Iraq War - Pardon the Troops Accused of Crimes

[stevenleser]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_steven_l_061224_iraq_war___pardon_th.htm

December 24, 2006 at 10:20:44

Iraq War - Pardon the Troops Accused of Crimes
by Steven Leser

Our troops in Iraq are under an immense amount of psychological pressure. Our troops wear uniforms that clearly designate them as members of the US Armed forces. Anyone in Iraq desiring to attack or kill members of the American military do not have to guess about their targets. Our troops, however, do not have the same ease in identifying friend from foe. US Service People on patrol in Iraq are like sitting ducks with bull's-eyes not just painted on their front, or back, but on every surface and edge. Bullets can come at anytime and from any angle. Improvised Explosive Devices or IEDs can be hidden under any car, in any garbage can, in any store-front and exploded by remote control when our troops come near.

Our troops have seen bullets and shrapnel kill and eviscerate hundreds and thousands of their friends. They have had to work under the constant pressure that this same fate could befall them at any time. Many of our GIs have served two or more six month tours in Iraq under these conditions. A large percentage are mentally collapsing under the strain.

A UPI article "10% at Army Hospital had Mental Problems" quotes Colonel Rhonda Cornum, commander of Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany as saying (at the time of the article, February 18, 2004) 'Between 8 and 10 percent of the nearly 12,000 soldiers from the war on terror, mostly from Iraq, treated at had "psychiatric or behavioral health issues"', http://www.upi.com/archive/view.php?archive=1&StoryID=20040218-020757-3188r

That was after one year of the war. After nearly four years, how much more has the cumulative effect of the conflict torn at the fabric of our troops' mental health?

We see three clear indications that there is a serious problem:

Much More at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_steven_l_061224_iraq_war___pardon_th.htm

[babylonsister]

1. I totally disagree. There are thousands of soldiers over there

facing the same degree of horror; the majority of them deal with the situation as best they can without resorting to murder. Granted, I have never been in that situation, but I don't think pardoning them is the answer. That kind of 'punishment' would send a lousy message to soldiers and Iraqis.

[stevenleser]

4. I pondered this article and objections such as you raised...

for about two weeks before firmly deciding where I stood and committing 'pen to paper'. The one thing I would say in response to the very good points you raised is that different people 'break' differently. We already know that 17% of Iraq war vets who have returned home have been diagnosed with PTSD and than number is expected to rise since it takes a while for the disease to manifest itself and for the diagnoses to be made.

Some troops are committing suicide. Suicide rates among the troops are climbing alarmingly. Like I said, different GIs are breaking in different ways, but breaking they are.

[babylonsister]

14. So when/if they 'break', it's not their fault and you think a pardon

is in order across the board? What about their victims? What do you tell them?

[Monkeyman]

6. We who have served want those who commit crimes

To face the full scale of Military Justice. These is no excuse in the world for these actions. It bring dishonor on those of us who did our time in combat.

[stevenleser]

8. I've also served, FYI

[Webster Green]

2. Bad idea!

Blanket pardon of troops accused of atrocities? Seems a bit extreme.

If they were insane at the time, the attorneys can use that as a defense at the trial.

[unhappycamper]

3. IMO, war crimes are just that - war crimes.

Abu Gharib, Ramadi, Fallueja & Haditha are a few examples of issues the ICC should investigate.

http://www.un.org/law/icc/general/overview.htm

[noamnety]

5. You feel the same way about all war criminals?

Nazi ones?
Darfur?

Are you basically arguing against prosecuting war crimes world wide? Or is this pardoning something only American troops deserve?

Are you in favor of pardoning all US military troops who rape US military women?
Or only those who rape Iraqi women?

The more I think about those last two questions, the more offended I am. Actually shaking with anger at the moment, at Yet Another Man coming up with Yet More Reasons why men shouldn't be held accountable for raping women.

Better proposal - those who send troops with PTSD back into battle should be charged as accomplices for the crimes those troops commit.

[stevenleser]

7. All very good questions

ones I did think about before writing it.

My father is a holocaust survivor. I have no other family besides him on my fathers side, most of them died in the gas chambers surrounding the town of Riga in Latvia, some also went to Treblinka or Auschwitz. I am normally not very, what is the word I should use, sympathetic when it comes to being soft on prosecution for war crimes or crimes against humanity.

I believe that Iraq is a specific case and that other coalition troops, the Brits, Aussies, etc. should also be subject to the same.

The question I would ask back at you is, do we prosecute the insane? Whether it is murder or rape or any other crime, regular citizens are not prosecuted if they are insane. Now, what if we go further and realize, in the case of Iraq and our soldiers, that it is US, more specifically, those who we elected to represent us who initiated the policies that made them insane?

The Nazis who were in charge of POW and concentration camps and committed war crimes and crimes against humanity had no pressure on them other than the chain of command. They were not insane and nothing was driving them to be insane. They were there for the express purpose of committing those crimes.

In Darfur, nothing is pressuring those committing crimes to do so. They are not facing what our troops face. They are also not insane and like the Nazi decades before them, they are there for the express purpose of committing those crimes.

Along with WMD and all of that, our involvement in Iraq was predicated on the idea that we would be liberators from a corrupt and depraved regime. Our troops were there for regime change. They did not go with the purpose of committing crimes.

