Don't Blame the Apples When the Tree is Rotten

[Karenina]

Martin Smith, a former sergeant in the US Marine Corps, is a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. He can be reached at: [e-mail]

http://counterpunch.org/smith08052006.html

Sgt. Martin Smith, USMC (Ret.)
'Bad apples from a rotten tree: Military training and atrocities'

The mounting revelations of war crimes in Iraq have ripped the mask of democracy and nation-building off of a fatigued and wearied Uncle Sam, revealing the true face of U.S. imperialism. At least thirty U.S. servicemen are being prosecuted or are under investigation for the murder of Iraqi civilians. Twenty-one year old Steven Green, who served in the 502nd Infantry Regiment, was charged with the gang rape and murder of a fourteen-year old Iraqi girl in Al-Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad.

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Iraqis claim that Marines gunned down unarmed teenagers in the streets and then stormed through homes, killing residents, including babies and the elderly, in what can only be described as a blood bath. Likewise, in March in the town of Ishaqi, witnesses claim that eleven civilians, including children under the age of five and a seventy-five year old woman, were forced into a corner of a room with hands bound and then brutally shot by U.S. troops.

Explaining how U.S. soldiers could be capable of such ghastly deeds has led to blatant distortions and false claims by the media punditocracy. The Fox News and Limbaughesque loudmouths were quick to blame the anti-war movement's criticisms of the conduct of the war as a scheme to demoralize America's "will to win" and a ploy aimed to bolster the propaganda efforts of "al Qaeda operatives." Some in the blogosphere even absolved U.S. war crimes as a just response to an insurgency which has utilized beheadings, kidnappings, and roadside bombs--even though the targeting of civilians is in contravention of international humanitarian law or let alone the fact that the Iraqi resistance is born out of the very presence of U.S. troops as an occupying force.

Liberal analyses rely on two versions of the "bad apple" hypothesis that are equally inept. On the one hand, it is claimed that the war crimes are the result of a renegade president who flaunts international law. According to such a view, the impeachment of Bush would be a step forward in remapping what is merely a stray path on which the neo-con Republicans have circuitously navigated U.S. democracy. On the other, many argue that such incidents are the result of a few deranged individuals and that Steven Green's discharge with a "personality disorder" is proof that his actions represent an isolated incident by an unstable individual. The former argument buys into the liberal myth that the U.S. military is somehow capable of humanitarian interventions-if only Al Gore or John Kerry were president, or so they say. Such an assessment fails to acknowledge that U.S. imperialism has never been humanitarian nor has it been free of blatant war crimes, as the history of military intervention under Clinton in Kosovo or Somalia will attest. The latter is merely another version of the "support our troops" sloganeering which holds that the U.S. military, as a whole, represents the lofty ideals of honor, courage and commitment. While many have loved ones or relatives in service; or may have served in the military themselves, there can be no denial that the military is a tool of big business--and comes at a cost to human life that is, as they say, "priceless." In describing the interventions that he participated in during the early decades of the 20th century--and the corporate interests he served--U.S. Marine Gen. Smedley Butler said: "I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism."

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http://counterpunch.org/smith08052006.html