One of the Marines charged with murdering civilians in Haditha, Iraq, in 2005 knew that only women and children were huddled in a back bedroom in a house there, but he opened the door and shot them anyway, a squadmate testified Tuesday.
“I told him, there’s women and kids in that room,” Lance Cpl. Humberto M. Mendoza said of Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum. Tatum’s response was, “Well, shoot them,” Mendoza said.
[…] Mendoza’s testimony could undermine Tatum’s defense and suggests that at least some of the shootings that day purposely targeted unarmed civilians.
As with any investigation uncovering the facts will exonerate some suspects and condemn others. Regardless, the contours of what happened at Haditha are by now well known. Hit by a fatal IED attack, a company of American troops spread out to catch the bombers. In the process the Marines shot a significant number of innocent Iraqi women and children, unarmed and hiding in their homes.
Nobody is arguing that American soldiers are monsters because they killed innocent people at Haditha, merely that American kids are human. This is just what happens in counterinsurgency wars, and it is not a mistake. A few marines reacted this way because some of us can only take so much harrassment from enemies who won’t stand and fight before we lash out at someone.
The insurgents know this. They provoke us because each Haditha makes life harder for us and easier for them. Now, as a result of Haditha and fatal misunderstandings that happen every day in every district, an overwhelming majority of Iraqis think it is just fine to attack Americans. The troops we train by day shoot us at night. For an occupying force the situation has become untenable.
Oddly enough Glenn Reynolds and I agree 100% on this particular point – America never had a chance in Iraq unless the gloves really, really came off. Yes, you can win an insurgency war. If a resistance band bothers you, slaughter the whole village and string up the corpses to warn the neighbors. Flatten towns, kill off fighting age males, terrorize the survivors and we probably could have owned Iraq. Indeed.
So why didn’t we do that? Oh right, it would have made us worse than f*cking Saddam. Since America won’t become ancient Persia (put down the lotion, Glenn, it ain’t happening) and neither the Sadrists nor the Sunnis had any intention of rolling over for a western occupier, the game had no win state. Haditha was not an illustration of American awfulness, but it wasn’t an aberration either. It just illustrates of why modern armies, constrained (for good reason) by modern rules of conduct, usually lose wars of occupation.
Face
Speak for yourself.
Women and children, corned in a bedroom of a house, just blown away, for shits and giggles. Maybe you’re right, Tim–“monsters” isn’t quite harsh enough.
Zifnab
I wouldn’t go that far. Haditha is definitely the fruits of a corrupt and shoddy invasion. The same dipshits who were running the Vietnam War under Nixon were the dipshits who mapped out the Iraq Invasion. They should have fucking known better.
Were all the 60s-era pictures of kids covered in napalm and zippo raids and guys with ear-lobe necklaces not sufficiently educational? Is anyone really shocked at soldiers going berserk in combat, 40 years after we did this exact same song and dance down in the jungle? The 20-year-olds at Haditha didn’t quite understand how true the phrase “War is Hell” could ring true on the battlefield, but the geriatric crowd at the Pentagon doesn’t have that excuse.
Haditha is a very vivid picture of American awfulness. It is a picture of a handful of young men committing the crimes of their fathers, a generation later, because the same fuckwit generals and blind leaders of their father’s generation are ordering them to make the same horrible mistakes in their own.
These marines should be sitting on the docket for losing control of themselves. There is no excuse for that type of grisly act. But Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfwitz, and Donald Rumsfeld should be joining them. Because they’re no less guilty than if they’d pulled the triggers themselves.
Roonieroo
I believe you are reading that wrong Face. The women and children were not blown away for “shits and giggles”. The point of Tim’s statement is that the American soldiers have reached a state of psychological terror such that their own morality is compromised.
They are not monsters but human beings that have been broken by our own administration and the conduct of the war. They are not functioning at a healthy mental state that allows them to see the horror of their decisions.
By saying they are blowing people away for “shits and giggles” proves you completely misunderstand the state our army and soldiers are in.
Paul L.
Perhaps you should use the singular monster as the article describes the actions of one marine.
Funny, how the anti-war side does not express the same outrage for massacres from the other side.
Roonieroo
Zifnab, you nailed it. You said it much better than I did.
The Other Steve
Glenn isn’t saying that Iraq is impossible because America can’t go all Stalin on it’s ass.
Glenn is saying we should have gone Stalin on it’s ass, and that those who prevented us from doing so because of petty morals, are America haters.
Face
Pure liberal bullshit. So, can we thusly excuse any crimes committed by our troops? They don’t get much more heinous than this; anything lesser surely should be excused as well, right? I’m sick of this “nobody take any responsibility, it’s all something/someone else’s fault” crap. Fog of war bullshit extraordinaire. A solider(s) (happy, Paul?) went into a house, found women and children cowering in a corner, and blew them away. Not for defense, not for protection, not for a tactical advantage, but seemingly just b/c they wanted revenge. That’s specious and capricious; that’s for the hell of it. That’s shits and giggles.
All this “it’s all the war’s fault” nonsense is pointless unless one’s now willing to excuse all of these actions as “compromised morality”. Yeah, there’s some monsters in our Army–probably every branch of the military. Doesn’t make one a non-patriot to call a spade a spade.
The Other Steve
I’m curious why you demand the anti-war side hold some sort of consistency that you yourself do not hold?
Why the double-standard?
zmulls
Have we heard of incidents like this coming out of Afghanistan?
I haven’t — there may have been, but it sure seems as if that war theatre is not fertile ground for the “slaying of innocents.” Either that or the news is better controlled.
In Afghanistan, there is a clear enemy and a clear objective — control, marginalize and defeat Al Queda. In Iraq, who are we fighting? We’re sitting around rarely knowing who we’re supposed to be shooting at.
I would suggest that the moral confusion of the “mission” in Iraq encourages these immoral incidents.
(I know Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan — that’s a different sort of incident than what I’m talking about)
The Other Steve
Face,
I think you are confused. Nobody is saying that these soldiers don’t deserve to be court martialed. They have to be. The only way to maintain order in the ranks is to punish those who have broken the law.
What people are saying is that, it’s not surprising given the stress of war.
Although I’ll make a point that others have missed. Lord of the Flies mentality. Without proper leadership, people will naturaly gravitate towards making up their own rules.
Tim F.
You miss the point. The guilty soldiers should be prosecuted for monstrous crimes, and they are. Explaining someone’s actions is a far cry from excusing them.
Paul L.
Explain the double standard. Am I giving a pass to US Military on this?
Of course the behavior US Military is not equal to the Iraqi insurgents/Al-Qaeda.
Are the Iraqi insurgents/Al-Qaeda currently holding any public trials for any members of that group that commit atrocities or violated the Geneva Conventions?
rachel
Paul L., you moron, we expect the other side to do shit like that; therefore, it is not news when they do shit like that. You should be glad the “anti-war side” does not express the same outrage for massacres from the other side because if the day ever comes that they treat both sides the same, then all expectation that our soldiers are better people than the terrorists will have been lost.
The Other Steve
You certainly appear to be excusing their behavior, by trying to redirect outrage towards something else.
Not that I’ve heard of. But aren’t you trying to make the US more like al-Qaeda by claiming that we should not be holding trials for soldiers who break the laws of combat?
Why would you want that? What possible motive could you possibly have to desire the US become as bad as our enemies?
