They cry peace, peace, but there is no peace -- not when American missiles are around to derail any talks that might hamper the profitable operations of the Washington war machine.
On Wednesday, missiles from an American drone destroyed a house in the Pakistani village of Damadola, killing at least 15 people, with women and children reportedly among the dead. The ostensible target was a gathering of Taliban fighters, who control the surrounding area in this border region with Afghanistan.
But the real target of the attack, no doubt, was the peace process now underway between the local militants and the new Pakistani government. As AP notes:
The explosions came as Pakistani authorities and Taliban militants exchanged dozens of prisoners in the latest step in a peace process that is stirring growing alarm in the West. NATO claims [that] militant incursions into Afghanistan have increased.
This is a familiar pattern of the worldwide Terror War launched by the Bush Administration. We saw it a few weeks ago in Somalia, when national unity talks between the government and insurgents were disrupted at a delicate stage by the "targeted assassination" of a rebel leader (and the usual assorted civilians) by U.S. missiles.
In the American imperium, subject nations are not permitted to work out their internal conflicts on their own -- especially if this involves a cessation of hostilities that leaves any group or faction disfavored by Washington still standing. Obliteration of the disobedient is the ultimate goal, as Hillary Clinton put it so well the other day. But the Terror War policy of disrupting peace talks has some short-term objectives as well. These include the continuation of the war profiteering that now greases the entire American system; and, perhaps above all, the ape-like show of dominance that gives such deep psychological satisfaction to the pathetic, stunted, needy wretches who control our politics and our political discourse.
What's going on in Lebanon? Nothing you haven't seen before -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Palestine and other places where "the United States is basically instigating and funding civil wars."
So says Professor As’ad AbuKhalil -- better known perhaps as the "Angry Arab," for his indispensable website of the same name. AbuKhalil was born and raised in Lebanon and has an intimate knowledge of troubled land's warring factions there -- and their external backers. Needless to say, the American media's framing of the current flare-up of violence in Lebanon is the usual sinister caricature of reality, with "bad guys" attacking "our friends" out of pure, malevolent, world-gobbling evil.
In fact, "our friends" in Lebanon are actually in league with our allegedly erstwhile friends Al Qaeda. The Hariri faction backed by the Bush Administration is drawing upon the most extremist Sunni armed factions in an attempt to counteract the power of Shiite Hezbollah. This is of course just a continuation of current American strategy in the region, as Sy Hersh outlined last year: giving arms and money to extremist Sunni groups allied with al Qaeda in order to ward off Shiite factions making trouble in our client regimes.
This in turn is part of a broader, more long-standing strategy, going back to 2004, as we noted in a recent report: a global program of arming and funding militias and other violent "non-state actors" to foment trouble where Washington wants trouble, and pressure recalcitrant regimes to bend to the imperial will.
And no, Washington is not "behind" every twist and turn in Middle East politics. But American interventions, direct and covert, are responsible for exacerbating and intensifying conflicts, enflaming sectarian and ethnic divides (or literally building giant concrete walls between them, as in Baghdad today), bolstering tyrannical and/or ineffectual, illegitimate leaders whose misrule provoke more strife, suffering and conflict.
In an interview this week on Democracy Now, AbuKhalil cuts through the corporate media cartoons to give a truer picture of the outbreak in Lebanon:
I think that people may remember, back in the 1980s, the United States government, for two years in the administration of Ronald Reagan, deployed troops from ’82 to ’84. And there was a civil war, and the United States was supporting the rightwing militias of Israel in Lebanon, and they used the discourse of supporting the central government of Lebanon.
Something similar is taking place right now in Lebanon, and this is very much similar to what’s happening in Sudan, in Palestine, in Iraq, in Afghanistan and Somalia. The United States is basically instigating, funding and arming civil wars in all those places. We hear a lot about this inability of the international community to tolerate armed militias. Of course, Hezbollah is an armed militia, but so are the pro-militias of the government. There’s a Los Angeles Times article today detailing the efforts by the United States and allies to create militias throughout the country. And the Washington Post indicated that this government of the United States spent $1.4 billion to prop up the administration of Siniora in Lebanon.
And basically, what happened in Lebanon in the last few days is a partial coup d’etat that was in response to a full coup d’etat that was engineered by the United States and Saudi Arabia and Israel from behind the scene back in 2005, capitalizing on the assassination of Rafik Hariri.
And things have gotten to this point because America basically is responsible, more than their clients in Lebanon. I mean, there were ideas of dialogue in Lebanon, and things were moving in that direction, and then, suddenly, lo and behold, the Assistant Secretary of State of the United States for the Near East, David Welch, shows up in Lebanon, and he basically wanted to stiffen the resolve of the clients and to basically prevent the possibility of dialogue. And then, Walid Jumblatt, one of the clients of the United States and Saudi Arabia and Lebanon today, escalated by deciding on taking the issue of disarming Hezbollah, which is supported at least by half of the Lebanese; and Lebanese parties, including clients of the United States, [had] agreed that the issues of disarming Hezbollah should be left for internal dialogue of the Lebanese themselves...
This [the current violence] is something that experts have warned the United Nations about. If you push things to that point, the other side is going to lash out, and they did lash out, even if one, like me, does not like the scenes of these militias and armed thugs running into the streets of Beirut and so on. But basically, we have to say that this is the doing of US foreign policy, and this is the true face of the Bush Doctrine in the Middle East.....
