[spectre] FW: The Logic of War Crimes in a Criminal War

[Louise Desrenards]

Even as me you are not ³Guevarist²;-).... Please have a look:

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> From: "VoteNoWar.org" <Action at VoteNoWar.org>
> Reply-To: "VoteNoWar.org" <Action at VoteNoWar.org>
> Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2006 16:36:10 -0500 (CDT)
> To: (...)
> Subject: The Logic of War Crimes in a Criminal War
> 

> Subscribe  <http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=ZTPn-5_w_EzRNHynWllthw..>
> *Feel free to circulate* The Logic of War Crimes in a Criminal War By: Mara
> Verheyden-Hilliard and Brian Becker
> June 2, 2006 When U.S. marines carried out the savage and systematic execution
> of Iraqi families and small children in Haditha last November, it was
> initially reported as a ³battle² with ³insurgent casualties.² A photo of a
> kneeling Iraqi civilian moments before he was murdered was taken by a Marine
> using his cell phone camera. Other pictures of the corpses of small children,
> families lying in pools of blood in their homes, students gunned down in a
> taxi are all part of the documentary evidence.
>  
> The massacre in Haditha took place one year after a much larger massacre of
> civilians in Fallujah. Four to six thousand civilians are estimated to have
> been killed in Fallujah in November 2004, according to credible independent
> sources reporting from the ground. The truth of Iraq is that there were other
> massacres almost every week in between the events that have made Haditha and
> Fallujah famous cities: famous in the way no city wants to become well known
> throughout the world. The attack on the people of Iraq and ensuing occupation
> by the United States government has caused the deaths of well over 100,000
> Iraqi people (the British medical journal, The Lancet, reported an excess of
> 100,000 dead eighteen months ago). ³Ethics Training² to Prevent Massacres
>  
> Now that the butchery in Haditha is making headlines in the United States,
> high ranking officials in the Pentagon as well as the President are promising
> an investigation. They have even announced ³ethics training² for combat
> troops. The implication is that something unusual happened when unarmed
> civilians, including terrified small children and their mothers who were
> trying to shield them, were riddled with bullets by U.S. soldiers. Were they
> rogue soldiers lawlessly breaking ranks from an otherwise pristine mission
> aimed at liberating Iraqis? That is pure fiction. Those who criticize the
> management of the war are talking complete nonsense when they say that the
> actions of these Marines will make it ³harder to carry out the mission in
> Iraq.² 
>  
> The Haditha massacre will not make the Iraqis think differently about the
> United States or Bush. It will only confirm their view, an outlook shaped by
> the cruel, cold-hard reality of the past years. A Routine Phenomenon
>  
> Just this week, on May 31, US soldiers in Iraq ³killed two Iraqi women ‹ one
> of them about to give birth ‹ when the troops shot at a car that failed to
> stop at an observation post in a city north of Baghdad." The AP reports that
> Nabiha Nisaif Jassim, 35, was being raced to the maternity hospital in Samarra
> by her brother when the shooting occurred Tuesday.  Jassim, the mother of two
> children, and her 57-year-old cousin, Saliha Mohammed Hassan, were killed by
> the U.S. forces, according to police Capt. Laith Mohammed and witnesses. Her
> husband was waiting for her at the maternity unit of the hospital when Jassim,
> pregnant with their child, and her cousin were murdered.
>  
> Yesterday, the BBC disclosed new video evidence that U.S. forces massacred
> another group of Iraqi civilians in the town of Ishaqi in March. The story,
> carried by Knight-Ridder in March, and denied by the U.S. government
> thereafter, stated that U.S. troops had rounded-up villagers into a single
> room of a house and then ³executed 11 people, including a 75-year-old woman
> and a 6-month-old infant.² BBC reported June 1 that of the eleven people
> murdered by U.S. troops, five were children. The soldiers then, ³burned three
> vehicles, killed the villagers¹ animals and blew up the house.²
>  
> In Afghanistan this week, large masses of people took to the streets throwing
> rocks at U.S. military vehicles following another incident in which U.S.
> military personnel raced through Kabul and then rammed passenger vehicles
> killing at least three people. A top Afghan police officer reported that U.S.