RSA
I’ll go a bit further: With improper leadership, people gravitate toward actions that are acceptable to their leaders but rightly viewed as morally unacceptable by almost everyone else. (An All Quiet on the Western Front mentality, perhaps.)
ThymeZone
PaulL has long ago crossed the line into spoof. “We’re not as bad as the terrorists” is something only a spoof could type and publish to the world.
And …. Tim is exactly right. We can both explain what happened in terms of the effects of war on our people, and at the same time enforce our laws when they are broken.
The fact that the stresses and horrors of war can turn someone into a murderer is just one of the reasons not to have a war in the first place.
We have the best military in the world. Let’s not paint with too broad a brush. The actions of a few flipped-out soldiers do not represent our military, or the US. Eh?
Zifnab
Here’s the difference, Paul. We didn’t vote for Al-Qaeda for President. If we’d wanted a torturing, bombing, warmongering, baby-killing terrorist for President, we’d have voted Al-Sadr or Bin Laden in ’04. But we didn’t vote for Al-Sadr for President. We voted for a man whom, we assumed, wouldn’t commit war crimes in our name. So when he does commit war crimes in our name, we will be more pissed than when Al-Sadr commits war crimes in the names of Iraqis.
I know that’s hard for you to understand, so go back to Malkin-World where everyone’s a Nazi except the people who supported the Japanese Interment Concentration Camps.
Tim F.
Paul, your last post directly contradicts itself. If you think that America resembles the terrorists then you have a right to expect the terrorists to act like America, or vice versa. If you don’t think that America is like the terrorists then of course they don’t act like us. It’s normal. They are terrorists, we’re not.
Please make up your mind.
Z
I agree with most of you. While I expect our soldiers to be better than the enemy, it is pretty telling that Paul L doesn’t.
Z
tBone
Paul L: “Bu-bu-but they did it too!”
BJ commenters: “If al-Queda jumped off a bridge, would our soldiers follow them?”
Paul L: “….”
Mr Furious
bill Kristol’s got no problem with that.
ThymeZone
Best line of the day. Kudos.
Face
It’s a shame, Tim, that you are excusing them by suddenly yanking personal responsibility from them. This statement:
is disgusting. So “shit happens!” is your new mantra? “Kids are human”?? Yeah, they’re kids, so they’re expected to swallow their gum, drive fast, and kill defenseless women and children. So Tim says.
Sorry, Tim, that’s no “explanation”. That’s excusing their actions based on some catch-all, all-encompassing ruse that “this is just what happens”. So again, I pose you the question–what’s not “just what happens” in war? Where’s the devestation delineation? Should we chalk up rape, dismemberment, etc to “kids are human”, in effect claiming they ought have no moral responsiblity for their actions, because “this is just what happens”?
Are they finding it hard to stay on mission? Are they monsters for slaughtering innocents. Yes.
Cassidy
I think maybe you are all missing the point. You’re trying to explain the actions of Soldiers through the lens of civilians.
While I don’t excuse the actions of those Marines, I do understand the intense anger and hatred after watching friends die. When you are a deployed Soldier, especially in combat arms, you live in a perpetual state of anger and aggravation. It’s a survival mechanism. The more negative emotions keep you cynical and sharp to the threat around you.
What you all are doing is over-complicating the thought process. A deployed Soldier looks at other Soldiers as his “brothers”. In combat, it’s all the family you have. Yet, when one dies, you don’t have the time to feel the grief until much later.
Lastly, having been there, there is no such thing as an innocent civilian. When an IED goes off, you can guarantee that those living around it “saw nothing” and “know nothing”, which is pure bullshit. You can only take so much of that, especially when you are genuinely trying to help, before you can’t contain the emotional trauma anymore.
John Cole
Why is it that every time we discuss this issue there is some dipshit who can not grasp the difference between understanding why soldiers do what they do and CONDONING what they do?
Cassidy
FAce perhaps you should show more compassion to the minority of young men in this country who’s lives have been forever changed. War [b]IS[/b] hell. Trying to live with it afterward is even worse.
Grumpy Code Monkey
These soldiers should be punished for their actions; I doubt anyone here feels otherwise. Their crime is horrific, especially because we’re supposed to be the good guys. We’re not supposed to do things like that.
The issue is that, thanks to the stunning, mind-boggling incompetence of this administration with respect to how this war is being fought, our military have been put into a situation that makes such a crime far more likely to occur.
Counterinsurgency is hard under the best of conditions, and our troops in Iraq have been operating at a disadvantage since day one, thanks to pernicious neocon fantasies about how the wogs would simply wilt in the face of our obvious and unquestionable bad-assery. As a result they’re undermanned and overextended. This situation is conducive to breaks like what happened at Haditha. The miracle is that it doesn’t happen more often.
We’re not saying these soldiers should be excused; we’re saying that their leadership, all the way up the fucking chain to the Deciderator himself, share responsibility for what happened.
Dreggas
Murphy’s law?
John Cole
Take this faux outrage bullshit and dedicate it to something truly worthy of such histrionics- I recommend Bill O’Reilly’s War on Christmas nonsense.
No one is condoning what these soldiers did. No one is excusing the massacre of these women and children.
What we are doing is saying that eventslike this are entirely fucking predictable, have happened in every fucking counterinsurgency since time immemorial, and that while we think the people behind this should be punished for their monstrous acts, we don’t think they are monsters, but we think they are regular kids pushed beyond the breaking point by stress and the hell of war to do monstrous things.
If you can’t understand that, you probably should go start a campaign to execute women who murder their abusive husbands.
Face
Show me, John, where in Tim’s post he demonstrates his contempt for their actions, regardess and independent of this later “explanations” for these actions. Please blockquote me the part where he condems these actions. In fact, just the opposite:
No, instead, he simply explains them away. Poof! Hey, their just kids, so what the hell!
Dreggas
To me this is Vietnam on fast forward. Initially there was a mission. The mission over time changed so much we didn’t know whether we were coming or going. At this point the guys on the ground realized that the only ones they could rely on were each other and they became true family. When one died they’d go berzerk.
Does that excuse their actions? Nope not at all they should be held accountable. However it’s the same story as before. We didn’t learn a god damn thing and thanks to the stress of these stupid deployments we’re only making it worse.
John Cole
WTF are you? Some kind of retard who needs people to tell you that civilian massacres are bad?
HOW BOUT WE JUST FUCKING ASSUME, BASED ON TWO YEARS OF POSTS, THAT TIM BELIVES MASSACRES ARE WRONG.
This is Malinesque argumentation at its best. Harry Reid stands up on the Senate Floor, discusses issues related to terrorism, and all Malkin and others would have to say is “REID NEVER SAID THE TERRORISTS ARE EVIL.”
Face
Uh…wait a minute…here it comes:
Sounds like an excuse to me. This wasn’t a slaughtering, it was a lashing out. But not against the enemy, but against some kids. War is hell. Anything goes, apparently.
Rome Again
Because that’s NUANCE?
Paul L.
I guess my problem is that I am giving the US troops the benefit of the doubt instead of the terrorists.
I do not want the US troops to resemble the terrorists. If any member of the US Military intentionality murdered innocent women and children, they should be punished.
However I would like a little more outrage at terrorist’s actions.
Of course using your standard, this should have been the main story of World War II. Afterall we except bad behavior from Nazis. They are Nazis we are not.
Does this count as a Godwin?
It reminds me of the difference in coverage/outrage between the Duke Lacrosse Rape hoax and this.
