Haditha Massacre in Iraq- Video evidence found

Will this turn public opinion in the US against the war?

um...

-- gear (speed.to.roa...), June 1st, 2006.

otfm

More bad news for American-Arab relations : Massacre

"Even before these revelations about Haditha, the war in Iraq was shaping up to be one of - perhaps THE issue, of this year..."

AAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!

(And conservatives cry that this is the "liberal media"!)

Anyway, my take on the whole thing is that this is the kind of shit that inevitably happens in wars, WHICH IS WHY WE SHOULD AVOID THEM WHENEVER POSSIBLE. Especially when our goal is supposed to be winning "hearts and minds." That shit just doesn't work.

-- Abbadavid Berman (Hurtingchie...), June 2nd, 2006.

well, yes.

but it is possible to minimize the massacring-of-the-civilians stuff. it's not entirely inevitable.

Minimize, yes, but not eliminate, and in such a mediated age the fallout from even one incident is huge. I'm sure there were plenty of civillian massacres in World War II, World War I, and every other major war in history, it's just that with Vietnam we started moving into an age where people find out about that stuff.

At any rate, comparing Iraq/Vietnam to WWI/WWII really isn't feasible because of the massive difference in scale--WWI civilian massacres (if they occured) don't have as much impact when you consider that Europe lost nearly an entire generation of men who were fighting as soldiers.

I suspect if I talked about it at work, I'd find a few people in favor of our involvement in Iraq, which is why I don't talk about it at work. As for family, friends and acquaintances, I haven't heard anyone say anything positive about it.

And what measures do you think they've undertaken to prevent this sort of thing from happening (again) (and again)? It's a miniscule difference between going about intentionally killing civilians and killing them repeatedly through indifference/negligence.

I really do believe the disgusting amount of civilian casualties we're seeing in iraq is in large part due to a systematic indifference to the lives of the Iraqi people. And that's just as bad IMHO.

Bottom line is no one's figured out yet how to conduct a civilized war.

Please get some perspective. You're crazy if you think that there are other armies out there that have fought wars with more care to avoid civilian casualties that the US has in this case. Are there deaths, is there destruction? Yes. Even if you take the most unrealistic position possible -- that the majority of the Iraqi population is friendly and supportive of US tropps -- then you've still got a small band of committed anti-US fighters, whose best hope is to disguise themselves as, and hide themselves among, peaceful non-combatants. And this is leaving out the whole factional conflict/civil war angle. People are going to die. But it just doesn't make ANY practical sense to avoid unnecessary civilian deaths.

I say again, hurtingchief OTM

btw, this kind of "shit happens" attitude about civilians is a post-WWI, 20th-century phenomenon, so all you retro-justifiers don't really get to go "aw, but we ALWAYS useta line people up against the wall and kill em!"

- oops -

Well, until we had to justify a certain invasion.

E-mail from someone in the military:

Rich, The values training is a misnomer. It is refresher training. We all have had core value training, ROE “rules of engagement” training and any other number of classes in how to interact/act with the Iraqi’s. It’s much the same as after a helicopter goes down and subsequent investigation determines it was maintenance related, we have a safety stand down day. We don’t suddenly learn how to perform maintenance; we review policy and maintenance procedures to make sure we are not cutting corners and all following the book.

1 AD
Massacre of the Innocents
A biblical event in which Herod the Great orders the execution of all young male children in the city.

1098 First Crusade
Almost all Muslim inhabitants slaughtered after the fall of the city to the Crusaders. 12,000 Christians are killed two centuries later when the city is retaken by Muslims.

1220
Samarkand Massacre
The Mongols under Genghis Khan laid siege to the capital city of Khwarezm and, after the Turkish garrison surrendered the city, drove out the remaining population slaughtering over 75,000 men, women, and children.

Just a few of the "highlights"...

I think part of the problem is that the troops don't always see the civilians as being innocent. Is someone innocent if they watched the bomb being planted in the roadway and didn't warn the convoy as it approached? I'm not saying that's what happened in this case, but these kinds of suspicions must be common.

o. nate otm, i think that is a fundamental problem here.

more xposts!

xpost - Alfred, i didn't know that!

Article 50: “The presence within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians does not deprive the population of its civilian character.”