We have to say that this level of intense tensions and conflict and animosity is the product of a deliberate American-Saudi policy of instigating a Sunni-Shiite conflict, the likes of which Lebanon has never seen. I mean, even somebody like myself who comes from a split background—my mother is Sunni, and my father is Shiite—I mean, we’ve never seen anything like this. Saudi media, with the full cooperation of the United States, have been for three years mobilizing the Lebanese opposition, because that’s the only thing they have....They have been [doing] serious propagandizing to [split] Sunnis from Shiites in order [to] create a militia that can stand up to Hezbollah.
Back at his website, AbuKhalil notes:
What is quite ironic is that Lebanese Forces' media (like LBC-TV) are gleefully airing calls for Jihad... by (Hariri- and Saudi-funded) Salafite groups in North Lebanon. Do they not know what those groups' views are of Christians? They even refer to Lebanese Christians as "crusaders". These are clones of Al-Qa`idah, but the Lebanese Forces seem to be embracing them.
And so in Lebanon -- as in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia -- the policies of the Bush Administration have only produced more extremism, more terrorists, more violence.
Can we not discern a pattern here, a clear intention? The "War on Terror" produces terror; it's part of the "creative destruction" that the militarists used to boast about, when they dreamed that their crimes of aggression, torture and murder would lead future generations to "sing songs about us," in the immortal words of Michael Ledeen.
This quote is often attributed to Richard Perle, but it comes from Ledeen's call for "total war" in a speech at American Enterprise Institute on October 29, 2001. Ledeen followed this up with a piece on National Review Online in August 2002, when he mocked Brent Scowcroft's concern that an invasion of Iraq could turn the Middle East into a cauldron. Ledeen's response:
One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today.
Ledeen is no mere kibitzer on the rightwing gravy train. He is one of the architects and chief abettors of the cauldronization -- the slaughter and suffering -- we see across the Middle East today. As the Washington Post noted back in the glory days of 2003, when these bloodthirsty wretches were still strutting around beating their chests about their importance:
One [of Karl Rove's advisers] is Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, whose specialties include terrorism and the Middle East. His latest book, according to the official summary, asserts that "America must topple the regimes of the terror masters to eliminate the threat of terrorism."
The two met after Bush's election. "He said, 'Anytime you have a good idea, tell me,' " Ledeen said. Every month or six weeks, Ledeen will offer Rove "something you should be thinking about." More than once, Ledeen has seen his ideas, faxed to Rove, become official policy or rhetoric.
Nowadays, of course, Ledeen skulks around pretending he opposed the invasion of Iraq: the kind of astonishing lie one might have heard in a Nuremberg courtoom back in the day, and one easily refuted. (As is his current lie that he has always opposed an attack on Iran.) But he, Rove and all the other facilitators of the militarists bear a direct and substantial share of responsibility for the murder and chaos that continues to erupt across the tormented region.
UPDATE: And now Bush is proposing an even more direct U.S. military intervention in Lebanon. Speaking in Cairo -- on yet another one of his pointless trots* around the cauldron (maybe he wants another fancy sword -- or just some more good smoochin' -- from the Saudi king) -- Bush offered to help the Lebanese army "respond more effectively" to Hezbollah. He also took the opportunity to -- what else? -- blame Iran for everything happening in Lebanon, claiming that without the backing of the devilish Persians, Hezbollah -- which, as AbuKhalil noted, is supported by almost half of the Lebanese population -- would be "powerless."
So Bush will soon have yet another proxy war playground to while away his time before retiring to stick his snout in the same corporate trough that has so enriched his fellow war crminal, Tony Blair -- who has already made almost $20 million in corporate pork in less than a year after leaving office.
Who says crime -- especially war crime -- doesn't pay?
*Note. Some might think that Bush is touring the region to build support for an attack on Iran. But that kind of head-knocking and arm-twisting is left to Dick Cheney (who took an ominious swing through the cauldron not long ago). Junior is too witless for any hard-core dealing -- although no doubt he will bluster and bellow to his hosts about Iranian perfidy and "doin' God's will" and whatever else vomits up from his murder-rotted brain.
To divert from atrocity and anguish and political folly for a moment: over at the MySpace page, there are four new songs up, with more to come. These are demos, self-produced, rough-sketch possibilities for the second album, which, if all goes well, might be recorded this summer with Nick Kulukundis, the extraordinary producer, arranger and musician. There are also two songs from the first album with Nick, Wheel of Heaven (available through iTunes), still up on the page. Give 'em a listen if you take a notion.
Civilians are still streaming out of Baghdad's Sadr City, despite the announcement of a truce late last week designed to avert – or at least give the appearance of diverting – a major bloodbath from an all-out assault on the densely-populated area by U.S. forces and their local junior partners. Announced on Saturday, the deal was immediately eviscerated by U.S. forces, who bombed three neighborhoods in Sadr City that very afternoon, as dpa reports.
Oddly enough, when Iraqi government forces tried to enter disputed Sadr City quadrants the next day, they were attacked, the New York Times reports. The Times' intrepid correspondents, including the ever-reliable spin-funnel Michael Gordon, professed to be shocked – shocked! – at such rude behavior, which they presented as clear and unprovoked violations of the nascent truce. Naturally, they omitted any unseemly and unnecessary mention of the American bombing of the day before.
