A man doesn't get out of his car, so he is shot by our military

[Maine-ah]

yep, this happened in Iraq. One of our sales-people has a son in Iraq, he's a marine. Anyway, so he's on patrol with a few other soldiers, and they have a stopped vehicle. Tell guy to get out of his car. Guy refuses to get out of his car, so, they kill him. To finish this story, son says to father that he believed the guy was innocent, and he didn't partake in the killing of the guy that wouldn't get out of his car.

When I was told this story this afternoon, I was pretty disgusted. I'm also torn. Our military are facing car bombs, roadside bombs ect... every single day. I get that. But, they also had no idea whether or not this guy possessed any weapons. They just shot him. I also don't know if they found weapons on him or not, only that the son said that he thought the guy was innocent.

It's just fucking insane, I guess is my point. This whole thing is fucking insane.

anyway, I just needed to get this out of my mind. Thanks.

[Karenina]

1. There ARE some Iraqis

who don't understand English...

[Ian David]

7. I think guys with guns gesturing at you is universal in any language?

And (I hope) our troops are trained in effective ways to communicate things like, "Get out of your car or I will shoot you."

Saw a documentary on The Military Channel. Marines and other combat soldiers are specially trained in yelling at people and using verbal techniques to gain compliance.

[Maine-ah]

18. well, see, that's where I was torn

[Virginia Dare]

2. But we are spreading freedom and democracy to these people...

get it?

:banghead:

[Jacobin]

3. In Viet Nam

Young children would sometimes walk up to troops and throw hand grenades at them. Young children walking up to G.I.s were then considered 'legitimate targets'. So, you either shoot kids, or risk your life.

Wars of insurgency. That's what Chimpy has gotten us into. Bush's War.

We will never win this carnage. We don't have the moral high ground. We weren't attacked. You never ever go to war unless you are attacked and then only if there is no other alternative, because wars are obscene, immoral, ghastly scenes of never ending carnage and mayhem.

[Xithras]

23. Happened to my uncle.

The VC were a nasty enemy. They would kill families to take their small children, carry them to the nearest American military installation, and hand them a grenade. According to him, the VC would tell these kids...usually between 2 and 4, that the grenade was a "present" for the American, and that the American would give him candy, food, or a toy if he took it to him.

My uncle was in a convoy that had stopped when this happened to them. One of the gunners shot the 3-ish year old kid dead, and then promptly had a nervous breakdown because of it.

The real tragedy? A lot of innocent kids got shot in Vietnam because they went running towards soldiers with something in their hands.

[Ian David]

4. If marines point machine guns at me and say, "get out of your car:...

I am going to get out of my car unless I have a damned good reason not to-- for example, if I have no legs.

Anyone willing to stay in their car despite a bunch of heavily armed guys pointing machine guns at them in the middle of a war zone is probably either a threat or crazy.

It's terrible, it's tragic, and it was probably the wrong thing to do to shoot him.

But you have to wonder... why would he be so insistent on staying in the car despite the obvious danger of non-compliance?

You also have to wonder: Were there warning shots? Did the man pose an immediate threat? Could the vehicle have been disabled, instead of having to shoot the man?

[IdaBriggs]

8. Because either a) he didn't understand the command, or

b) he thought he would be safer in the car where they couldn't beat the shit out of him? Just a few quick thoughts on why....:)

[Ian David]

10. Maybe he saw the Oprah special...

"Never let them take you to the second location."

Maybe he preferred being killed on the spot over hauled away to Abu Grahib and tortured for years and years?

[tatertop]

11. Speak English? Did he think he was being ordered to stay IN his car?

It can be damn hard to figure out what someone is trying
to tell you if you don't speak their language and they don't understand yours.
We will never know.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

12. Probably the wrong thing to shoot him?

Good to know. If I ever go senile and start shooting people as they sit in their cars there's a chance they had it coming.

[Ian David]

15. I'm sorry if I sounded flip about it...

I meant that it's likely that she shooting was unnecessary under the circumstances.

[Kutjara]

14. Not so clear cut.

The man may not have spoken English. He may have been deaf or hard of hearing. He may have been afraid. He may have believed the soldiers would shoot him once he was out of the car.

It's easy for us to think we'd behave rationally in crisis situations but, as psychologists who work with survivors of aircraft crashes have learned, there are generally two types of people in the world: those who react to life-threatening situations with action and those that freeze into immobility. Nobody really knows which type they are until the chips are down. This man may have seen the guns pointed at him, heard the aggressive shouts of the soldiers and simply frozen in terror.

Or he may have misunderstood the shouts of the soldiers and thought they were telling him not to get out of the car. Even if he spoke English, differences in accent and intonation can lead to misunderstanding.

This kind of thing often happens when two groups of frightened people confront each other.

[Ian David]

17. True. He could have frozen. I might do that myself, I suppose...

I might even wet my pants.

Being stopped by angry, shouting marines sighting down their barrels isn't exactly like being pulled-over for speeding.

[Karmakaze]

28. Especially when this is by no means unique...

Just how many Iraqis have been killed at checkpoints by nervous soldiers? Hundreds? Thousands? And why is it, that it is by far more common for the nervous soldiers to be American, rather than say the British?