I think Thermo makes a good point that a liberating army shouldn't behave like a conquering one. It DOES contradict the whole "winning hearts and minds" goal of a liberating army, after all. In that sense, I really think Vietnam is pretty much the only war we can compare Iraq to, as both fall under the category (however ill-fitting a label it may be) of wars intended to "liberate" a nation.

jessiee don't tell me you actually believe the "liberation" stuff in either case???

Tracer, I for one was not (trying to) say "civilians have always been targeted in one way or another, war sucks like that," but rather "civilians always die one way or another, war sucks like that"

I don't know the "on the ground" facts enough to get into it, but I do object to trying to force the war into a "liberating army vs. conquering army" one. There was a definite but short liberation period, but it's been a lo-o-ong time since we were actually liberating anyone in Iraq. Talking about it in those terms is falling into administration propaganda.

The Marines involved seem to have acted out of rage and frustration. The massacre was preceded by a bombing that killed a soldier in their patrol.

This kind of massacre is as old as war itself.

With regards to the idea that targeting civilians has become the MAIN tactic of fighting forces--this emergence is due primarily to the increased use of terrorism, which traditional armies have no idea how to effectively combat, resulting in targeting civilians because in spite of the consequences, it's one thing they can do that might actually eliminate terrorists. Of course, that kind of tactic only causes resentment in the targeted civilian population, breeding more terrorists, which is why we should be fighting the root causes of terrorism instead of going out and killing people BUT I DIGRESS.

yeah jessie, totally agreed on your last graf.

Germany and Japan to thread! And there you had a population that actually supported their governments, unlike Iraq where we can assume that a sizable minority were happy to see Saddam go (at the very least). Iraq is a different case of course...

I still think the overall trend in warfare is toward restraint. This massacre, though horrible and unacceptable, seems to be exceptional in this war. Is it part of a bigger pattern? Perhaps, but at this point we don't know.

1 AD
Massacre of the Innocents
A biblical event in which Herod the Great orders the execution of all young male children in the city.

earlier than that, actually, but there was like more than 5 Herods. HtG supposedly died in like 3-4 BC, and was succeeded by some of his sons, Herod Philip, Herod Antipas, and Herod Archelaus.

but if you want to get into Biblical examples, there's no shortage of this kinda thing(OT more than NT, of course)

Okay I will stop being an IR/history nerd now.

huh? read one kenneth davis

fulla neat little things like that: e.g. the many Herods, that the "three wise men"/"three kings" were zoroastrian magicians from persia, the changing the day of Christ's birth to the end of december, etc

but anyway, back to military slaughters...

Attitudes towards civilian casualties are and have been diverse depending on the time period/conflict/cultures of participants. I don't think you can characterize them as singularly as you have, especially in light of how differently the military perceives them vs. how politicians perceive them vs. how the public perceives them.

Tracey, really, look for a library with a copy of Vollmann's Rising Up and Rising Down. 7 volumes on the ethics of using force, he looks at different conflicts and incidents througout history. It will blow apart your perceptions of civilian-killing-as-strategy being a 20th century phenomenon.

War has always been a ruthless game. The horror of the 20th century is not that new kinds of war atrocities occurred, but that the old ones were fueled and compounded by the tools that were supposed to build the new utopia; science, urban culture, efficiency, mass media. As Doestoevsky said in 1864, "If man has not become more bloodthirsty as a result of civilization, he has certainly become bloodthirsty in a nastier, ugly way than before." That just about sums up 20th century warfare for me.

The killing of civilians is sickening no matter who's behind the trigger. Pretending they're not going to happen is a bit naive, and the attitude that US-forces-are-reckless-murdering-racists is as simplistic as US-forces-are-knights-in-shining-white-armor.

I'm as against the war in Iraq as you can get, but we're there and we're not leaving anytime soon. We going to be hearing about incidents like this for years. (I don't have any faith that the American people will pick a leader better than George Bush next time, though I can't imagine they'll be able to find one that's worse) If that sounds like "shit happens", well, maybe it's the overwhelming sense of inevitability this whole thing has had since Bush first uttered the words weapons of mass destruction in 2002... it's like watching a fucking car crash unfold in slo-mo over the course of four years: "Ah, now the unbuckled toddler's going to go through the windscreen, well, that was bound to happen, been waiting for it for a year and a half now..."

this is so OTM it makes me want to cry.

i'll check out Vollman, but not as history.. i sorta don't quite trust lt.-cpl-major save-a-ho to give me anything that's not filtered through his rigorously 20th-C western male POV

You make it sound as though there was a single attitude about civilian casualties that underwent a turning point during WWII and now there is a new single attitude.