The fighting is Sadr City is concentrated along a demarcation line, Al Quds Street (Jerusalem Street), between areas loyal to nationalist cleric Motqada al-Sadr and areas now under the control of the violent sectarian factions backed by both the United States and Iran; i.e., the Iraqi "government." In addition to bombing residential areas and leading Iraqi government troops in attacks, American forces are also erecting a massive concrete wall, 12 feet high, along three miles of Al Quds street, in attempt to seal off the recalcitrant neighborhoods. Of course, it was considered poor form – or rather, an international outrage – when the Soviets did this kind of thing in Berlin; but in our brave new world, it is now an accepted, even celebrated policy. (Just like torture, concentration camps, aggressive war, warrantless surveilance, etc.) During the past 17 months, throughout the vaunted "surge," U.S. forces have been building ghettos all over Baghdad and elsewhere in the country, often turning over these enclaves to the tender mercies of "former" insurgents and terrorists who, now in the pay of Washington, rule them as private fiefdoms. This, you understand, is what is now known as "liberation."
Civilians still living in the slowly closing concrete trap say they are almost as fearful of a genuine truce as continued warfare. That's because a real truce would allow the violent sectarians empowered by Bush to operate with murderous impunity in their neighborhoods, replacing al-Sadr's draconian militia with something even worse, as McClatchy Papers reports:
Inside Abdul Hassan's home, furnished with colorful rugs and flimsy mattresses, Sakran and his wife hoped for calm after weeks of bombardment and gun battles, but they feared the worst is yet to come. "We just want peace," Sakran's wife, Suham Bresam, said, her eyes heavy from sleepless nights. "This agreement happened and I was up all night from the gunshots and strikes."
Her home was in the middle of the fight on the edge of the district where U.S. forces are holed up in abandoned buildings and the Iraqi Army has set up checkpoints, and she hadn't left it in weeks. A nearly completed wall built by the U.S. military isolates the area, and her modest dwelling is scarred by bullets and shrapnel…
Nowhere in Sadr City is safe from an air strike, Bresam said, but Abdul Hassan's home was safer than her own. At home, the Iraqi Army shoots erratically after a roadside bomb blast hit civilians, and when the Mahdi Army shoots rockets at U.S. aircraft, missiles rain on people's homes.
"It's just the civilians who get hurt," she said....
Before the battle began in late March, the area was peaceful…but they lived in an atmosphere of intimidation. When women were beaten by the Mahdi Army in her neighborhood or Sunnis killed, they objected quietly and never challenged the militia....
But they also fear the Iraqi Army. Videos captured on cell phones are being sent as messages from person to person. Abdul Hassan pulled out his phone to show a public hanging of three men. They stood on police trucks with nooses around their necks as a crowd of people looked on and then the trucks were driven away and the men were hung. Another showed men shot by the Iraqi Security Forces and then burned. In the background Iraqi soldiers spoke.
"Don't say in the name of God the most compassionate the most merciful. They are animals," one soldier said....
Abdul Hassan said the videos were shot in the southern cities of Karbala and Nassiriyah, and he worried that the same would happen in Sadr City if the Iraqi Army had free reign.
"We haven't seen a solution that will give us peace," he said. "We don't want it to be like Karbala or Nassiriyah. We don't want people executed in the streets."
But there will be no peace in Sadr City. The "surge" will continue along the Al Quds line. Bombs will keep falling from American planes, missiles from drone-craft operated by button-pushers bunkered in Nevada will continue to rain death on houses and apartment blocks, and the extremists embraced by George Bush will keep hanging and shooting people in the streets.
II. Meanwhile, civilians in Mosul are likewise fleeing or hunkering down in the face of a major assault by U.S. and Iraqi forces. Patrick Cockburn of the Independent reports that one of Iraq's largest cities has been turned into a "ghost town," as likewise fleeing or hunkering down in the face of an attack by U.S. and Iraqi forces. The latter have launched the attack because, they say, the city has been under the control of "al Qaeda in Iraq" for many months.
That's right; as Juan Cole notes, one of Iraq's largest cities has been in the hands of what is supposed to be America's deadliest enemies in Iraq – even while Americans has been bombarded with propaganda about the "success" of the surge. This is the same city, by the way, that is routinely trumpted as a "success story" in the glittering career of General David Petraeus, architect of the "successful" surge. Petraeus was in control of Mosul during the first months of the war, when he was regularly touted – by Michael Gordon of the NYT, among others – for his remarkable "counterinsurgency techniques" and peerless "nation-building skills." So "successful" were Petraeus' efforts that the current assault to dislodge "al Qaeda in Iraq" is a carbon-copy of a similar operation launched earlier this year, as Cole reports:
Reading news about Iraq is like watching Bill Murray's 'Groundhog Day' in which you have to live through the same day over and over again. So the US and Iraqi governments have announced a new campaign against Sunni radicals in Ninevah province, especially Mosul. Take a look at this article, published late last January: "Thousands of Iraqi army soldiers reached the northern city of Mosul on Sunday in preparation for what the government said would be a major offensive there against Al-Qaeda in Iraq, along with other Sunni militants."
Ninevah governor Duraid Kashmula admitted to Al-Hayat that Mosul "has come to dominated by the leaders of al-Qaeda as a result of the delay in the military operation in the city."
What??! Mosul is Iraq's second largest city at 1.7 million, and it is under the control of "al-Qaeda"? How long has this been the case? All this time? While the US press was reveling in the "calm" in the country?
Mosul was also taken over by insurgents in 2004 – while U.S. forces were destroying Fallujah. It has long been flashpoint for terrorist attacks, reprisals and strife throughout the war. And now, for the second time in less than a year, it is being subjected to a major attack to wrest it away from insurgents. This is the kind of "success" that has fuelled Petraeus' meteoric rise to his current perch in command of the entire "Central Command" of the Terror War.