Another question in response since you seem to be fixated on the crime of rape. If we imprison someone on charges that turn out to be false, and that person is brutalized in prison over the course of three years, comes out with PTSD and is clinically insane and then that person rapes someone, should they be charged with rape? This to me is the logical equivalent of our soldiers in Iraq.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

9. I politely disagree,

especially when it comes to our male soldiers raping our female soldiers. Time and again I've heard the testimony: a superior demanded sexual favors from a woman soldier, telling them that if they don't their career is ruined. Just today there was a thread about a woman soldier who went AWOL rather than go back to Iraq because she feared more rape there. She named names--and those fellows are free to walk about, but she's in the brig. I've also heard reports where women soldiers in Iraq fear to go to the bathroom at night unacompanied because of rape and sexual harrassment. If the stress is so bad in Iraq that women are forced to do this or have sex, then there is something very very wrong. I say it is the military considering these rape cases as not all that important.

[Monkeyman]

10. Well stated and it is very true

This Combat vet for one says this Any Man who rapes is not a man

[stevenleser]

12. Admittedly, that is one scenario I did not think about...

... I am a little less sure when it comes to our soldiers attacking our own soldiers. I think in those cases, they probably should be more individually examined. Come to think of it, I wouldn't mind so much if EVERY case were more individually examined with an eye to exactly what the individual soldier/marine/airman/seaman's experience to date affected the commission of the crime.

Clearly, a superior officer sitting in an office who spent the war sitting in an office, asking for favors does not fit the requirement for any sort of leniency or pardon.

[noamnety]

16. Again, this is some nationalistic crap

Why are you less sure when it's an AMERICAN woman being raped?

[noamnety]

15. How is Iraq a special case?

How are German soldiers different from Americans?

Personally I think it's a load of nationalistic crap to argue that Nazis committing war crimes did it only because of their chain of command, whereas our guys did it because they were traumatized. I don't know where you got the idea that the average German soldier wasn't traumatized by what he'd seen, or that he wasn't living in fear that if he didn't do what he was ordered, he'd be the next one tossed into the camps.

People commit crimes against humanity because they've been dehumanized and/or they've dehumanized the enemy for some reason, and that crosses nationalities. Americans are not inherently better or worse than Germans in that regard, and I find your train of thought - that "Americans in Iraq are in a unique circimstance, not like those OTHER people who commit war crimes" - to be distasteful at best, and somewhere between white supremacist and xenophobic at worst. I can't quite find the right phrase for that, but reading your post it sounds like you are making excuses for Americans because you believe deep down they are - they must be - good people at heart, unlike people of those other nations.

I imagine from an Iraqi's point of view, you know, Americans are exactly there "for the express purpose of committing those crimes."

As for your statement that I seem to be "fixated" on the crime of rape, I can't help noticing you seem to be dismissive of it. You seem to take the holocaust personally, because of your personal history. Maybe it would take your mom being a victim of rape by the Germans for you to get it, I don't know. Me, I'm a female veteran. Roughly a third of female veterans have been the victims of a successful or attempted rape by another soldier while they were in the military. I take it very personally when I bring that up, and a man responds by suggesting we shouldn't prosecute rapes, because a man might be falsely imprisoned if we do, or a soldier who raped a woman must have been dealing with personal issues. To be blunt, I think this shows a stunning ability on your part to empathize with Men, and an equally stunning INability to empathize with women who are victims of violence against women - not unlike your ability to empathize with American men, but not German ones. The fact that you defend not prosecuting rapists on the grounds that they might be victims of prison brutality if we did - is jaw droppingly appalling to me. Better to let women be brutalized en masse without accountability than (God Forbid) risk having a Man be brutalized.

Can you see why, as a woman, I might find that offensive?

(I am NOT condoning prison violence here, just to be clear.)

[cassiepriam]

11. PTSD is not an excuse for criminal activity. No way there should be blanket pardon.

[prole_for_peace]

13. i don't believe there are psychological reasons for these things.

i believe that they are pissed at the iraqis and don't think they are on the same level as westerners. kind of the like the way the english treated the irish and scottish.

[some guy]

17. I respectfully disagree.

I do believe you opinion is based on compassion for the US troops. Your essay is slightly better than the headline, in that you do advocate trials, and treatment. The proper term for that is not guilty by reason of insanity (or PTSD, could I suppose be a newly defined legal term.) Pardon is the wrong term.

However, the entire invasion/occupation is a war crime, and crimes committed under that umbrella designation are still crimes.

There are military personnel who have opted to refuse to serve - Ricky Clousing was just released, and discharged from the military for going AWOL in refusing to return to Iraq. Ehren Watada, (I believe) is about to stand trial; to list just two.

Rather than pardons, the US should have very public accountings of the entire mess; the nationalistic propaganda that helps create the facade of US exceptionalism; the lies by the maladministration that pushed for the war crime; the cheer leading by the corporate media that helped feed the lies and jingoism that led some to enlist; the lowering of recruitment standards by the military itself to provide bodies for the war crime - all of this needs to be very visibly, and very publicly exposed and repudiated.

[Skittles]

18. no

I am a huge supporter of our troops but it does a disservice to humanity - to America - to the troops themselves, to excuse criminal behavior. The reasons they are using in this article for excusing such behavior could just as easily be applied to a lot of the insurgents and Iraqi people - it's not right for them, it's not right for anyone. If anything, higher-ranking people - in the military and in the government - need to be held accountable for the extremely fucked-up conditions our troops are forced to endure.

[MarinCoUSA]

19. NO PARDON. We ARE NOT the sovereign power in Iraq

Sorry, it may feel good and our troops are indeed in a very very hard situation,

but the power to pardon is a supreme power of sovereign authority and should the U.S. exercise this power in Iraq now it would be another (enough already!!!) legal and strategic blunder.

If these soldiers had killed/murdered U.S. citizens then a pardon may or may not be appropriate.

Since we are not in Iraq as imperial and sovereign conquers (right?) a pardon is just not appropriate.


It's really very simple: How will this look to the Iraqis?.