> soldiers then opened fire indiscriminately directly into the crowd killing at
> least four more people. Rejecting the Disney Version of U.S. Foreign Policy
>  
> The perception of the U.S. in the Arab world is based on actual information
> and knowledge of the Iraq war and the war in Afghanistan. The U.S. financing
> and support for the ongoing war waged by the Israeli military against the
> Palestinian people also contributes to the understanding of the U.S. role
> among the people of the Middle East. This perception is 100 percent different
> than the fantasy promoted in the United States. In the United States, facts
> are not allowed to stand in the way of the official legend.
>  
> All the mainstream media, the politicians and even some in the ³peace
> movement² in the United States uphold the Disney version of U.S. imperialism:
> a fundamentally benign force, motivated by democratic values and a vision of
> freedom, that is suffering an unexplained outburst of criminality based on
> stress caused by  poor management of the war. Haditha, and Fallujah before it,
> or Abu Ghraib, are registered as deviant behavior by out of control people.
> Conveniently they are all rank and file enlisted men and women. No Generals,
> Secretary of Defense or President need worry.
>  
> That every exposed crime is widely accepted to be ³deviant² or aberrational in
> the United States is only a testament to the power of political indoctrination
> by the media and the government whose economic resources for ³opinion-molding²
> are greater than that of any previous empire in human history.
>  
> The Perception of U.S. Imperialism from The Middle East
>  
> ³The deaths in Haditha, a volatile town in western Iraq, have barely caused a
> stir in Iraq and much of the Arab world ‹ where American troops are reviled as
> brutal invaders who regularly commit such acts,² writes AP reporter Hamza
> Hendawi, in a story filed on May 30, 2006.
>        
> The next day a dispatch from AP reporter Kim Gamel, reports the same
> sentiment, "People in Samarra are very angry with the Americans not only
> because of Haditha case but because the Americans kill people randomly
> especially recently," Khalid Nisaif Jassim said.
>  
> Closely connected by language, historical and geographic knowledge, and access
> to more comprehensive media reporting, the Arab people consider the entire
> war, including its unprovoked initiation by Bush on March 20, 2003, to be a
> criminal endeavor by large powers against a small but oil-rich nation. The
> racist character of the war itself is well recognized throughout the region.
> Having battled for a century against colonial and semi-colonial domination,
> the Arab people don¹t derive their knowledge about the intentions of Britain
> or the United States from FOX News or the New York Times.
>  
> In the U.S. media, Iraq is treated as a low-intensity war. When U.S. soldiers
> are killed their deaths are accompanied by a small article. The fact that well
> more than 100,000 Iraqis have died does not merit blazing headlines. Iraqi
> suffering is minimized or usually attributed to ³terrorists.² Thus, the people
> of the United States are shielded from that which the Arab people know all too
> well about the criminal character of the war of aggression. Fallujah and Hue
> City, Vietnam 
>  
> The issue of Fallujah is a case in point. Fallujah is emblematic of the war.
> It is well understood throughout the Arab world but treated like ancient
> history by the U.S. media.
>  
> On the eve of the assault on Fallujah, the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition sent out an
> email to anti-war activists (November 7, 2004) under the headline: ³Top U.S.
> Marine in Iraq Calls for Massacre in Fallujah.² It reported that Sgt. Major
> Carlton W. Kent gave an emotional pep-talk to 2,500 Marines who were poised to
> attack the city. The marines had just notified the people of Fallujah that any
> male between the age of 15-55 who dared go outside would be automatically
> killed. ³You¹re all in the process of making history,² the Sgt. Major exhorted
> his soldiers. ³This is another Hue City in the making. I, have no doubt, if we
> do get the word, that each and every one of you is going to do what you have
> always done kick some butt.² (AP, November 7, 2004)
>  
> Evoking the events in Hue by U.S. officers, as a motivation for today¹s
> troops, shows the macabre criminality inherent in imperialism¹s war for
> conquest.   
>  
> Hue was a city in South Vietnam that was a scene of horrific war crimes by
> military personnel when it was captured by U.S.-led forces in March 1968. U.S.
