aside men like Green and labelling them monsters does us all a disservice, and it puts future Abeers at risk. We should’t consider Green extraordinary because he wasn’t. He was just a poor kid from Texas who fucked up his life and then joined the military where he became traumatized and psychotic, and unleashed every ounce of pain inside him on total innocents. That’s bigger than the story of Steven Green. That’s the story of war.

[heaven05]

11. +1000

having served myself.

[JustAnotherGen]

21. N/t

[Scuba]

19. another 1,000 from another vet. The MIC and their for-profit wars turn ordinary kids into monsters.

Steven Green was as much a victim as anyone in this sad, sad story.

[JustAnotherGen]

20. Daughter of one of the first Green Berets

What the military does to people - mentally, emotionally and physically. He (Green) turned on others - but I will never forget being ten years old and waking up to my father screaming in the front hall closet in the middle of the night. And he signed up for it too . . .

[orpupilofnature57]

23. Only ones not victimized are the profiteers .

[Donald Ian Rankin]

3. Speaking as a European Jew: think again.

*Most* decisions to declare war have done more harm than good.

"All"? No, you're absolutely wrong.

[mythology]

4. Agreed

Even outside of something like the Holocaust, is a war of self-defense not acceptable?

But also I think while as awful as this situation is, the fact is the U.S. military is more restrained in its discriminant killing than other superpowers. Yes there are bad actors, and yes the military needs to be even more restrained, but I feel it doesn't get enough credit for the ways in which it has been limited.

[Victor_c3]

6. This is something that is near and dear to me

unfortunately I don't have the time or energy right now to really get into the subject. It's saturday morning and I'm getting ready to take my kids out for breakfast...

The main problem that I see with the military in the middle east and even the police in our country is that they put a focus on "force protection" first and everything else second. If something is deemed to be a threat to yourself, you shoot first and ask questions later rather than take a little bit of personal risk and further assess the situation and let it develop. The chain of command, given that you can reasonably justify your thoughts, feelings, and actions will stand behind you and will never question the use of force. I was in a number of situation where someone in my platoon shot a civilian and so long as it was reported properly, we never had a problem.

[merrily]

9. WWII was far from typical.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

13. That's what the word "most" means.

The word "all", however, means something different.

[merrily]

14. World War II was one of a kind in all of human history.

Even "most" would be a vast exaggeration.


ETA: Even as to Hitler, I am not sure war was the only solution, especially if people had acted early on. And World War I was what enabled Hitler in the first place.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

15. There are at least a few other examples.

I think that it was unquestionably right to attack Serbia to prevent the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo and it was unquestionably *wrong not* to send troops to Rwanda to prevent the genocide. I think the UN and the UK were right to send troops to Sierra Leone, and that the subsequent fates of North and South Korea probably (but not certainly) vindicates the decision to send troops to Korea (a million-odd deaths, many of them civilians, vs 50 million people having to spend 60 years and counting living under one of the worst and most repressive dictatorships around rather than a peaceful and prosperous democracy, is not a call I'd like to have to be responsible for).

Now, obviously, there are an awful lot more examples of bad decisions to fight wars in the same time period. But WWII is by no means unique, and "most" is right and "all" is wrong.

War invariably involves an awful lot of suffering and destruction, but sometimes that's going to happen anyhow and in those cases sometimes military action *is* the lesser evil.

[merrily]

16. Not really comparable to gassing 12 million people, IMO.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

17. No, I agree (except arguably Rwanda), but examples of cases where declaring was was the right call.

What I'm challenging is the assertion in the OP that we should be calling for an end to all wars ever; I think we should just be calling for much more stringent criteria to be applied before declaring war.

Obviously, that doesn't make such a good slogan, but it's a better policy.

[merrily]

18. Call for an end to all wars. It's a very small risk.

Many people have been calling for an end to all wars for a very long time. So far, that has not ended even the unjust wars, let alone the just ones, assuming there are just ones.

[Victor_c3]

5. I read this yesterday in the veterans section of this forum

A good read.

I've said it before, but war brings out the worst in people. As a combat veteran (I was an Infantryman in Iraq in 2004), I've seen and experienced first hand what war does to a person's psyche. It's not pretty and it brings out some pretty dark and disturbing stuff. You quickly either become comfortable with killing people or you shut down. Fortunately, I got to the point where I couldn't shoot anyone else. And even not killing brings about its own feelings of guilt.

You don't shoot people because you respect them as human beings. Events like the one described in the article, although they are the extreme end of normal, are hardly anomalies in war. Again, war brings out the worst in people.

A good read on the subject is On Killing by Dan Grossman. I thoroughly recommend it.

[heaven05]

12. I'm so glad for your truth!

[cali]

7. so much wrong with your op title. this is the kind of thing that happens all the

time is wars and it has NEVER EVER EVER stopped a war.

And it never will.

[merrily]

10. ? The OP title is "The One Story You Ever Need to Read to Demand and End to All Wars."

[mountain grammy]

8. This story is important, not that it will ever end wars or the desires for wars..

but that it is the truth and not the glory.

[undeterred]

22. Multiply this for wars all over the world

Are the reasons why women are raped and brutalized in war any different depending on the nationality of the soldier?