I thought that is how the left portrayed George W. Bush. So I guess that is what we wanted.
Please note that was sarcasm.
John Cole
You know what Face, you are just being an ass. If it were just me or my post, I wouldn’t care.
Tim, on the other hand, is never anything but nice and fair with everyone, and this bad faith bullshit you are trying to pull is pissing me off.
Apparently you have constructed a dichotomy in your head in which there are two sides:
1.) AMERIKKKA IS EVIL AND OUR SOLDIERS ARE MURDERERS
2.) Gosh, gee-willickers, just kids acting up.
Congratulations. You now think on the same level as the President, who is also never able to juggle more than two competing thoughts.
rachel
Well, take equal parts black-and-white worldview, stunted imagination, lack of empathy and a generous pinch of self-righteousness, and you too can be a dipshit
The Other Steve
There’s no nuance in baseball!
Cassidy
Wow…just wow…sometimes I feel I have to hide my Democrat voter registration card.
The Other Steve
This is called being Obtuse.
Otherwise known as reading comprehension problems, or just not listening to what others are saying.
Cassidy
Wow…simply amazing what kind of mental leaps the brain can make. The fact that some of my elected officials actually take your kind seriously scares me.
tBone
Paul L and Face: two sides of the same coin. How ’bout you two go off and construct a set of guidelines for the rest of us, so we can be sure to express the appropriate level of OUTRAGE! we should be feeling.
Jake
Fixed.
jg
The haditha incident involved Marines, not soldiers. Just an FYI.
We can talk all day about what we should have done in order to really take control of Iraq from the outset but what’s the point? We wouldn’t have gone to war if they were honest about the effort and they had no intention of winning and then leaving anyway. The fact that we aren’t even trying to win should be obvious. Before we finished Afghanistan we left for Iraq and now they want to hit Iran before we finish Iraq. Without war republicans are a very useless party for 99% of the country.
tBone
You’re right, I forgot the obligatory jackalope release.
jg
Just seeing or hearing the word obtuse takes me back to WKRP days with Les Nessman looking up the meaning of the word:
Exceeding 90 degrees, rounded at the free end, dull.
WKRP was one of the best shows ever!!!
That and Shawshank Redemption.
The Other Steve
WHOAAAAA!!!!! That ‘this’, is the University of Minnesota rape incident that just broke wide open yesterday with the new evidence that there was a video.
As I happen to live in Minnesota, and I happen to watch WCCO news. There is a tremendous amount of outrage right now in the community. Although it’s mostly a sense of frustration, as the Gophers have had a lot of problems with their players.
It’s just that Hennepin county has a competent Prosecutor, Mike Freeman, who just recently replaced Klobuchar who just joined the Senate last year. He’s not overhyping this. There is substantial evidence, and the guys involved aren’t running around claiming they are innocent and the man is just trying to bring them down.
Go fuck yourself Paul, seriously.
les
I wish I agreed, TZ; but this is the Repub mantra from the preznident on down. Anything, no matter how vile, can be justified to “defend ‘Murka” as long as someone, sometime, did something as bad. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
Face
Bad faith my ass, Cole. I’m about as liberal as they come, but one thing I cannot stand about progressives in general is their quick and nasty willingness to excuse personal responsibility and behavior and chalk it up to all sorts of shit. Attention-deficient disorder, post-partum depression, road-rage, etc. Conservatives rail against this constantly, screaming “personal responsibility!” for damn near every crime. Hence, their love of the death penalty for minors, retarded people, etc. As a former conservative yourself, I find it amazing that you’ve jettisoned even this core tenet of conservatism.
So when I read Tim’s post, I see NOTHING that condemns this. I see one excuse after another “explaining” how the soliders didn’t really do any of this, but the war made them do it. Thus, the genesis of my indignation. Am I smart enough to realize that Tim probably abhors said massacre? Yes. But to excuse (my opinion) their actions based on a geographical location is taking the liberal inclination to “blame away” personal responsibility to an extreme.
My $0.02 cents and I’m done.
jrg
Horrible stuff happens in war, because people start to loose their minds after being shot at day after day. This is what people call “common sense”. Nobody wants this, nobody is excusing it.
If these soldiers had been serial killers before going to Iraq, you would have a point. Take someone slightly unstable, who probably would have been OK otherwise, train them to be a killer, give them a gun, dump them in a 130 degree desert for a few months, expose them to IEDs and snipers… Sooner or later some of them will break. What happened at Haditha was horrible, and the soldiers should be court marshaled, but it would not have happened if the soldiers were not in Haditha to begin with. Again… common sense.
John Cole
BABY, IF YOU’VE EVER WONDERED, WONDERED, WHAT EVER BECAME OF ME. I’M LIVING ON THE AIR IN CINCINNATI, CINCINNATI WKRP!
One of my favorite shows growing up. Venus FLytrap, Johnny Paycheck, Les Nessman.
WKRP also has some of the greatest comedy scenes in television history- my personal favorite is when they dropped turkeys from a helicopter at a mall for a promotional event, and all you hear Carlson say is “With God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”
Easily up there with the MTM Chuckles episode, or some of the comedy genius with Larry, Darrel and Darrel on Newhart.
canuckistani
Hmmm…gasoline.. fire…fun time!
I’ll call the guys who pulled the trigger monsters. Maybe they didn’t start that way, maybe they did, and there’s room to understand how they became monsters, but if they are machine gunning cowering women and children, that is what they are. There are many ways to react to combat stress, and killing innocent civilians is about the worst I can think of.
ThymeZone
The point is well taken.
And alas, it’s even worse than that. What Bush and his followers will do, shamelessly and brazenly, is demagogue this stuff so as to paint their opponents as being weak or soft on terrorism. The have calculated that to a certain demographic, the “story” of Haditha will play to that demo as a story of how the left excuses terrorism in order to persecute our soldiers. It’s all theatrics, and it is beyond vile.
These are the same people who cry out for “bipartisanship” when the cry (not real bipartisanship) suits their purpose.
These are the assholes we have running our country.
PaulL is just one example of the nonsensical horescrap that gets wallpapered onto the Tubes thanks to these buttheads.
Fuck them, ignore them. Their party is over, and we know what the realities are. We don’t need their idiotic carping to help us figure this stuff out.
rachel
As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.
ThymeZone
Yes, an easy mistake to make, given the large squadrons of turkeys that can be seen flying south for the winter every year. Heading, we must assume, for somewhere where they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving?
Each early November, there they are. The skies darken and the air trembles with the beat of ten thousand wings.
Tsulagi
To use a question style common on this blog…Why don’t we hear about the tens of thousands of soldiers deployed who willingly assume great risks to their lives while doing their job in order to prevent/minimize civilian casualties?
Answer: Because you don’t. That you don’t hear about. They’re doing their job.
Exactly
canuckistani
Brain fart there, John.. it was of course Doctor Johnny Fever you’re thinking of. Now what I’m trying to remember is what Venus Flytrap meant to call himself before Les bungled his on-air introduction.
Paul L.
Turned out the Duke Lacrosse players were innocent.
Was there substantial evidence of the Duke Lacrosse players raping the accuser CGM? Video? DNA?
As for the man is just trying to bring them down, You have any quotes from Lacrosse players or their Lawyers saying that before it was found out Nifong withheld DNA evidence.
Right back at you.
aliceandbob
Mmmm… wings.
