Some Marines Doubt Haditha Atrocities

A report in the NYT this morning says that many Marines trained at Camp Pendleton, California, including civilians who live in the town, either deny the accusations that American troops engaged in “unacceptable kills’ in Haditha, Iraq last November, or they feel it was justified. The consensus is that either the soldiers were following orders or it never happened. And there’s a problem with that. Of course our troops are being trained to do whatever they have to do when enemy guns are pointed at them. Of course our troops are being trained to inflict torture on the enemy. Of course, as the owner of a G.I. Joe’s store, Jerry Alexander, said, "If I saw my buddy laying there dead, there is no such thing as too much retaliation." Our troops were trained in the Second World War to demonize the Germans and Japanese. Our troops were trained to think of the North Vietnamese as less than human savages and to call them Gooks. There is no way a man or woman can be trained to kill and maim while at the same time stopping to think about ethical and philosophical niceties. And it is naïve to think that the military is training our fighting troops now in any way different from the way it has always trained troops for war. But here’s the problem. The war in Iraq is an unnecessary war that the Bush administration lied the United States into for reasons having nothing to do with an enemy at our door. That is why the massacre at My Lai during the Vietnam War and the atrocities being reported in Haditha Iraq are so horrifying. They didn’t have to happen because we have no business being there. We heard about terrible things our troops inflicted on the Japanese during WWII and Americans not only accepted it, many reveled in it. Served them right, they attacked us. But since Iraq was not a clear and present danger, Iraq did not pose an immediate threat and our government trumped up reasons for the attack, the stories of atrocities are horrifying because we have no business being in Iraq. Jerry Alexander said, "In the heat of combat, you cannot hesitate; he who hesitates is lost," he said. "I would not prosecute these young men because they were just doing their jobs." One cannot argue that. It was certainly true in WWI and WWII. But with every conflict since the end of WWII, the kill-or-be-killed rationale has become a harder sell. Because with every conflict we’ve engaged in since WWII, we have had less of a moral reason for getting involved. Our troops are in life-and-death situations in Iraq. And they have been trained to demonize an enemy that is only an enemy because the Bush administration coolly decided to make Iraq an enemy. Haditha is the best proof that we need to get out of Iraq now. This war is not worth fighting and never has been. This war is not worth putting our American troops into no-win situations like Haditha.