The most horrific part of the November Marine Slaughter of civilians

[Terran1212]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/26/AR2006052602069_pf.html


"They are waiting for the sentence -- although they are convinced that the sentence will be like one for someone who killed a dog in the United States," said Waleed Mohammed, a lawyer preparing a file for Iraqi courts and the United Nations, if the U.S. trial disappoints. "Because Iraqis have become like dogs in the eyes of Americans.''

God damn Bush.

I suppose it will become that the US will become like Israel in the Occupied Territories. Settlers and occupiers getting 6 months sentences for killing Arabs (to the uproar of some of Israel's finest judges, though).


Or maybe they could make "examples" of out marines and give them lengthy sentences -- scapegoat them. That way the people who initiated a war violating of Article 51 of the UN Charter can pretend they did not committ war crimes, and that you can train brave young men and women to kill and die in a foreign and hostile land and not expect things like this to happen.

Either it'll be blown off or it will turn into "blame the troops"; the real criminals will escape criticisms.

[The Magistrate]

1. As A Matter Of Curiousity, Sir

Since it seems you would complain equally of a light or a harsh sentence, what do you think should happen to these men?

[Mikimouse]

4. I realize that your question was not addressed to me, but...

I feel compelled to throw in my 2 cents, if I may. With all due respect the servicemen who have not engaged in questionable practices (I am the master of euphemistic expression), if these folks are indeed guilty, and it seems that they are, then: They should be disarmed and dropped off in the main street of the town where the massacres were accomplished. Walk away, don't look back. The main problem that I have with debating these types of issues is that we tend to look at the number of tours that these servicepeople have done, how tired they are, how stressed they might be (and I do not doubt that they are stressed), and so on. I fear that we ignore how the victims, or their survivors might interpret the same circumstances, especially considering the fact that the US military is there as an invading/occupying force. The UCMJ has shown itself to be a veritable swiss cheese of loopholes, through which a number of very light punishments, or no punishments, have been handed down in cases of assault or murder (I'm thinking of the prison abuses, as well as the wonderful videotape of the soldier shooting an obviously incapacitated Iraqi in the mosque, I believe in Fallujah last year).

[HysteryDiagnosis]

5. Same thing happened out in the open, used to have the footage....

shrub's democrification of Iraq has produced as much if not more than that other guy.

[Mikimouse]

6. I weep for a once great nation...de Tocqueville said...

that "America is great because it is good, when it ceases to be good...".

[TahitiNut]

8. It seems clear that their punishment should be no more severe ...

... than the punishment of the tactical field command (to the general officer level) that deployed them except in any instance where it can be persuasively shown that they clearly violated an explicit limit to their actions.

I'm not at all in agreement that the "Nuremberg Defense" is illegitimate at the lowest levels. I can only hold them culpable for acting totally within their orders when those giving the orders are likewise punished. It is completely illegitimate, imho, to hold the grunts responsible for obeying an "illegal order" when those who deployed them escape punishment for their culpability.

It must be remembered that the "Nuremberg Defense" was held illegitimate with the context of holding the senior command guilty as well, at a higher level of culpability as befitted their higher level of authority. The prosecution of the My Lai 'incident' was an abomination of justice, not because Calley was punished, but because his command was not! Higher authority MUST incur higher culpability!

[Terran1212]

13. I thought it would be most appropriate that

These grunts do not recieve punishments unproportionally severe to the criminals who sent them there.

[pretzel4gore]

2. nevermind this. the pigmedia are gunmen

and dance as fast as we can, eventually their bullet gonna hit our feet! Instead of dancing to their giggles and scattershot approach, why not get them while in their stinking hovels, and instill some sense of right/wrong into them? where is woof blitzer? where is tweets? where is rush limbah-humbug? where is jonah goldeberg? morton kondrake? brite hum? don imus? bob schieffer? anus coulter? judy miller? robert nofact? o'reilly? The washington Post? cnnfox? ABC? where ARE THEY?
that's the only issue, one would think.....
anyone thinks that the iraqis are the only dogs in this fight is a goddam fool

[acmejack]

3. An interesting question?

Normally the media has much-too much, too say! They are conspicuously silent on this matter.

[alcibiades_mystery]

7. Maybe blaming the troops isn't such a bad idea?

And yes, of course, blame the civilian leadership for creating the conditions, etc., etc. But it seems to me that America has now cultivated a troop fetish to the point of absurdity, such that troops escape all blame for any and all actions, simply by virtue of being troops. This is a true reversal, with the perpetrators taking up the mantle of most aggrieved victim - God forbid we blame the troops.