But what is happening in Mosul today? Patrick Cockburn has the story:
Mosul looks like a city of the dead. American and Iraqi troops have launched an attack aimed at crushing the last bastion of al- Qa'ida in Iraq and in doing so have turned the country's northern capital into a ghost town.
Soldiers shoot at any civilian vehicle on the streets in defiance of a strict curfew. Two men, a woman and child in one car which failed to stop were shot dead yesterday by US troops, who issued a statement saying the men were armed and one made "threatening movements"....
I had been to Mosul down this road half a dozen times since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and on each occasion the military escort necessary to reach the city safely has grown bigger....
That's Petraeus' legacy of "success" in action!
There is no doubt that security in Mosul has been deteriorating over the last six months. Mr Goran, who in effect runs the city, said that 90 people were killed in Mosul last September compared to 213 dead this March, including 58 soldiers and policemen. The number of roadside bombs had risen from 175 to 269 over the same period.
The official theory for this is that al-Qa'ida in Iraq, which has only a limited connection with Osama bin Laden and is largely home grown, has been driven out of its bastions in Anbar and Diyala provinces and Sunni districts of Baghdad. It has retreated to Mosul, the largest Sunni Arab city and the third largest in Iraq.
This is probably over-simple. Attacks on US troops in Anbar province have restarted and in Sunni districts of west Baghdad al-Qa'ida appears to be lying low rather than being eliminated. In many cases in Baghdad al-Sahwa, the supposedly anti-al-Qa'ida awakening councils paid by the Americans, in practice have cosy arrangements with al-Qa'ida.
I was in Mosul on the day it was surrendered by Saddam Hussein's forces in 2003. Scenes of joy were succeeded within the space of a few hours by looting and gun battles between Arabs and Kurds. Five years later Mosul, one of the great cities of the world, looks ruinous and under siege. Every alley way is blocked by barricades and the only new building is in the form of concrete blast walls. The fact that the government has to empty the streets of Mosul of its people to establish peace for a few days shows how far the city is from genuine peace.
How far from peace…. There will be no peace in that tormented land now, because the ones who started the war, and keep it going, see no profit in peace – unless, as we've said before, it is the peace of the grave, with all resistance to their will, their interests, their agenda crushed utterly. There is no middle way for the war-and-dominion machine that bestrides our system. There is only the "obliteration" of resistance – or else, as in Vietnam, ignominous retreat after years of pointless death and ruin. But what do they care? In the words of Suham Bresam: "It's just the civilians who get hurt."
Arthur Silber needs your help. It's as simple as that. One of the most insightful, original, informed and meaningful voices in our political discourse today, Silber must scrape by from month to month on the jagged edge of circumstance, battling ill health with notable courage, surviving on nothing but what his blog can bring in. This is a shameful reflection of how our society regards wisdom and truth: as something to be cut off, unsupported, crushed if possible, and if not -- as in the case of Silber's indomitable spirit -- then marginalized, battered, made to suffer.
In recent weeks, Silber has roared back from a particularly vicious bout that laid him low to write a remarkable string of essays, full of the learning, passion, perception -- and wicked wit -- that is a trademark of his work. Some particularly choice example can be found here: Let the Victims Speak; Why America May Go to Hell; and Cultivate Your Sense of Wonder.
In the latter piece, Silber combines older and new material to speak eloquently about the vision that drives his work:
If I had to select just a single word to express my deepest feeling about the world, and about humankind, it would be that one: wonder. I consider it a measure of how unevolved we are that so many people appear to be capable of that feeling only when they contemplate an imaginary, supernatural plane. It is hardly surprising that our world holds so much unnecessary suffering, when so many people are willing and eager to condemn it to second-rate status in favor of one they've made up out of whole cloth...
I think it highly probable that our circumstances will continue to get significantly worse, although this deterioration may come quickly or comparatively slowly. You may live the rest of your life without seeing the worst of what will happen, or even anything close to the worst -- or you may not. There is no way to know, and the variables are close to infinite. But I say again: it does not have to be this way. Extraordinary events have transpired in history before, and they might again. We need a miracle, but not one delivered to us from a supernatural realm: we require a miracle that we create.
It can happen. Hold on to your sense of wonder; if you do not have a sufficiently strong one, then develop it. For me, it is the most precious resource in the world....
Live in the sense of wonder, and in the world of joy. Take it, feel it and pass it on. That's sometimes all you can do -- for someone, somewhere, one day. It's everything.
I now add that, when you engage in this process, you yourself live ecstatically -- today.
Can we afford to let such a voice fall silent? If you have anything at all to spare, get on over to Silber's site and give what support you can.
Outside Agitators: Another Missile Attack Aimed at Peace Talks Thomas married into the multi-billionaire Bucksbaum clan, owners of about 60 million square feet of shopping malls. Thomas lives better than the average reporter, in Bethesda, in "a palatial 11,400-square-foot house, currently valued at $9.3 million...
Serving the System: Disillusion, Deception and the Obama Campaign Honestly, why even bother with pwogwessives like fd? He's obviously carved a comfy niche for himself in the corporate DNC and can manage to maintain the delusion that Obama is some kind of pwoggie savior. Nice work if you can get it...
There's no ...
Falling Cedars: Fomenting War in Lebanon -- and Beyond mistah Charlie: check the podcasts; I did an interview with Howard Zinn a few weeks back to discuss 'A peopel's History of American Empire'
Jimmythem: youa make-a me laugh: like you, i like bikes and weed, and liberals make me feel weird and uncomfo...