Chris Johnson
Yeah, I’m with Face and canuckistani etc. Tim blew it- if there’s any progressive fault I have no sympathy for whatever, it’s not taxing spending etc., it’s throwing out even the notion of a balance of personal accountability.
You can take stuff into consideration, sure. That’s the sort of thing that would have me endorsing jail time and therapy rather than say execution- but somebody who guns down a crowd of cowering women and children IS a monster and the question becomes whether there’s a path away from that state for them. You get them the hell out of the job that gives them such responsibility as choosing whether or not to open fire, you hold them responsible (and in the old school military, their commanders are also responsible on up the line) and you acknowledge what they and you have done.
It is certainly bad to admit that your ‘good guys’ army has committed terrorist acts that are no better than your big villains, but if you don’t immediately take responsibility for that, YOU ARE the same as the bad guys. I don’t see any little halos flying around over these soldiers saying that for them it’s okay to slaughter innocents.
I’d like to know what would have happened if the guy’s buddy had shot him when he was halfway through slaughtering the women and children. To my mind that would have been the act of a true American, but we’ll never know. And by that I don’t imply he should then have gone around killing all the US soldiers he could find- but it’s like a cop, what do you do if a gunman is slaughtering innocents and won’t stop just because you say so?
If this idea is shocking, it shouldn’t be.
Andrei
I have to agree with Face on this. While I don’t think Tim means to excuse the actions of a few Marines, by stating:
Tim does himself a serious disservice and undermines the larger point he is tryng to make.
I just got through watching Letters from Iwo Jima last night, finally. There’s a scene in there where one of the Japanese captains stops his soliders from killing an American they capture. Why? Because even though they are all going to die, it’s the “right thing to do.”
I don’t care what the situation is, but killing children cowering in a corner is a monstrous act. To call it “human” — regardless of circumstance — is to undermine how monstrous it actually is. This is the point that I think is angering Face, and quite frankly, I have to agree with him.
Having read this blog since the Schiavo incident, I’d like to think I understand Tim’s position on a lot of things. He is generally reasonable and very insightful. On this post however, I think he has failed to live up to his usually insightful self by attempting to explain a point that I think can only work on an intellectual level. The fact is: a bunch of innocent children were murdered. Children. Murdered at point blank. Keep saying that to yourselves while you attempt the nuance of the War is Hell especially in trying to fight a intergrated public militia part of the argument. In fact, if you have kids, go look in their eyes as you try to explain whatever larger point you are trying to make about what this incident means.
The Commissar
Tim,
Very well put. I’m not sure I agree with you implication that counterinsurgency wars, waged by modern, humane doctrine, are unwinnable. Petraeus and Mattis wrote the book on how to do it. The Brits did in Malaya.
Cain
Reading Face’s rant, I just can’t help but have Jack Nicholson’s speech from “Few Good Men” run in my head.
Face,
You should realize that soldiers who are on edge from being shot at, seeing their buddies killed, watching sons picking up his father’s body parts, picking up their own buddy’s body parts, running over people during caravan trips; it put great strains on a person’s mental status. They’ll never forget it’s like a bad movie running through their head constantly. I’ve read enough of Vietnam vets telling their stories what that means. Those here who have actually served can probably tell it more eloquently than I.
So save your outrage. Yes, they do deserve punishment and they will get it. But realize that even good people can go bad when they snap. Their moral judgements gone under tremendous emotional pressure.
Save your outrage. Save it for the jackasses who put those people in that position with no body armor, no proper gear, no leadership, and knowing when you get home that they’ll be holed up in some hospital desperately fighting to get mental and physical care by a government who only pays lip service for “support the troops”.
Save it for those guys.
cain
ThymeZone
Fine post.
Davebo
Well, perhaps not halos around their heads, but the reaction of their leadership certainly showed that if they could keep the incident under wraps it would be best.
Remember, no investigation was launched until after Time published it’s account of the massacre.
Remember, the first explanation was that everyone was killed in the initial blast which the Marines knew was not true hence the payments they made to the victims families.
Oddly similar to the beating and killing of the cab driver in Afghanistan. Finally, the military admits it was murder, but the stiffest sentence handed out was 5 months imprisonment.
Way to send a message to the troops that it’s all good. We’ll cover it up if we can, and if not you won’t get any serious punishment anyway.
Geoduck
I think it was Venus Rising. And Fever may have called himself “Paycheck” at some point; he had used a different name in every job. :-)
On more serious matters.. a important point that got lost in all the shouting: Americans as a whole just can’t handle being long-term imperialists. Because, as noted, if you want to run a successful empire, you gotta be utterly ruthless. Kill everyone, string up the corpses, burn down the village, salt the earth. There is a sizable percentage of the American population which would lustfully cheer this course of action, but it’s not big enough. Not yet, at least, and that means in the end we’re gonna lose in Iraq. (As a near textbook counter-example, see what Russia did in/to Chechnya.)
And since such a statement seems to be required.. yes, I think it would be a very very BAD thing if we became an unapologetic empire and started openly slaughtering thousands and thousands of people.
protected static
Commissar: I’d be careful holding up the British experience in Malaysia as a bright and shining example. They used forcible relocation of entire villages, ‘detention centers’, and ethnic violence (since many of the Malaysian CP members were ethnic Chinese) to achieve their ends… and it still took them 12 years.
Zifnab
And that’s the real crime. Face can chastize Tim for “condoning” the massacre, but Tim wasn’t in charge of the Military Police. Tim didn’t write the report that detailed the events in town. Tim wasn’t the judge handing down sentences for crimes committed.
If you want to hold someone accountable for “condoning” Haditha, you need look no further than the ENTIRE MILITARY JUSTICE SYSTEM.
With a fair and proper handling of this massacre, is there even any question why people are aghast at “fair and balanced military tribunals for Gitmo prisoners”? These guys can’t get it right on persecuting the slaughter of women and children. How the fuck are they going to be expected to handle pre-convicted “terrorists”?
timb
The conclusion of Tim’s post is irredeemable. Counter-insurgency wars are NOT won by slaughtering everyone, as we found in Vietnam (Free-Fire Zones), the Russians discovered in Afghanistan, the British contemplated after the Boer Wars, and the Nazis found in France, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and thew Ukraine. Killing everyone only works if you are KILLING everyone (think Navaho or Apache or Greeks and Armenians by the Turks in 1920’s). Since we were not going to kill everyone, killing only mostly everyone feeds a more desperate insurgency.
You beat an insurgency by politically bringing the opposition to the table and fixing their grievances. They in turn point out the instransgient ones and…poof…problem eliminated.
Wilfred
Instead of disagreeing about Petraeus and Mattis let me refer you to someone who knows what he’s talking about, especially the ‘old wine in new bottles’ of COIN:
http://www.turcopolier.typepad.com/
aliceandbob
Don’t confuse ‘human’ with ‘humane’ — these actions are all too human. And I’d argue that the “only a monster could do this” attitude is a far bigger cop out than acknowledging that yes, actual human beings with families and friends and no discernable horns or pitchforks at all did this. Monsters are easy to deal with. You find them, condemn them, and move on. Humans are harder. You can’t just punish them and move on. You have find out how it was allowed to happen, and why, and make damned sure it doesn’t happen again.
Andrei
You’re not helping your or Tim’s cause with this line of logic. Again… let’s review: Children were murdered. At point blank. Children were cowering in a room and then shot dead. Children.