You know what? Fuck all that. Marines receive fucking training. Marines are subject to the law and to the UCMJ, not to mention to Geneva, and to fucking ethics more generally. Being stressed out in a war zone isn't an excuse to murder. Neither is watching your friend get blown up. It's remarkable that in the US, anyone who tried this kind of defense would be excoriated endlessly in public. How many times have we seen a prosecutor on Law & Order say, yes, well, that's a tough break, but not everyone who has that tough break kills people - and that's the full justification for denying that external conditions led to the fatal choice to murder. Drunk Mom who beat you? That's tough, but not everyone with a drunk abusive mother kills their neighbor. No break for you. This makes sense stateside to everyone. But God forbid one applies the same logic to the precious, fragile, delicate sensibilities of the "troops." The fact of being troops justifies any and all atrocities, says the troop fetish. Slaugtered twenty people in cold blood? Well, it's not your fault, dear, we must never blame YOU for your choices. It's Bush's fault, see? We support the troops, ahem. This absurdity is the road to atrocity itself - the pendulum has swung so far to the other side that now the precious troops get a free pas for the most outrageous conduct, at least on these boards. That this is a secret lust for militarization of ociety as a whole is fairly obvious. That people consider this stupidty "moral" is what is surprising.

[TahitiNut]

9. I suspect you have no combat experience. Right?

It's just one of those things for which nothing else can suffice to base a comprehension upon. :shrug:

Please don't think of this as an ad hominem. It's not. It's just that those of us who've served in a combat zone understand the utter insanity that cannot be conveyed to those who haven't.

[alcibiades_mystery]

16. And yet not everyone who serves in combat

blasts a bunch of civilians to hell.

The principle remains the same, regardless of my experience.

One could just as easily say "I suspect you never had an alcoholic abusive parent?, I suspect you were never sexually abused as a child? I suspect that you never had exprince X that justifie my otherwise indefensible actions, etc." It's gnosticism, and doesn't wash. Now, it may be true that these experiences should serve as mitigating factors. My only point is that they never seem to serve as mitigating factors for any exprience other than warfare. If these folks can't hack combat, they were poorly trained and should be removed from duty.

[TahitiNut]

17. Your 'argument' is a fascinating admixture of broad-brush and selective

... scapegoating. Nobody, including myself, says there's *NO* culpability or that there's a license to kill indiscriminately. At the same time, I'm saying that culpability for such atrocities must, in an authoritarian command culture where disobedience can be summarily punished with instant death, be laid also at the command level except where the front-line troops clearly acted outside of their orders.

When I see such unit behavior, I'm absolutely certain that culpability goes higher than merely that unit. It's like My Lai - it wasn't just Calley and his platoon. It's like abu Ghraib - it wasn't just the grunts in the prison.

The fact of the matter is that the whole reason the field command operates from some saner and less pressured location is that they have an affirmative duty to maintain command and control. I'd want to know, in detail, what kind of briefings these guys received and what their verbal orders were. I'd want to know whether they were 'programmed' to deal with people as though they were in a "free fire" zone.

After all, how can they be more culpable than some bomber pilot that wipes our multiple innocent families by just dropping a bomb on them from 20,000'? How many of their buddies did these guys pick up in pieces over the prior week?

As for the attitude of exonerating people for being abused ... I seem to remember a HUGE part of DU calling for the exoneration of Andrea Yates, shifting the blame for her behavior to her husband and the health care system! How the hell can ANYONE not comprehend that the intentional insanity of a combat zone and training people to kill is one helluva lot more "mitigating" than a woman with a mental disorder in a community where resources and assistance were available? After all, part of the training and indoctrination of a combat soldier is to make killing people seem "right"!!

[tabasco]

10. It would not be scapegoating to put them in prison for life.

That is what murderers deserve. These were deliberate murders, just like My Lai. The military has to give them all life sentences if they want to maintain any discipline. No more My Lais where only one junior officer gets a slap on the wrist!

This is just another outrageous crime against the Iraqi People by the corporate forces of the USA. Robber barons control our nation and have placed our military in a hopeless quagmire. War crimes like these are just a nasty by-product of any war. Another factor disregarded by the neocons. They are not the ones doing the dying. They sit in comfy offices and order our military around like toy soldiers. They live in a fantasy world of US hegemony of the globe while our troops are in a living hell. Then they cry "support the troops." We must support our troops and get them the hell out of Cheney's oil war!

[shadowknows69]

12. I've spoken to many soldiers

in particular when Abu Ghraib first came to light that were completely outraged at the actions of their peers. I'm talking combat veterans too who did hard tours but were still able to keep their humanity. They understand all too well how the actions of a few can tarnish the honor of many. Just my two cents based on observation. Closest I've ever come to combat was being robbed.

[Terran1212]

14. They will be punished but their superiors who led the war will not

[AndyTiedye]

11. If You Treated Dogs That Way You'd Be More Likely to Go to Jail

[sweetheart]

15. bushcheney -> war crimes

The soldiers committed he crime for their commander and thief,
since when are they not under command. The deaths never would
have happened without the invasion and the big liars... These
filth need to get buried so we can de-stink the swamp.