Falling Cedars: Fomenting War in Lebanon -- and Beyond The U.S. has had a remarkably consistent policy in the Middle East for nearly 40 years, selling arms to as many factions as possible, and pitting them against each other whenever it can. The "war on terror" just makes this foreign policy more obvious...
Falling Cedars: Fomenting War in Lebanon -- and Beyond Um. Chris?
You should check your permit.
In most counties, shootin' trolls in a barrel is not exactly above boards...
HA!
oh, that was made to order.
Love,
Scott
Fire Alarm: Feeding the Flames at Traitor's Gate I am in the militia in my state, and the militia is not what the mainstream media make us out to be. However this thing plays out, you and your loved ones will stand a better chance of coming out the other end by getting plugged in to the militia ne...
Falling Cedars: Fomenting War in Lebanon -- and Beyond I'm glad I stopped by here today, because I need diagnosis: I'm a motorcyclist who smokes wacky weed and likes shiny black boots. Creepy liberal hippies are people who smoke wacky weed, but evil Nazi faggots like shiny black boots. Both hippies AND N...
Falling Cedars: Fomenting War in Lebanon -- and Beyond In the interview you quote from Democacy Now, Professor As’ad AbuKhalil states "There’s a Los Angeles Times article today detailing the efforts by the United States and allies to create militias throughout the country. And the Washington Post in...
Shoot, Kill, Lie, Repeat: America's New Moral Universe
Friday, 09 May 2008
Tell me that this doesn't sound like something out of a history of Nazi tactics in World War II:
The rules [of engagement]t explicitly allowed the killing of unarmed Iraqis under certain circumstances...Specifically, the snipers were allowed to shoot unarmed people running away from explosions or firefights....Of course, it's not unusual for innocent people to run from explosions.
Didier, who has since been promoted to captain, said that "if that individual makes contact with you and then breaks contact of their own accord and disarms themselves while they are breaking contact, they are still an engageable target because they are not wounded, nor did they surrender." He explained, "They are only breaking contact so that they can engage coalition forces at a later time." In court, Sgt. Anthony Murphy, one of the snipers who was responsible for a questionable kill, testified that he interpreted this order about breaking contact so they can engage at a later time as: "Engage fleeing local nationals without weapons."
In other words, if an innocent, unarmed Iraqi runs away to seek safety from a suicide bombing, a missile attack or a gunfight -- which any human being would instinctively do -- then he is fair game to be killed by an American sniper.
The excerpt above comes from a story in Salon.com, "Killing by the Numbers," about an "elite" U.S. sniper squad that murdered a captured, unarmed civilian in cold blood. A more detailed excerpt follows below, but I'd like to deal briefly with one ancillary aspect first.
The story expands to talk more generally about the sniper program in Iraq, and is careful -- overly careful -- to emphasize that the snipers responsible for so many "questionable kills" are operating in very stressful conditions: sleep-deprived, sweltering in deadly heat, surrounded by potential "hostiles," at constant risk of attack. All true, of course, but it prompts this simple question: What the hell are they doing there in the first place? Why are they squatting and sweltering in "hides" in a foreign land, looking to kill people who never attacked the United States?
Yes, it is entirely understandable that a soldier subjected to nerve-wracking, physically tormenting conditions might fail to act with reason, patience, judgment and prudence. But is this supposed to be some kind of excuse for crimes committed within the context of a larger crime: a war of aggression, the military invasion and occupation of a foreign country without any provocation? Surely many of the Nazi atrocities were committed by men under unbearable mental and physical strain as well. So what? Were they absolved of their crimes? And more importantly -- were their leaders absolved for instigating the larger crime that engendered these atrocities?
For as the story also shows, the "questionable kills" by American snipers derive largely from the murderous "rules of engagement" they are given by their superiors -- and by the anxiety of their officers to produce big "kill numbers" to appease the bloodlust -- and PR needs -- of the thugs in the White House and their "counterinsurgency genius," David Petraeus.
But let's return to the story of how a sniper squad murdered Genei Nesir Khudair al-Janabi, an Iraqi vegetable farmer, almost one year ago, after he stumbled upon their "hide" on the banks of the Euphrates.
(Continued after the jump)
From Salon.com: Sandoval, who had been woken by the sound of the Iraqi's approach, motioned toward Vela's gun. Taking the signal, Vela pointed the 9 mm pistol at the farmer's face.
Sandoval woke up Redfern. Redfern and Vela waved the Iraqi into the hide, forced him down on his stomach and put the corner of the plastic poncho over his head. Vela stood over the man with the pistol, while Redfern ran his hands over Khudair's shoulders, arms, sides, back and chest in a cursory search. No weapons.
Vela woke Hensley and told him an unarmed Iraqi was in the hide. Hensley stood up, walked over to the Iraqi -- and from a standing position dropped a knee into his back with the full force of his body.
Khudair threw his head back, gasping for wind. "Staff Sgt. Hensley grabbed him by the mouth," Vela testified, "and told him to shut up or he was going to kill him."
Hensley wrapped parachute cord around the Iraqi's hands and Redfern dragged him deeper into the snipers' hide.... Vela said Hensley sat down on the berm for a moment. He then got up and radioed their superior officer, Didier. Hensley reported that he had spotted an Iraqi nearby armed with an AK-47. But Vela couldn't see anyone who matched that description. Vela alerted Hand, who was fading in and out of sleep on a nearby berm, that Hensley "might have seen something." Then Hensley ordered Vela to retrieve his pistol from Sandoval in the pump house....
