Haditha: Problem Solved!
The top U.S. general in Iraq has responded to the public disclosure, after six months of attempted cover-up, that Marines murdered men, women and little children in cold blood in the town of Haditha on Nov. 19, 2005.
He has ordered 30 days of "moral training" in "core warrior values" for every soldier in Iraq.
Oh good.
I was worried there for a moment. But now, two years, a month, and some change after we invaded Iraq, after we have shot, bombed, beat and tortured unknown thousands, we are going to give the troops moral training.
I guess that means that we can't really hold soldiers responsible for what they've done 'til now, because they didn't have ethics training. Without review of "core warrior values," how could they have known that it is wrong to shoot bullets (real bullets! live ones! little chunks of metal going the speed of sound! from machine guns!) and throw grenades (you know, the ones that explode!) at six-month-old babies and 75-year-old women?
It is understandable that, lacking this training, they may have not realized that when "four ... girls died screaming" it is a Bad Thing. They've been under a lot of stress, you know?
Similarly, when more Marines were sent in to clean up the bodies, lacking ethics training, they may not have realized that after carrying a "little girl in [their] hands and her brains splattering on [their] boots" should not tell their superior officers and members of the press that civillians were killed by an explosive device set by insurgents (version 1) or in a "crossfire" (version 2). They could not have possibly realized that this was a war crime.
I mean, the Geneva Conventions on Protection of Civilians During Times Of War have only been around since 1949. The Hague conventions that they were based on only date to 1907.
When the Attorney General of the United States calls the Geneva Conventions, the ones which the United States has signed, which every soldier is required to know, calls those Geneva Conventions "quaint," when Department of Justice attorneys write memos that justify taking a detainees' child and crushing his testicles in hopes of convincing the detainee to tell us what we want to know, when most of the troops fighting in Iraq think that Saddam planned 9/11, it's perfectly understandable, isn't it?
I mean, under those circumstances, wouldn't you think its okay to burst into three houses in a row, one taxi, and one other house, and shoot every unarmed family, every naked college student, every grandmother that you find?
No?
There is a phrase that is tossed around in Israel, particularly among the Israeli left. "An enlightened occupation." Israeli human rights groups like B'Tselem, the Israeli version of Human Rights Watch for the occupied Palestinian territories, are sometimes accused of being complicit in trying to create an "enlightened occupation." The Israeli government boasts of having the most moral army in the world, one that bends over backwards to respect human rights. It worked with B'Tselem to create a pocketbook that every soldier could carry with him or her telling him explaining what the Geneva Conventions require in terms of treatment of civilians.
The problem is, there is no such thing as an "enlightened occupation." If the soldiers have received "ethical training" in "core warrior values" they are still hostile foreign occupiers, whether in Iraq or in Palestine, surrounded by a culture they don't understand, a language they don't speak, in a situation where every civilian looks like a potential threat. Even if we assume the best of intentions, even if we assume that most of our soldiers really do want to help Iraqis rebuild their country, really don't see them as "sand coons" or terrorists, even if they scrupulously try to uphold the rules of war, they are still an occupying army. They are going to face situations where trucks run checkpoints accidentally, and they will shoot the two female passengers inside, killing both, including one pregnant woman. Their own trucks will lose control over their breaks and kill four people in a traffic accident, and they will be "forced" to shoot three people in the crowd that forms afterwards.
There is no such thing as an enlightened occupation.
Ethical training isn't going to help.
The Marines in Haditha weren't confused about whether their actions were ethical. Soldiers at checkpoints in Baghdad don't think they are acting unethically.
This is what war looks like. This is what occupation looks like. Every war. Every occupation. Even the ones that have the best of intentions.
Can we go home now?
--Ethan Heitner | Friday, June 2, 2006 10:21 AM
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