Accustomed to Their Own Atrocities in Iraq, U.S. Soldiers Have Become Murderers

[laststeamtrain]

Accustomed to Their Own Atrocities in Iraq, U.S. Soldiers Have Become Murderers
By Chris Hedges, Adbusters
Posted on July 27, 2007, Printed on July 27, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/58101/

All troops, when they occupy and battle insurgent forces, as in Iraq, or Gaza or Vietnam, are placed in "atrocity producing situations."

In this environment, surrounded by a hostile population, simple acts such as going to a store to buy a can of Coke means you can be killed. This constant fear and stress pushes troops to view everyone around them as the enemy. This hostility is compounded when the enemy, as in Iraq, is elusive, shadowy and hard to find.

The rage soldiers feel after a roadside bomb explodes, killing or maiming their comrades, is one that is easily directed over time to innocent civilians who are seen to support the insurgents. It is a short psychological leap, but a massive moral leap. It is a leap from killing -- the shooting of someone who has the capacity to do you harm -- to murder -- the deadly assault against someone who cannot harm you. The war in Iraq is now primarily about murder. There is very little killing.

After four years of war, American Marines and soldiers have become socialized to atrocity. The American killing project is not described in these terms to a distant public. The politicians still speak in the abstract terms of glory, honor, and heroism, in the necessity of improving the world, in lofty phrases of political and spiritual renewal. Those who kill large numbers of people always claim it as a virtue. The campaign to rid the world of terror is expressed with this rhetoric, as if once all terrorists are destroyed evil itself will vanish.

The reality behind the myth, however, is very different. The reality and the ideal clash when soldiers and Marines return home, alienating these combat veterans from the world around them, a world that still dines out on the myth of war and the virtues of the nation. But slowly returning veterans are giving us a new narrative of the war -- one that exposes the vast enterprise of industrial slaughter unleashed in Iraq for a lie and sustained because of wounded national pride and willful ignorance. "This unit sets up this traffic control point and this 18 year old kid is on top of an armored Humvee with a .50 caliber machine gun," remembered Geoffrey Millard who served in Tikrit with the 42nd Infantry Division. "And this car speeds at him pretty quick and he makes a split second decision that that's a suicide bomber, and he presses the butterfly trigger and puts 200 rounds in less than a minute into this vehicle. It killed the mother, a father and two kids. The boy was aged four and the daughter was aged three."

"And they briefed this to the general," Millard said, "and they briefed it gruesome. I mean, they had pictures. They briefed it to him. And this colonel turns around to this full division staff and says, 'if these fucking Hadjis learned to drive, this shit wouldn't happen.'"

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http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/58101/

[anniebelle]

1. This begs the question - how many Timothy McVeighs

are we creating with this insanity? We're obviously not treating them properly when they return from the 'war zone' and then just toss them back into society. How sick has this nation become?

[Prophet 451]

3. It's a lesson always unlearned

You've heard of Richard Rameirez, right? The serial killer known as the "Nightstalker"? He was taught how to kill stealthily by his cousin. His cousin was, you guessed it, a deranged Vietnam vet.

The casualties of war are rarely limited to the battlefield.

[ixion]

2. The semantic distinction between "killing" and "murder" is dubious

and using "capacity to harm" is also dubious, IMO.

The only justification I find is defense. REAL defense from a REAL threat. NOT a "perceived" threat, which is something entirely different. However, the "defense" defense, if you will, breaks down when you are illegally occupying a sovereign nation with a populace who does not want to be occupied. In this case, we are always murdering, because we're in their home, as it were.

[Briar]

5. Indeed

The willingness to kill another human being has to be inculcated into a soldier before he or she becomes of any use to the state. The willingness to do harm is always dangerous in my view. And let us not forget that every state's authority ultimately rests in its willingness to use force against its own citizens. Passive resistance can always be swept away by a government prepared to use force.

[MISSDem]

4. My goodness. What a powerful piece.

This gave me goosebumps and then made me cry. War is finished or we are the man said.