Sandoval peered around the pump house wall to look into the hide. Khudair was still there. Vela was sitting on his rear, with one leg cocked up and an elbow resting on his knee, holding the pistol in one hand.
Inside the hide, Hensley radioed Didier a second time, saying an insurgent was moving closer to their position. Hensley asked permission to do a "close kill" to avoid being compromised.
Vela then looked around, but still didn't see any armed insurgent. "I was just really confused about what he was saying," Vela testified.
Hensley untied the Iraqi. "I thought we were going to let him go," Vela told the Army court.
"Are you ready?" Hensley allegedly asked Vela.
Hensley stepped aside. "Shoot," he said.
Vela claimed during testimony that he doesn't remember pulling the trigger. "It took me a second to realize that the shot had come from the pistol and it was in my hand."
Hensley radioed to Didier that the snipers had killed an insurgent. Meanwhile, the Iraqi's body convulsed. Hensley "kind of laughed" at the spectacle, according to Vela. Hensley then "[punched] the guy in the throat, and said, 'Shoot him again,' which I did."
Vela testified that after he shot the man for the second time, Hensley pulled an AK-47 out of his rucksack and placed it on the body. The snipers then agreed on a story about the shooting consistent with Hensley's radio calls...
Sandoval was charged with murder for the deaths on April 27 and May 11, but convicted only of planting command wire in connection with the April 27 killing. He served about a month and a half in prison. The Army charged Hensley with three murders for the shootings of April 14, April 27 and May 11. He was convicted of planting a weapon, for placing the AK-47 next to Khudair, and insubordination. He was sentenced to time served and busted down to sergeant.
On February 10, 2008, however, Vela was sentenced to 10 years in a military prison for the murder of Khudair.
It goes without saying that the officers who put these men in this situation -- not to mention the civilian "leaders" in Washington who instigated the mass murder in Iraq -- suffered not the slightest adverse consequence of this crime, for which they bear the primary responsibility.
However, it is unlikely that the scapegoat -- and murderer -- Vela will ever serve his whole term for his part in the crime. The case of a Marine squad who kidnapped and murdered an Iraqi man in Hamdania is instructive on this point, as AP reported this week:
A Marine from Camp Pendleton who was sentenced to 15 years in the brig for killing an Iraqi civilian had his term reduced by four years, the man's attorney said Wednesday.
Rich Brannon, the civilian lawyer for Lawrence G. Hutchins III, said the reduction came after he appealed for clemency to Lt. Gen. Samuel T. Helland, Hutchins' commanding general. "I was pleased to see a reduction, but I would like to see more," Brannon told The Associated Press in a phone call from North Carolina.
Hutchins, of Plymouth, Mass., was the leader of an eight-man squad accused of kidnapping Hashim Ibrahim Awad, 52, from his home in April 2006, then marching him to a ditch and shooting him to death. The killing took place in Hamdania, a small village in Al Anbar province.
Hutchins was sentenced Aug. 3 after being convicted of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, making a false official statement and larceny. He had been charged with premeditated murder, but premeditation was removed from the verdict, meaning Hutchins no longer faced a mandatory life sentence.
All eight squad members — seven Marines and one Navy corpsmen — were initially charged with murder and kidnapping, but four lower-ranking Marines and the sailor cut deals with prosecutors in exchange for their testimony and received sentences ranging from one to eight years in prison.
Other Marines were acquitted of murder but convicted of lesser charges and freed after their courts-martial.
When even the scapegoats escape justice, what possible hope can there be that the perpetrators and abettors of the Nazi-like war crime in Iraq will ever pay the price -- or even suffer the slightest trouble -- for their monstrous outrage?
The greatness of Mr. Floyd's wartime reporting is that he is not on the frontlines like the star war reporters of old, like Ernie Pyle, Ernest Hemingway, Michael Herr. He is where hundreds of millions of us are - connected to the war by our economic lives, haunted by its monstrousness, yet unable to stop it, halt it, or even contain its burgeoning nature. However, we as mature participants in the web of associations that emanate from empire and its horrific warfare, need to read these on-going truths about war and its crimes of genocide, murder, religious fanaticism, but we also need to find ways of improving upon plaintive cries for moral rebirth or moral justice. The perpetrators of Nazi Germany became the good burghers of Marshall Plan-CIA Germany. Descendants of the victims of that holocaust have waged colonial devastation upon the people of Palestine. The rich have become fantastically richer during our supposedly "educated" time. The absurd nature of these social inequities, visited upon defenseless victims throughout history, with immeasurable suffering of starvation, incineration, or bestial killings like this one, calls for more than observation - or self-enraptured speechifying - or thunderous commenting from a few awake folk. Violence is within us, violence is around us, and violence never seems to get its due, so we must admit our stupid predicaments, and stop chasing our imaginations of own moral purity, stop hoping for political heroics from complicit "leaders," and see the supersystem that controls nearly all as the omnipotent monster it has become. Then go take your puppy for a walk in the park - our Rumsfeldian enemies want us enfeebled and on anti-depressants.
I wanted to mention another interesting essay. Titled "Liberal" Israelis: Still Crying And Shooting After All These Years, it touches on some of the same issues as your piece.
Sadly, most people spend their lives either running from or sublimating those innate human qualities like violence.
I've had conversations with women who tell me that they don't like how men are so competitive. Then those same women will be together in a group tearing down an external woman's clothing or haircut. Not competitive at all, right? The competition is sublimated to "social criticism" or "fashion analysis" but it's still competition -- and to my mind, more harmful because it pretends to be other than competition.