So given that context, please explain once again your larger point here? And why it matters in the larger context?
jg
I see a parralel between not wanting to bother to understand terrorists actions to not being able to understand Tim is not excusing what the Marines did.
Chopping off heads is barbaric, so is shooting cowering children. But in each case there is a reason why the persons are doing the act and believe me they don’t think they are monsters. The reasons are vastly different but they both believed they are justified.
jenniebee
This puts me in mind of the beginning of this war, back when anybody who said “terrible things happen in war and our soldiers will be asked to do them and it will change them for life; wars breed atrocities and those atrocities will haunt us, so we’d better be good and sure that every alternative is worse because we’re pretty confident that this one is going to be bad” was dismissed out of hand as a Dirty Fucking Hippie who Didn’t Get It that this was going to be just like Gulf I. Mission Accomplished and don’t those DFH’s look silly with all that egg on their faces now that none of the bad stuff they warned about has come to be.
Then, after things had gotten messy and terrible things started happening, the likes of Glenn Reynolds and the Doughy Pantload dismissed news like Haditha by saying something like: “terrible things happen in war and our soldiers will be asked to do them and that’s what wars are like, honeychile. I anticipated this all along. I only didn’t mention it because I believe that the costs of a war shouldn’t be weighed in deciding whether a war is worth fighting.”
rachel
You missed the “You have find out how it was allowed to happen, and why, and make damned sure it doesn’t happen again” part. I think perhaps you’re obtuse. (That word was explained up-thread; go look it up since you seem to have trouble with comprehending English.)
keatssycamore
Have to agree with Face and Andrei et. al., but for me the issue of what Tim F was doing with this post is less about him abandoning the concept of personal responsibility and, instead, simply going the extra distance to avoid the most powerful and effective PC card out there today (with the only possible exception being the anti-semite card).
“Supporting the military” has become such a powerful PC position that even when the military does horrible things (like higher ups telling civilian leadership “yes, sir, we can invade and win on the cheap” when that isn’t true or grunts murdering civilians in cold-blood etc) criticism must now always be leavened with gratutious commentary related to “supporting the troops”. Especially if the criticizer has any leftward lean to his/her politics.
I object to Tim F falling victim to this particularly PC tick by ever so slightly shifting the rhetorical blame away from the “evil-doers” and onto WAR. The military is made up of human beings, not supermen. There are good soldiers and there are great soldiers. And there are corrupt soldiers and, frankly, there are evil soldiers. What these guys did is evil. If the evil desire to murder women and children in cold blood had not been so strong for them, then they wouldn’t have ignored every bit of their training just to feed their bloodlust. If WAR really did this (and sure, WAR, puts evil people in a position to do greater evil than they otherwise might and, in that way, it provides an opportunity), then there would be Hadithas everyday because there are lethal IED attacks everyday.
These monsters need no justification from you, Tim. You can call them evil monsters without qualifiers and still keep your PC yellow-ribbon, militaristic American, support the troops street cred…at least from rational people that is.
Face
Let’s stop putting words in my mouth. I NEVER EVER said that Tim condoned this–my frustration was that he seemed to say it was an acceptable casualty of war. I stidently disagree. He never put any onus of responsibility on the soliders themselves; rather, his aura of “Fog of War, bitches” was used to explain (Cole’s line)/excuse (my reading) away the entire act. Nowhere in the post was there any copping to the very real fact–and the necessary requisite personal responsbility associated with it–that some Marines went in and literally slaughtered children.
And my question that no one will dare answer remains open: please tell me what act or action by soliders could not–would not?–be “explained” by “kids are human”? At what point does one stop blaming the war and start blaming the owners of the guns?
poppinfresh
Bullshit, John. These idiots weren’t “pushed beyond the limits by war”- they’re fucking jarhead cowboys who have no business doing counterinsurgent work in the first place. They are trained to be the biggest assholes in America’s arsenal BY DESIGN, because that makes them effective killers, but the Marines have no business in Iraq anymore. There are dozens of reported incidents of Marine units flying off the handle, and THOUSANDS of unreported ones that I hear from my friends who finally completed their service.
Marines. Cannot. Police. Period.
Do you know what the Army officers in charge of counterinsurgent tactics in Afghanistan and Iraq call the Marine Corps now, after countless fuckups like this make their jobs that much harder?
“The Butchers of Haditha”.
pharniel
“monsters” helps you distance them from yourself. a metephorical you.
it’s a coping mechanism.
it’s terribly disconcerting to live with the knowledge that properly applied modern psychology lays out a textbook and simple 5 step programme that could turn 90% of your coworkers into killing machines.
far better to shout “monster” and comdenm those with empathy than face the reality that there are no monsters, only humans, and that humanity when left to our own devices do horrible things for piss poor reasons.
if it was not so, we would not have the history we have.
Redleg
Tim,
I disagree with the premise that “America never had a chance in Iraq unless the gloves really, really came off.” Taking off the gloves and destroying entire villages would ultimately lead to even worse resistance by the populace as well as almost universal condemnation by other nations and an abandonment by our allies. It is folly to believe that extremely harsh tactics could have won the war. I say this as a veteran combat arms officer.
aliceandbob
Actually, he was saying that it was a predictable casualty of war that is being exploited by the insurgency. I suppose that you could argue that no one could have predicted a Haditha type event, but you’d have to ignore several thousand years of human history to do so. Nice strawman you’re constructing over there, though.
bob mcmanus
“It just illustrates of why modern armies, constrained (for good reason) by modern rules of conduct, usually lose wars of occupation.”
First time commenter, but there is a model that does not involve “going Roman”. George Marshall developed a occupation/pacification/counterinsurgency strategy that worked like a charm in postwar Germany. Marshall was a very good man, and considered his occupation program a morally necessary part of war. Some details are available at Next Hurrah in posts by sistersaralou. Mark Kleiman also discussed numbers. We may be talking five million for Iraq.
Now we don’t have that army, the army doesn’t want that army, and maybe we cannot afford or have the political will for that army. So maybe we just won’t have wars, or just fight like locusts, where we strafe and bomb and destroy countries without picking up the pieces.
And maybe even having an honest discussion isn’t even possible. It is a real shame.
Tim F.
Andrei, Face and Canuckistani have all made similar points, so I will respond to Andrei’s because I find this more interesting.
Basically, Andrei, you want to accuse me of lacking insight because I didn’t say that bad things are bad. That isn’t insight. It’s insipid. It is the kind of reasoning that humor magazines make fun of. Of fucking course killing innocent kids is a monstrous act. So is painting a brick wall to look like the finish line at the special olympics. So it running a kitten through a pepper mill. People generally get that some things have an inherent badness that goes without saying.
Calling the soldiers monsters in this case is just as airheaded as letting the brass scapegoat privates for abu Ghraib. It’s exactly the same story. The things that these low-level soldiers and Marines did were monstrous, inexcusable. Some were reprehensible people before they arrived in Iraq, but many of them weren’t. Something made them monsters.
You might think that it’s enough to piss on the privates and leave it at that; I think that’s a cop-out. Think more comprehensively about what these stories mean. They’re not just individual tragic stories. Abu Ghraib and Haditha are the predictable and inevitable consequences of throwing an unprepared and undermanned army into a counterinsurgency fight.
Haditha and abu Ghraib symbolize what is wrong with the Iraq war. Nobody can predict a specific event, but a huge number of people saw that Iraq would keep producing Hadithas and abu Ghraibs for as long as we stayed there. The psychological trauma that can lead a soldier to do that kind of thing will haunt our army for a long, long time.