> Under-Secretary of the Air Force, Townsend Hoopes, admitted that Hue was left
> a ³devastated and prostrate city. Eighty percent of the buildings had been
> reduced to rubble, and in the smashed ruins lay 2,000 dead civilians Š² (Noam
> Chomsky¹s forward to the papers of the 1967 International War Crimes in
> Vietnam Tribunal.) The Machinery of Racism
>  
> How can 100,000 people die, how can children be murdered, how can the
> devastation and destruction of an entire society occur at the hands of the
> U.S. government without there being a huge outpouring of indignation and
> condemnation in the U.S. mass media, much less even acknowledgment by so many
> in the ³loyal opposition²? Because the U.S. mainstream media is a corporate
> dominated propaganda machine that is part and parcel of the imperial
> establishment and shares its interests. It uses the instrument of racism, a
> tool that has been fine-tuned by the forces of militarism in the United States
> for nearly four centuries. The racist demonization of conquered and targeted
> people has been crafted with the idea of dehumanizing the victims so as to
> prevent the forging of human solidarity in opposition to the crimes of
> conquest and Empire. The mass media, always willing to exploit the emotional
> appeal of death and tragedy that occurs within the United States, can ignore
> or define the experiences of the people of Iraq as somehow less worthy, the
> death of Iraqi children as less agonizing, their lives less valuable.
>  
> Bush Proclaims that Iraq ³is only the beginning² of Endless War
>  
> The day after the NY Times front page story revealing the graphic details of
> the Haditha massacre, George W. Bush said these words about the Iraq war to
> the West Point graduating class of 2006: ³This is only the beginning. The
> message has spread from Damascus to Tehran that the future belongs to freedom,
> and we will not rest until the promise of liberty reaches every people, in
> every nation.² Reiterating his and Cheney¹s theme that the U.S. is now engaged
> in ³endless war,² Bush told the young cadets:  ³The war began on my watch, but
> its going to end on your watch.²
>  
> While Bush was exhorting the next generation of privileged military officers
> to enthusiastically embrace his imperial crusade, the reality is that this
> administration sees in every rank and file enlisted man and woman nothing more
> than pawns. For the working class youth who make up the bulk of the military,
> the Bush administration has only callous disregard. Bush is willing to send
> these young people to kill and be killed while it carries out vicious
> cut-backs in education, job training and veterans benefits. The rich are
> always ready to have the working class and poor people do their fighting and
> dying. 
>  
> The crimes of the U.S. soldiers in Iraq are as inevitable as the crimes
> committed by soldiers in imperial armies throughout history. The conquered
> people refuse to accept their fate. They rise up, they form resistance
> organizations. They take up arms and conspire to oust the foreign occupiers.
> They are then branded as terrorists and criminals by the Empire. To the extent
> that they enjoy popular support among the indigenous population, the
> population itself is considered ³suspect² by the occupiers.
> 
> Civilians thus become a danger. Children and young teenagers can become the
> ³enemy.² The vehicles carrying expectant mothers to the hospital can thus
> become a threat because they must travel quickly, too quickly for the comfort
> of the occupying soldiers who are fearful of car bombs.
> 
> A Pertinent Revelation this Week: 50 Years After the Fact
>  
> In the Korean War, U.S. soldiers gunned down hundreds and possibly thousands
> of South Korean civilians as they tried to escape the horrors of war. For five
> decades, the Pentagon and each successive U.S. administration denied these
> facts. South Korean survivors who tried to press their claims against the
> United States were labeled traitors and North Korean spies and put into prison
> for many years. After the killings of No Gun Ri in July 1950 were exposed
> decades later in the U.S. media, the Pentagon even carried out an ³exhaustive²
> investigation and concluded that the actions were those of inexperienced
> soldiers. ³The deaths and injuries of civilians, wherever they occurred, were
> an unfortunate tragedy inherent to war and not a deliberate killing....