Likewise, violence. Who among Americans will acknowledge that violence is integral to our character? Look at our most popular and uniquely American sport -- football. It was bastardized from rugby, a game found not violent enough for the American palate. And then move to other sports that people enjoy WATCHING -- hockey isn't hockey without fists flying and bodies crunched into the boards. Basketball now is as physical as rugby. Only baseball and golf get a pass on the violence quota. Hell, most who watch NASCAR do it to see a wreck! (or so I'm told)
Bush/Cheney took Goebbels' post-Reichstag approach to heart, and fed the violent tendencies and leanings within most Americans. That's how so many got gulled into supporting this "war" in Iraq and this "war on Terrorism."
As long as people keep denying violence, misanthropy, cruelty within humans, we'll never get close to becoming the post-WW 2 burghers.
Increasingly, I have a difficulties making moral distinctions between such acts as the destruction of Fallujah to avenge the killings of four American "security contractors" and the destruction of Lidice to avenge Heydrich's assassination.
Or whether - given that the end result is often limbless children and non-combatants - if there's any real difference between a drugged-up Liberian boy soldier with a machete and a USAF captain carrying out a ground support mission over a populous city in his F-16. Besides the obvious ones that the latter is far better educated, well-paid, safer, and will more likely come home to community respect and eventually a six-figure job piloting civilian jets.
Do we have to wait until the US can no longer AFFORD to send armies around the world killing foreigners at will to put a stop to this? Shining city on the hill, indeed... more like "whited sepulchres".
Waiting around for the invisible hand of the market place to disable the military-industrial-national security complex is not much of a solution obviously, since the current imperial misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan are all being charged on the national credit card to Beijing.
I propose (in complete seriousness) a simple first step solution to the long term dilemma: a complete moratorium on all research, development, and deployment of all new Pentagon and CIA hi tech weaponry until FIRST a hi tech solution to America's dependency upon petroleum is discovered, developed, and deployed. Simply re-route every DARPA and Pentagon procurement dollar for advanced war making into research and development in alternative energy technology until the internal combustion engine as we now know it has been rendered obsolete.
Amazing writing yet again, Chris. I have just come home from a couple of weeks holidays to read all your articles and I just want to scream! I keep asking myself, how the people of the US (in particular) and the rest of western world can put up with all this injustice. death and mayhem. How can they not see that the government of the US is not better than any totalitarian regime, and maybe worse than the Nazis. God I want to grab somebody with some power by the collar and shake them awake.
It has always make my skin crawl to realize that there are so many, many of my fellows willing to kill in cold blood, especially for the State. It makes me want to wretch out the pure bile that has infected the souls of these poor creatures. But you can't heal other's in that way. Empathy has it's limitations, at least for we mortals. So, I mostly hide from the killers and their groupies; mostly in plain sight because there is no refuge from society affordable to me.
But I am seriously considering dropping out of the game all together. Wage slavery and debt. The unremitting, unfocused hostility of average people just going about their lives but passively enabling a Hobbesian nightmare. The impossibility of resistance. The corrupting creep of perverse excitement that I sense tingling somewhere deep inside when I realize that my fears for the future where not fantasy and are actually unfolding. I don't like it. Critic, or voyeur? I think I may have to go solidly mad and wander about watching the weeds grow through the pavement...
Chris emphasizes the question, "what the hell are they doing there in the first place?" Good God. That should be the obvious first question on the tongues of every citizen in this miserable country. Instead it is the exasperated shout of the head scribe heard echoing, relegated to this island of barest sanity with but a few residents resisting the all pervasive lemming group-think disease, and that imperfectly...
Worse to come.
It has always make my skin crawl to realize that there are so many, many of my fellows willing to kill in cold blood, especially for the State. It makes me want to wretch out the pure bile that has infected the souls of these poor creatures. But you can't heal other's in that way. Empathy has it's limitations, at least for we mortals. So, I mostly hide from the killers and their groupies; mostly in plain sight because there is no refuge from society affordable to me.
But I am seriously considering dropping out of the game all together. Wage slavery and debt, the unremitting unfocused hostility of average people just going about their lives but passively enabling a Hobbesian nightmare. The impossibility of resistance. The corrupting creep of perverse excitement that I sense tingling somewhere deep inside when I realize that my fears for the future where not fantasy and are actually unfolding. I don't like it. Critic, or voyeur?
Chris emphasizes the question, "what the hell are they doing there in the first place?" Good God. That should be the obvious first question on the tongues of every citizen in this miserable country. Instead it is an exasperated shout heard echoing, relegated to this island of barest sanity with but a few residents resisting the all pervasive lemming group-think disease, and that imperfectly...
You see, in the U.S. there was a movement to bring this attitude to the minds of the masses - we're not allowed to resist arrest not even an unlawful one. Why? Because we're consumers who are criminals first since this is how we're measured with respect to "worth." Disposable commodities. Digits. Look at the credit report and get it, the "Mark of the Beast," 666, or 620, 700, 800, 900? This was recently brought home to me when I was pepper sprayed with the new Red Saber from India, it's a globalist commodity of trade, like tasers and Taser International (hiding the results of deaths from "electric shock" and silencing doctors). Anyway, in my own home in my bathroom attempting to not wet my pants as to why "Officers of the Peace" can enter our homes with immunity and impunity from/by the "State" and proceed to attack with a deadly chemical weapon. It goes on and on and the direct orders are to destroy - a population control mechanism which is cloaked in the dress-up of GWOT. The benefit is, but of course, the digital trading of commodities and all those numbered digits for disposable commodities (common stock humans) traded for weapons and war.