Many of us knew this would happen. Eric Shinseki tried to get the word out before shit met fan. In a simplistic sense, sure, the soldiers are monsters. Fine with me if you want to hug a teddy bear and leave it at that. I would rather place the greater blame on leaders who either didn’t listen to warnings that Haditha and abu Ghraib would happen, or they listened and didn’t care.
Combat stress, insurgency warfare and a leadership vacuum can make normal people into monsters. That is unbearably sad, and the people who committed those crimes will live with the scars and the inner disfigurement for the rest of their lives. For the most part, those monsters were made from perfectly normal men. They will be punished for what they did, and they should be, but to leave it at that strikes me as deeply unjust.
Not everybody is born normal. Take someone who blithely pushes troops around a Risk board to satisfy his petty whims, who cannot learn from his own past or anyone else’s, whose irresponsible leadership causes Haditha after Haditha. When a guy like that reads the carnage that his flippant warmongering caused, and sleeps well at night, there is a born monster.
Zifnab
Yes. Children were murdered. But not before a marine was murdered before hand. And lets not forget that all insurgents aren’t 40-year-old bearded men. Women and children are also counted within the ranks of the various insurgencies. That these were children who were slaughtered doesn’t reduce the perceived danger, when a cell-phone can be a weapon and you’ve been shot at by kids before.
One of the people killed could, potentially, have been the one who set off the IED. There’s no age limit to planting bombs and detonating them. One of those families could have helped plan out the murder. One of those mothers could have put food on the bomber’s plate. One of those children could have walked the bomber’s dog. The marines didn’t know. But rather than acting calmly and intelligently in hopes of identifying the attacker, they opted for the short, quick, foolish, and messy approach.
The marines are not being punished simply for murdering people. If you could be tried for murder in the armed services, they’d have to lock up damn never every veteran in the service. The soldiers are being disciplined for disobeying orders, recklessly endangering non-combatants, and generally making life hell for the next convoy that has to pass through Haditha.
In short, they’re being punished for acting not like marines but Sadrist militiamen. But this idea that these handful of marines is to be punished for killing civilians when we slaughtered hundreds of civilians while we pounded Bagdad with artillery and bombs? Give me a fucking break. It’s war. We kill women and children all the time. Last time it was an “accident”. This time it was clearly on purpose. But don’t pretend the marines at Haditha were the only ones perpetrating this particular horror.
Tim F.
Redleg and timb,
The conclusion of my post is what is known as a “modest proposal.”
Cassidy
Is the child-like, overly emotional hysterics done yet? I’d like to see some more mature discussion regarding this.
I guess not…
Andrei
How did it happen?Obviously war is hell. Soldiers are in a no-win situation fighting enemies integrated into the civilian population, put there by an incompetnent admistration and allowed to stay there by a couch potato public more fascintated by Transformers and Harry Potter movies than by what happens on the opposite of the world.
And?
Find out how it happend? That’s like explaining how babies are made. We all know the answer. So what? How does that help? Does it make you feel better that you think you understand some argument on some higher intellectual plane?
This thread is so far nothing more than an intellectual exercise because at the end of the day, children were murderd in cold blood. That’s “human”? Oh really? Great… so its human nature to act like a monster in the heat of battle. Now that we got that out of the way, what’s the point again? Where do we go from here again?
Those Iraqi children were still murdered. So I’m not sure how calling the act itself a natural extension of the context of war does anything to promote anything in any arguement.
Redleg
Tim F,
By “modest proposal” do you mean “satire?”
Redleg
P.S. I enjoy the blog. Keep up the good work.
pharniel
yes. the marines are trained to be killers. they should not be being used as police units.
here. have a cookie.
“Blame” means ‘responsible for’
the entire point of marine training is to allow the soldier to not actually be responsible, and thus not feel crippling guilt or become a sociopath after potentially snuffing out hundreds of lives.
the blame lies in the fact that the administration, admeralty and generals knew this was coming, because they were all around for vietnam and korea (and to a lesser extent WWII, but having a competent and crediable threat tends to give one something else to do aside from butcher civilians). In short they used the wrong tools for the job. unforutnatly those tools are humans who now have to live with being killers.
THis is no time for kneebending ‘you’re excusing it’ bullshit. this is an attempt to have a cold, hard, academic look at what happened and wtf is going on.
Redleg
Andrei,
I don’t believe that it is human nature to “act like a monster in battle.” The majority of soldiers and Marines have acted more-or-less honorably in times of war. I do believe, however, that many of our troops have been put into very difficult circumstances and have had poor training and weak leadership.
Redleg
Andrei
There you go Tim. I look forward to your repsonse to Zifnab on whether this was your intended point or not with this post.
Face
If you read, you see I wrote “seemed”. Thus it was my interpretation of Tim’s intent to mean “acceptable”. My explicitly prefaced opinion does not a strawman make.
Tim F.
Commissar,
Thanks. Regarding your second point, the Malays didn’t have force levelers like the IED and Petraeus’s manual says that we need three or four more armies to have a chance in Iraq. Also, as other commenters have pointed out the Brits hardly played nice-nice. Neither strikes me as very instructive.
canuckistani
I absolutely agree. I never meant to imply that the Marine Corps enlists serial killers and sends them into battle. But something has happened to these men that has destroyed their humanity. And in a just world, punishment would also fall on those who created these monsters. But I’m not holding my breath.
John Cole
For Face, Andrei, and the numerous others who seem to think that the way to argue something is to merely repeat “BABIES WAS MURDERED” over and over again, let me ask you this question:
Do you think these “MONSTERS,” these “EVILDOERS,” these “EVIL AWFUL KILLERS” would have gone into an apartment and slaughtered children in say, Chicago, or Boston, or wherever they were from?
If your answer is “No” or “I don’t know,” then ask yourself what is different.
The answer, of course, is the situation they were in and the stress they were under. That doesn’t excuse their fucking behavior, but it can help explain it.
Andrei
Redleg, that’s fine. Now map your comment:
with what Tim said that started this little liberal flare up:
Tim has used some pretty polarizing words: Monster, human, harrassment…
Harrassment? Poor choice of words by Tim imho. Lashing out? Harrassment? That warrants walking into a room where children are cowering and shooting them dead point blank? That’s just human? I don’t think Tim is excusing the action, but man… seriously poor choice of words imho from a guy who is usually so much more accurate than this.
Tim F.
In fact it is closer than you think. Like zifnab I think that you need to step away from Haditha as an event and see it for what it represents. Did a squad of Marines go briefly, inexplicably nuts or does the event have a touch more significance than that? Zifnab answers the question in that little paragraph. Hadithas happen all over Iraq. Some days it happens verbatim and nobody bothers to file a report, in other places it happens on a smaller scale at a roadblock or during a house search.
The point you need to get is that Haditha is not unique. To a certain degree events like Haditha happens all over Iraq all the time. If you want to wage a counterinsurgency war without training troops for it, equipping them properly or sending enough of them to do the job then this is the war that you get. It’s outrageous, it’s unacceptable and it’s exactly why people like me thought that the war was a suicidally stupid idea from day one.
Andrei
John, I think you bring up an potentially interesting parallel. Take your hypothetical and up the ante a little:
Say a police officer, in the middle a massive riot where a fellow police officer had just been killed by someone in the mob, walks into a corner grocery store where he thinks he saw the culprit run into and kills whomever happens to be in there, which includes a family who were cowering in the corner.