> Soldiers were not ordered to attack and kill civilian refugees in the vicinity
> of No Gun Ri.² (Department of the Army Inspector General, No Gun Ri Review,
> Jan. 2001) 
>  
> But just this week, as the Pentagon begins its new ³investigation² into
> Haditha, a document has come to light that not only reveals the truth of the
> massacre of Koreans but that it was an act of official U.S. war policy. The
> day of the mass killings, the US Ambassador to South Korea sent a letter to
> State Department official Dean Rusk about the military decision arrived at a
> meeting on July 25, 1950 announcing that Korean war refugees would be shot if
> they approached US lines. The day after the decision the 7th U.S. Cavalry
> Regiment killed hundreds of civilians at No Gun Ri in South Korea.
>  
> The Logic of War Crimes
>  
> There was a military rationale for killing the civilians at No Gun Ri and in
> scores of other sites throughout Korea during the war. The U.S. soldiers could
> not tell whether the civilians were sympathetic to the North Koreans or
> whether they would permit North Korean soldiers into their midst.
>  
> The Geneva Conventions expressly prohibit the targeting of civilians under any
> circumstances. But the Pentagon had a bigger political concern than adhering
> to international law. The fundamental fear of the Pentagon and the White House
> in Korea, as it was in Vietnam and during the first and current war against
> Iraq, was that public opinion at home would turn against the imperialist
> adventure and tie the hands of the warmakers. The logic of their political
> calculus was that U.S. public opinion would turn against the war directly as a
> result of a large number of U.S. casualties. This thought took them to the
> next murderous conclusion: if civilians pose even a remote risk to U.S.
> soldiers it is better to shoot the civilians first and ask questions later.
> Dead Korean or Vietnamese or Iraqi civilians will not be as politically
> damaging back home as dead American soldiers. There is one more side to the
> logic of war crimes. If the civilian population is sympathetic to the
> resistance fighters it is necessary to terrorize the civilians as punishment
> for providing aid or shelter to a guerrilla army. This is not a new story. The
> Japanese wiped out whole villages and nearly some cities in China as a warning
> against aiding the communist-led resistance during World War II. The Nazi's
> policy in Serbia was to kill one hundred Serbs for every German soldier killed
> by the resistance. Under the direction of John Negroponte, current Director of
> US Intelligence services, the Salvadoran military carried out large-scale
> massacres of peasant communities that were considered supportive of the FMLN
> resistance fighters in El Salvador during the 1980¹s. In Vietnam, the CIA
> organized the Phoenix Program, a clandestine war that assassinated as many
> 50,000 south Vietnamese who were considered to be members or sympathizers of
> the National Liberation Front.
>  
> The People of the United States Must Act to Stop Imperialist War
>  
> There is no investigation, no new training, or change in the way the war and
> occupation is administered that can stop massacres like Haditha, Fallujah and
> the day in and day out killings of Iraqis and destruction of their society.
> The only change that can bring about the hope of building a new future for
> Iraqis, one of self-determination and eventual peace, is to end the foreign
> occupation of Iraq and remove the invading army. Every day the U.S. and other
> troops remain in Iraq the situation grows more dire for the Iraqi people. We
> must demand that the troops be brought home now and reach out to our friends,
> families, co-workers and schoolmates to make this demand a powerful and
> undeniable force. The majority of people of the U.S. now oppose the war in
> Iraq - but at this very moment, many in the peace movement are urging that all
> focus turn towards the elections, just as they did two years ago. This is the
> road to irrelevance and it must be rejected.  The war in Vietnam was not ended
> because ³better politicians² were elected. No one could assert that Richard
> Nixon was better than anything or anyone. What mattered was that millions of
> people used every avenue to intensify the mass struggle in the streets and in
> every community throughout the country. The Vietnamese people were clearly
> determined to fight until their homeland was free from foreign occupation.
> Ultimately, the U.S. soldier was only fighting to return to his or her home.
> The congruence of these factors and the ever-widening mass anti-war movement
> made the nearly genocidal conflict unsustainable for the Pentagon brass and
> the occupant of the White House. We must learn and re-learn these lessons and
> apply them to today. That is the challenge and obligation of the next period.
> Mara Verheyden-Hilliard is a civil rights attorney and co-founder of the
> Partnership for Civil Justice. Brian Becker is the National Coordinator of the
> A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition.
> 
> 
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