Message for 'Norterner'-Darpa has being hiding crucial alt energy developments for over 20 years too my certian knowledge,and they are still at it(lepcon). This is a rather exact copy of the oil mafia control of battery technology that is still keeping a millstone round the neck of intermitent electrical sources and electric vechiles-see edison batts and exxon,see superflywheel and commoco,see NiMH and cheveron. Oddly your reroute suggestion is a most effective one-just forget about the 'atom and oil mafia'for it. As in all thing virtuous and from america-see;'Earth energy and everyone'published in the early 80's by the world game inst. If that is the blackwater employees deployed too maintain order while US troops are overseas havn't started burning the books. Like the snipers-they have specific ops orders.
I read Arthur Silber's 05/09 post after I made my comment here and I must admit to being ashamed. I agree with everything he said, and I can't believe I spewed despair when Arthur, of all people, had posted a HOPE note the day before. Lord. I AM lost. oh, and sorry about the double post thing; I was at work and had no editing tools - wooops...
DR. RON PAUL has been LOUDLY declaring this for many years, and has been campaigning with this absolute clear guarantee: "I WILL IMMEDIATELY BRING ALL US TROOPS HOME FROM EVERY FOREIGN NATION AND END THESE UNCONSTITUTIONAL LAWLESS FASCIST GLOBAL FOREIGN POLICIES AND CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES."
Dr. Paul is the ONLY REAL CHOICE for president, and the only candidate truly qualified to be president. The choice and distinctions between Dr. Paul and the other three puppets is clear.
Why then is America refusing to listen and support/vote for this modern founding father statesman of impeccable integrity and proven character?! America deserves the tyranny that is now consuming the nation for so many reasons. America will no more escape judgment than Germany or the Soviet bloc, or any other fascist nation (nation's that rule by brute force).
No doubt, America will "elect" one of the three installed political puppets (McMussolini, Hillary Stalin, or Barack "Che Guevera" Osama Obamination) - believing that somehow America will "change" -- It will change alright - but not for the better. The perpetual wars of aggression will continue under any of these three puppet stooges, America will continue to collapse economically and socially, and the People will continue to look around like stupid sheep wondering what is going on around them.
"Just war" vs. offensive wars of aggression -- for any people with common moral sense and understanding, it has been understood since man began forming social compacts/societies. These distinctions have been so clearly defined and expressed by both European and American philosophers of the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, that America is without any excuse for her war crimes and crimes against humanity.
It was principally America who conducted and drove the Nurenburg war crimes trials. It is MUST reading for all people to read both the Nazi's affirmative defenses given, and how difficult and awkward it was for America and the allies to counter their defense arguments. Ultimately, the US had to declare that while EVERYTHING THE NAZIS DID WAS ACCORDING TO THEIR NATIONAL LAWS, THERE ARE IMMUTABLE HIGHER LAWS ABOVE GOVERNMENT FOR WHICH NO NATION OR PEOPLE CAN OVERRIDE WITH MAN-MADE LAWS.
Hence, the "laws" that have been enacted over the last 60 years in the US, particularly with regards to Unconstitutional foreign wars and "police actions" and other laws in violation of Supreme law, are null and void and criminal in and of themselves. The Patriot Act and other similar Nazi laws that now threaten every person must be removed.
Chris, have we considered Bush's allowing of einsatzgruppen tactics may be revenge related, but not in a 9/11 revenge sense. No, I mean something far more personal.
In the early 40's Dubya's grand-father was charged with trading with the enemy. The old boy's support of the Third Reich was well-known and like many other American plutocrats, old Prescott Bush was supportive of Fascism in general.
Prescott was publically humiliated and George HW joined the Navy in part to atone for the actions of Prescott.
Enter the Chimp, Dubya Bush.
Dubya was quick to say Saddam had "tried to kill my daddy." But, America had humiliated his grandpa. We see the results of Dubya monomania in Iraq. Are we also seeing Dubya derail America from a position of respect into a position of a pariah nation because of a justifiable affront to Gramps? I do wonder, as Dubya does flirt with Fascism a great deal.
The superficialities which may drive these self absorbed monsters are a matter of no concern. The likelihood that they may change their view of the world and it's peoples to one which is not predicated upon fear, terror and avarice seems highly unlikely. We, the many are held in the grasp of a few. These few do not flinch from killing.These few do not grow pale at the starvation and slaughter of millions. These few are willing end any life which stands in the way of their particular needs. This is the fashion of human social organisation at the beginning of the twenty first century. This is darkness, ignorance and criminality once again enthroned in the guise of a benificient state. It may be that we must suffer this madness until the world will no longer sustain such a failed species. The loss of so many, and so much, for so petty a goal as the supremacy of one man over another is madness.
If you really think that Dubya Bush's "monomania" is responsible for our invading Iraq, you're not looking closely enough at the facts. Dubya Bush doesn't control America. He's neither smart enough nor brave enough for that role. He's just a figurehead, placed there because of familial connections. If Dubya Bush orders something it's not coming from his enfeebled noggin, not from that dank musty cellar that perhaps once held a functioning intellect. The brains behind Bush/Cheney do not reside within Dubya's cranial vault. They reside in Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and a whole fleet of people who aren't even in elected or appointed offices -- those whose private finances benefit from the operations chosen and pursued by Bush/Cheney.
Merely getting rid of Dubya Bush wouldn't change anything. We'd still be in Iraq even if Dubya had been assassinated on Jan 23 2001. Dubya is not the brains of the group. His absence would change nothing substantial.
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