Just Another Dead Iraqi
We’ve talked a few times about how the support the president crowd trots out the myth of the “few bad apples” whenever atrocities are committed by the good guys tm, it’s a convenient argument when your side gets caught doing what you are complaining about the bad guys tm doing.
Unfortunately for the folks who want to believe, indeed work at believing, that isn’t the way things work – the people who are sent out to kill others in war have to believe that the enemy deserve death, and part of the process of instilling that belief is to demonize them.
– and after that happens, after the enemy becomes less than you and yours, the atrocities begin.
The demonization process worked well in Iraq, according to a survey by the Office of the Surgeon General of the US Army Medical Command quoted by The Nation only “47 percent of soldiers and 38 percent of marines agreed that civilians should be treated with dignity and respect” and only “55 percent of soldiers and 40 percent of marines” would bother reporting the death or injury of “an innocent noncombatant” – that’s a lot of people with guns holding a very low opinion of the people they say they want to help.
According to one vet
“a lot of guys really supported that whole concept that, you know, if they don’t speak English and they have darker skin, they’re not as human as us, so we can do what we want.”
According to another
“It becomes this racialized hatred towards Iraqis.” And this racist language, as Specialist Harmon pointed out, likely played a role in the level of violence directed at Iraqi civilians. “By calling them names,” he said, “they’re not people anymore. They’re just objects.”
Summerized by one vet it becomes
“I guess while I was there, the general attitude was, A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi,”
The Nation interviewed 50 combat vets from the Iraqi war, what they found should make it really difficult for all but the most dogmatic of “few bad apples” crowd, to deny that there are atrocities being committed on a regular basis, and that the [supposed] forces of liberty and freedom are committing them.
We heard a few reports, in one case corroborated by photoÂgraphs, that some soldiers had so lost their moral compass that they’d mocked or desecrated Iraqi corpses. One photo, among dozens turned over to The Nation during the investigation, shows an American soldier acting as if he is about to eat the spilled brains of a dead Iraqi man with his brown plastic Army-issue spoon.
“Take a picture of me and this motherfucker,” a soldier who had been in Sergeant MejÃa’s squad said as he put his arm around the corpse. Sergeant MejÃa recalls that the shroud covering the body fell away, revealing that the young man was wearing only his pants. There was a bullet hole in his chest.
“Damn, they really fucked you up, didn’t they?” the soldier laughed.
The scene, Sergeant MejÃa said, was witnessed by the dead man’s brothers and cousins.
Not something that is going to win any hearts or minds, or solve any problems, is it?
Neither is this
According to descriptions culled from interviews with thirty-eight veterans who rode in convoys–guarding such runs as Kuwait to Nasiriya, Nasiriya to Baghdad and Balad to Kirkuk–when these columns of vehicles left their heavily fortified compounds they usually roared down the main supply routes, which often cut through densely populated areas, reaching speeds over sixty miles an hour. Governed by the rule that stagnation increases the likelihood of attack, convoys leapt meridians in traffic jams, ignored traffic signals, swerved without warning onto sidewalks, scattering pedestrians, and slammed into civilian vehicles, shoving them off the road. Iraqi civilians, including children, were frequently run over and killed. Veterans said they sometimes shot drivers of civilian cars that moved into convoy formations or attempted to pass convoys as a warning to other drivers to get out of the way.
There’s a lot of information contained in the story, and it’s all worth reading, and remembering for the next time you hear, or read, someone spouting off about how it’s just a few bad apples
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Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, DeMediacratic Nation, Big Dog’s Weblog, The World According to Carl, Pirate’s Cove, CommonSenseAmerica, The Pet Haven, Conservative Cat, High Desert Wanderer, Gone Hollywood, and Public Eye, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Americans are becoming dehumanized, just as they did in Vietnam. After that, it’s much easier to kill sand n-words. Dehumanization works after one repeatedly sees the futility in the apparent message as compared with the reality. They’re there to “win hearts and minds” but are being shot at and blown apart by IEDs. It doesn’t take much convincing before they say “gee, these people don’t want our brand of freedom and democracy.”
Let’s kill em all and let God sort em out.
What’s the difference between an Iraqi and an insurgent? An Iraqi who runs is an insurgent. An Iraqi who stands still is a well disciplined insurgent.