Ha, I'm not a huge Vollmann fan myself (yeah the he-man schtick can be off-putting) but there's quite a cumulative effect to the parade of violence in Rising Up and Rising Down, and he does earnestly struggle with the issue of what constitutes a proper use of force. Even when his observations/conclusions were repellent, I learned a lot of new ways of thinking about conflict and violence.

A US military investigation has found there was no misconduct by US troops over Iraqi civilian deaths in the town of Ishaqi, defence officials say.

This follows allegations that 11 people were deliberately shot by troops during a raid on a house in March.

The events in Ishaqi, north of Baghdad, are among a number of alleged atrocities by US troops in Iraq.

In the wake of the alleged massacre in Haditha, US troops are starting extra training in moral and ethical values.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has criticised coalition forces for what he described as habitual attacks against civilians.

'Correct procedure'

Military officials told the BBC on Friday that the investigation into events in Ishaqi found no wrongdoing on the part of the troops.

Officials said soldiers had followed all the correct procedures when they came under fire as they approached the house. The full results of the investigation have not yet been released.

My impression is that the Marine Corps is handling it well
Donald Rumsfeld
US defence secretary

Haditha: Massacre and cover-up?

The Americans said four Iraqis were killed in the attack.

The outcome of the Pentagon investigation emerged a day after the BBC released the video footage that appeared to show the aftermath of US action in Ishaqi, about 100km (60 miles) north of Baghdad.

The US authorities said they were involved in a firefight after a tip-off that an al-Qaeda supporter was visiting the house.

According to the Americans, the building collapsed under heavy fire killing four people - a suspect, two women and a child.

But a report filed by Iraqi police accused US troops of rounding up and deliberately shooting 11 people in the house, including five children and four women, before blowing up the building.

The video tape obtained by the BBC shows a number of dead adults and children at the site with what our world affairs editor John Simpson says were clearly gunshot wounds.

The pictures came from a hardline Sunni group opposed to coalition forces.

It has been cross-checked with other images taken at the time of events and is believed to be genuine.

Other probes are being carried out into the alleged massacre at Haditha, and also into claims that an Iraqi man was deliberately killed on 26 April in Hamandiya - and that the circumstances were covered up. Seven marines and a navy sailor are being held over the claims.

'Violence commonplace'

The Iraqi government has also launched an investigation into the alleged massacre at Haditha, which eyewitnesses claimed US marines shot dead 24 civilians after a roadside bomb attack in November.

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Mr Maliki said he would ask the US for the investigative files into the incident.

Violence against civilians was "common among many of the multinational forces", he added.

Many troops had "no respect for citizens, smashing civilian cars and killing on a suspicion or a hunch", he added.

mitya is that really the important argument to make?

not the most important certainly. i just didn't feel like the third of pfunkboy's copied blurbs added any real value to the discussion, let alone facts.

Thanks for the link to that story, Tracer. I read it and again found myself thinking, "How can anyone honestly argue that this is better than how Iraqis lived under Saddam?"

http://www.slate.com/id/2143011/

Also, major xpost to Germany and Japan nation building. This comparisson is even more unhelpful, because it helped create the confusion that led us to war.

Other bad analogies.

WikiLeaks: Iraqi children in U.S. raid shot in head, U.N. says

A U.S. diplomatic cable made public by WikiLeaks provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi.

The unclassified cable, which was posted on WikiLeaks' website last week, contained questions from a United Nations investigator about the incident, which had angered local Iraqi officials, who demanded some kind of action from their government. U.S. officials denied at the time that anything inappropriate had occurred.

But Philip Alston, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said in a communication to American officials dated 12 days after the March 15, 2006, incident that autopsies performed in the Iraqi city of Tikrit showed that all the dead had been handcuffed and shot in the head. Among the dead were four women and five children. The children were all 5 years old or younger.

That's murder

That and its covering up is an example of the kind of thing that makes people fly planes into towers. But you can't listen to what terrorists say or investigate why they got so angry in the first place because then they would win, right? :-/

While the broad American public doesn't actually condone this sort of shit, they seem all too willing to overlook it. Musn't be too critical of the troops, you know, because they are our sons, daughters, brothers, and so on.

"Just followin' orders!"

Illegal orders