Could it be that the British were correct and that the average American soldier DOES look at Iraqis as being untermenschen? Could it be that any seeming disobedience by an Iraqi to an American's orders is practically a capital offence?

[Autonomy]

5. The fog of war and the storm of occupation

We knew before going into Iraq that war causes civilian (aka innocent) casualties. That's why the premise (or should I say "revisionist premise") of going in to remove Saddam because "he killed his own people" was bullshit. War kills indicriminantly. It's the nature of the beast.

[Kutjara]

6. Iraqui car bombers and other suicide attackers...

...have two major effects. The first is the immediate effect of killing and injuring whomever is within range of the blast. The second effect is to create a climate of fear among the occupying forces that compels them to take an 'if in doubt, shoot' approach. This inevitably results in a lot of innocent Iraquis being killed, which deepens the resentment of ordinary Iraquis against the occupation and make them more likely to support the 'insurgents.'

Suicide bombing is a political tool, not merely a tactical weapon. In the battle of hearts and minds, we're losing...badly.


edit: typos

[atreides1]

9. He was there, he saw it happen, he's involved!!!!

Just because he didn't fire his weapon, does not mean he's guiltless! He was there and saw what happened, therefore he took part.


If it had been a car bomb don't you think the driver would have detonated right there in the middle of an American military patrol, who could have asked for a better opportunity.

Try to look at it from the victim's point of view, he was being stopped by Americans who have killed women and children in his country, and who might very well kill him, which they did.

Our military personnel realize, at least they should realize, that they are invaders to a good majority of the Iraqi people, and considered the enemy. Since the American led invasion the Iraqi people have suffered more deprevation then they did under Saddam, their children go hungry, the
unemployment figures are through the roof, electricity and water flows in the Green Zone, but for the people very little is provided. The US military is hated, not for what they have done personally,
but for the orders that they have followed.

This will continue until the US leaves Iraq. So they better suck it up and learn to deal with the
shithole that BushCo has thrown them into, because they are now the only ones who can save themselves from being used as cannon fodder.

[Name removed]

20. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Ian David]

24. Welcome to DU and enjoy your stay! n/t

[Ian David]

25. They signed-up to defend the country and the constitution...

and then we pulled a bait-and-switch on them and saddled them with the army we have, not the army we need or want.

[greenisin]

26. Well...

As I understand it the most common contracts are either two or four years, the vast majority of them did sign-up or resign-up under Bush. There was no bait and switch. Maybe you could have said that in 2002, but not now.

[Ian David]

27. Someone lied to you. Two words: "Stop Loss." n/t

[stillcool]

War is an un-natural environment...

how can anything be mentally processed in such a hyper-vigilant state? I have some emotional 'issues' left over from an unpleasant childhood, but can not fathom the depth of the trauma these soldiers live and breathe on a daily basis. They have so little familiarity with which to ground themselves. I would imagine for the most part they are on automatic pilot, and will not really experience what they're living until they can get some distance away from it. The mind self-preserves, allowing another day of life. 'War Crimes' are committed by those giving the orders, and allowing the environment to spiral into hell. All of these soldiers, are living in hell, and reacting accordingly.

[Burning Water]

13. War is insane,

but the guy knew he was in a war zone. Dammit. You have to adjust your behavior to the situation you find yourself in. That's what the soldiers, who do not want to die, are doing, and that's what anybody in the war zone, who doesn't want to die, needs to do.

It's a damn shame.

[The Backlash Cometh]

16. True story:

I took a Criminal Justice class at the B.A. level and it was taught by a prosecutor. Didn't learn a God damn thing. Flashy talker and the kids loved him because he was an easy "A." He just loved entertaining the kids with rah-rah prosecutor stuff and kept skipping the defense attorney-citizen's right angle to every story. One night, his enthusiasm caught up with him. He told us about a combined raid that the local police had with the FBI. They had the suspect sitting in the driver's seat of a stopped vehicle, the FBI were at the front of the car yelling at him to put his hands up and the local police were shouting at him from the window telling him to keep his hands on the wheel of the vehicle. The guy raised his hand and the local police shot him dead. The prosecutor-teacher thought it was funny and even laughed at his "joke." When he saw my look of shock his comment was, "Well, he was a known drug-dealer."

I think these things are not just limited to war zones.

[Maine-ah]

21. kind a like the marine that returned from Iraq

and ended up getting shot by police (or something like that) when they told him to stand up and then stay down....shit, I wish I could remember the whole story on that one.

[Avalux]

19. This is why we shouldn't even be there.

Our troops should not be in this position - to fear the Iraqi civilians to the point that they'd kill one for not getting out of his car. It has nothing to do with whether our troops are bad or good or whether the Iraqi people are bad or good...our invasion and their desperation had done horrible things to them all. Makes me very very sad.

[porphyrian]

22. Not understanding English is no excuse.

War is fucking insane. They adopt policies such as this to protect the lives of our soldiers. I don't begrudge them this. However, that is precisely why I'm so fucking furious that our soldiers have been ordered to war for a bunch of lies. The people responsible for it are the ones who suffer the least.