Does that reasonably explain the behavior of the cop? And even if it does, what’s the point? That riots are hard and people die? That walking into a store after watching a friend killed and aiming your gun at the children is a “human” reaction given that anyone in that store could have been the killer or is a future killer?
I don’t know the point, which is why I think Tim slipped on this post. I’m not sure what Tim is trying to accomplish actually in this post.
And FWIW… I didn’t say “BABIES WAS MURDERED.” I said children were murdered, I didn’t use all caps and I used proper grammar. If you are going to quote me, please keep it in context and accurate. I thought you had gotten over your rightwing tendencies like exaggerating people for dramatic effect. Given you voted for George Bush twice and I didn’t, I think I deserve a little bit of leeway here on this point. Thank you.
Andrei
Agreed. And that is exactly why I think you made a poor choice in your post to bring up that “American kids are human” as part of of this post. It completely takes away from your larger point.
John Cole
Andrei- the point of your stating repeatedly that “children were murdered” IS dramatic effect. We all know children were murdered. My mocking you was to point out how strained your attempts at drama really are.
Additionally, your comparison is wrong, as no cop is ever in riots for 300 days a year, or has half his police force blown up around him, or has to take armed patrols to work so IED’s planted by the civilians can be disarmed, etc.
The real irony of your bizarre position (a complete unwillingness to understand how normal people can do awful things in times of complete stress) is that you are letting the real bad guys off, here- the ones who sent these guys into this situation undertrained, undermanned, and without a clear mission. I think some of you call them Rummy and Shrub.
Face
Talk about strawman…
Cole’s question is ludicrous. Different situations, indeed. TONS of different variables, however. Would these soliders commit those crimes in NY? Well, there’d be less stress, so maybe not. But if NY was as completely lawless and this person’s actions just as nearly coverup-able, then maybe yes. Maybe they only murdered due to combat fatigue, OR maybe they did it b/c they were pretty sure they’d get away with it.
To say the only diff between Baghdad and NY or Philly is heat and bullets and combat stress is not recognizing the proclivity for some to engage in crimes if/when they can’t/won’t get caught. So please stop attempting to imply CTSD is the only variable at play.
Zifnab
That, I believe, depends on how big a warzone the city happens to be at the moment. How often are these policemen under fire? How long have the riots been going on? Do regular citizens routinely open fire on said police officers or is it only specific groups of gangster who bother them?
If the officer is working in a city where every person is a potential cop killer, if he’s been working the riot beat for a riot that’s been going on for 4 years, and if he’s shot at on a daily basis, then yeah, I suspect the cop will get cut a lot more slack than if he were patrolling the streets of Pleasantville during a two hour snowball fight.
Andrei
Fine. I’ll accept that. I wasn’t actually trying to be dramatic. I was trying to make sure that the discussion stayed contextual. I’ll concede that can easily come off as being dramatic.
I fully understand how “normal” people can do “awful” things in times of stress. I’m not sure still why that matters. They still go to jail though and must take the punishment.
The irony from my point of view is that by Tim deflating the atrocity of what the soldiers did through his use of equating the soldiers in this particualr case as nothing more than “American kids”, he deflates the accountabiity for all involved. The real bad guys? Those soliders killed children in cold blood. Would they have had they not been sent there by Rummy et al? I guess, but you can also say they wouldn’t have had they not volunteered to serve in the armed forces in the first place. They are still accountable, stressful situation or not. That’s part off the job.
And for the record, I’ve been asking to impeach the entire lot of this administration since they invaded Iraq in the first place. You’ve been much too late to that party, John. Most have forgiven you on that point. I doubt I ever wil. But using the gambit that I’m letting the “real bad guys” off the hook is entirely incorrect.
PAULQX
Juan Cole, you may think these are ordinary kids pushed to the breaking point by the war but you are most likely talking out of your ass. You don’t know who these kids were. Alot of kids who joined after 9/11 did it with the express purpose to “get back” at the jihadis who they conflated with Saddam and Iraq. The blame for that can go to Bush and the right wing hate machine of FOX, rightist radio and blogs and our lazy MSM. The real story not being told is that there are Hadithas going on all the time in Iraq. Most are never reported or quickly covered up. Some get out and ignored and some get some attention like Haditha. Now maybe some of these acts are carried out by “ordinary” otherwise good kids pushed to the brink by the horrors of war but I would posit that many of them are carried out by bad apples who joined to kill some “towel-heads” who they think bombed them on 9/11 and I think there is a great deal of anecdotal evidence to back that up. The army is lowering it’s standards for enlistment, letting in more felons and thugs and that will inevitably lead to more Haditha-like events.
As far as where the blame goes, well, I think it goes everywhere. A fish or an army rots from the head down but a society rots from the roots up. Alot of what we are seeing comes from the attitude of holding our soldiers out as automatic heroes by the very fact that they wear a uniform and fight in Iraq. I see alot of comments like “we have the best army in the world.”. No we don’t. The best army in the world would not murder women and children. They would not make excuses for their fellow soldiers when they commited acts of barbarism. They would have military leaders that were more interested in the mission and the lives of their soldiers than in saving face for their civilian bosses. There have been polls showing both the enormous lack of respect our soldiers have for Iraqis and their beleif that they should not report abuses by their fellow soldiers. The best army in the world would not hold those views.
Lastly I see alot of “I am not defending what they did but…..” and then they go on to defend what they did by rationalizing it. This is insulting to all the thousands of soldiers who do their service and do not engage in acts of barbarism and war crimes. The fact is there are alot of sick puppies in the army and given a chance they will act out on those desires and justify them in the name of war and patriotism.As a society, to make excuses for what they do is just going to make it more likely to happen again. They must be punished and ran out of the army, from the PFC to the commander in cheif.
Brachiator
What nonsense. What wars did you serve in and how many women and children did you kill? Few things are more absurd than armchair generals making up rules of combat and creating imaginary codes of justice that have absolutely nothing to do with what actually exists.
If you want to try to argue that professional soldiers who become murderers are only human, then you might as well argue that supposedly frustrated people who become suicide bombers are just human, so their actions are also understandable, even if inexcusable.
Similarly, it is a total contradiction to attempt to back off and say that you are not “really” excusing the murder of civilians and to also try to suggest that gloves are “supposed to be” taken off when fighting an “insurgency war.”
This goes far beyond the half-baked speculation of “why modern armies, constrained (for good reason) by modern rules of conduct, usually lose wars of occupation.” The invasion of Iraq was not supposed to be a war at all. The original fantasy sold to the American people was that love, peace and democracry would spontaneously sprout up in Iraq after Saddam Hussein was deposed.
Instead what you have here are people trying to rationalize conquest and attempting to explain to the conquered why they should just sit back and accept the occasional atrocity.
Part of the background to this war in the minds of many of its neo-con supporters was that they were going to show pointy-headed liberals how Viet Nam should have been done correctly. But I don’t see much difference in the idea of “getting tough” or “taking the gloves off” and the Viet Nam era nightmare of destroying a hamlet in order to save it.
I don’t find anything remotely acceptable in the idea that Iraqis should expect an occasional rape or murder because American troops are provoked or harried. And this issue of how to fight counter-insrugencies is not simply a dilemma of modern armies; shock-and-awe or bending a country to your will is an absurd proposition whenever you claim to be helping a country liberate itself from its enemies. You cannot become an enemy yourself.
Cassidy
For Christ’s sake…Andrei, Face, etc.
This is pathetic. It amazes me how shrill and petty liberal’s can be. LIke I said, it really scares me that some of my elected officials pander to your kind. Everything you all have said, has been an exercise in emotionally, over the top, sand in your unmentionable parts, bullshit.
By your own logic, I don’t see you stamping your feet and gnashing your teeth about the deaths of Soldiers. Does that mean you support the deaths of American Soldiers?
And lets stop with this not properly trained crap. I’ve spent most of my time in Combat Arms, as an Infantryman and Medic, and nothing pisses me off more than hearing a bunch of civilians say untrained, when 90% of civilians couldn’t do what we do in any comparable amount of time. If you want to know why we aren’t effectively fighting a counterinsurgency, it’s because everyone wants to watch, but no one wants to see blood. I guarantee, that within a two week time period, we could easily pacify Iraq. Easily. But you all don’t want that. You don’t want to see us brutally destroy the enemy. You want to see lovey-dovey pictures of us handing out water. Instead, you’ll stand around your water coolers and your keyboards and talk….talk, talk, talk, talk, talk…but never actually do anything. Whereas young men and some women, are living in a state of perpetual terror, witnessing horrors you could only dream about. So kindly screw off.
John Cole
No one is saying they should not be accountable. No one here, at least.
And while you think that by labelling these Marines monsters and refusing to allow for context places the blame on Rumsfeld, etc., it is little more than the liberal version of a few bad apples.
Tsulagi
Apparently not when you get bullshit like this…
Sweet fucking Jesus, for the retards who insist on painting with a broad brush, how about occasionally using a reality based one as a change even if it doesn’t happen to fit your Known Truth narrative?
Say like one where a unit taking fire from a building will call off an airstrike because they now believe there may also be civilians in that building. Instead they clear the building themselves putting their own lives at risk. And if they don’t take casualties this time, fair chance they will the next time or the next. That’s one example; there are plenty more.
Those events take place every god damned week. Even by Marines. Care to pick up those brushes also, or is a single brush the limit you can wrap your head around?
Cassidy
Incorrect. We are the most direct, and effective form of foriegn policy available to the United States.
Punchy
I disagree. You’re implictly making them unaccountable for their actions if you support the idea that they can just point to IEDs and random chaos and then say, “see, it’s not me, it’s everything else. Not my fault.”
If a child purposely throws a baseball thru a window, you can either blame the child, or blame the team for playing the game, thus removing all responsibility off the child. I think Andrei wants to blame the former, and Tim would rather point the blame at the latter.
John Cole
Nonsense- they are accountable for their actions. They pulled the trigger. But that doesn’t mean they pulled the trigger because they are simply “monsters,” or because America sucks.
You can try to understand why they did what they did without excusing it. Well, I can. You apparently can not.
Zifnab
I fail to see how these two statements are mutually exclusive.
Cassidy
What really amazes me here is the utter disdain you all have for Soldiers.
You know, I’ve been a lifelong Democrat, more liberal in my naive youth, but that got fixed. But I’ve also been involved with the military my whole life. You all seem to not be able to grasp a few things. We’re normal people. We’re not cowboys. We’re not bulked up jocks with inferiority comlexes. We’re normal people. Some of us have joined for more altruistic reasons. Some joined for college. Some joined to give their family a better life. But in the end, we’re normal, every day people, charged with performing at an extraordinary level of competence and professionalism.
Sure, we do get the odd, exceptional moment of bad things happenning, but by no means is that the rule. If you would come down off your hysterical high horse for a second, you would see that.
The hypocricy is sickening. Two years ago, you all would have fallen all over yourselves to make the point that “you support the troops, but not the war”, taking special emphasis to show you’re still a good American, even if you disagree on the policies. But now, you’ve turned into a screaming bunch of loons, further perpetuating the shrill version of the modern liberal.
We’re normal people folks. We have families. We drink beer. We barbecue on the weekends. We cry. The only difference is that sometimes, we also die, doing a job that we swore to do to the best of our abilities. And maybe an oath doesn’t mean anything to you, but to us, the old traditions of being a warrior count. Our word is our bond, and we’ve sworn to go out and do a job, even if we disagree with the politics of it.
For most of you, if you screw up your job, the most you have to do is call your IT dept. with a little chagrin. But it doesn’t work that way for us. Most of us can only dream of the confortable naiveté which you’ve showcased your opinions around.
Cassidy
Very easy…you’re injecting a comfortable level of emotionalism in a job that doesn’t have require it.
For instance…when I was out on patrol, 5-6 days a week, 4-12 hours a day, I didn’t sit and amuse myself with political banter and debating the right or wrongness of being in Iraq. I very simply did my job, which as a Medic, got a little “exciting” at times. I didn’t do my job for Bush or Haliburton or Rumsfeld…I did my job because I’m a professional Soldier. I had a mission. I completed my mission. I, thankfully, came home, largely whole, minus some emotional trauma.
Wilfred
I believe an order to ‘crank up the violence’ is questionable, isn’t it? There have been hundreds of things like this – random beatings, shooting people at checkpoints, humiliating Iraqis/Afghans just because you can – reported in the Arab press. To most Americans, Muslims are just this war’s gook; nobody gives a fuck. These stories will result in nothing happening.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-07-15-marines_N.htm
HyperIon
is this gamer talk?
why is war hell?
because people with guns and bombs try to kill each other. and sometimes bystanders get killed, too. war is an INCREDIBLY destructive activity that should be engaged in ONLY when nothing else will work. you go to war and lots of bad SHIT happens. the details are just that…details. the very sad details of humans acting sub-human and the very glad details of humans acting super-human. thus will it ever be as long as humans choose war.
canuckistani
You are a very sad nation if your most effective form of foreign policy is armed force. I’m glad you didn’t send the Marines to resolve the Canada-US softwood lumber dispute.
Zifnab
Well, I will definitely give you points for being hard core. No doubt about that.
Grumpy Code Monkey
The point is that even the most concientious, rigorously trained Marine has a breaking point. That simple fact should be recognized up the chain of command, all the way to the Deciderator himself, and deploying troops without taking that simple fact into consideration leads to events like Haditha.
Tim’s (and John’s) point has never been that these Marines weren’t responsible for their actions; the point is that, given the nature of counterinsurgency and the conditions under which our military is operating, incidents like this are inevitable.
Face
I completely and utterly fail to understand how you absolutely refuse to consider the specifics in this case. This isn’t a case of a fleeing innocent man shot out of confusion, nor a man mistakenly shot for holding up something looking like a gun, or a Marine shooting a man setting up road flares looking much like TNT. Those are understandable, if not tragic.
This is case of at least one Marine entering a house, and when confronted with women and children hiding in a bedroom, rather than turn and leave, he just stands there and wastes a whole family. Go ahead, call that hysterical. I call that monsterous.
Andrei
Cassidy, you’re the one letting your emotions get you. In fact, if you bothered to ask me my stance on this, it sounds as if we might agree. I don’t think the “stress” line in this discussion is proper at all personally. I think men and women in the armed forces are trained, and they agree to an oath of honor in their service. To that end, standards for soldiers will be higher than normal people. I do think that a large majority of the soldiers (oh say… mre than 98%?) stand up to that test. As it should be.
As for John, you said:
This whole mess stems from one little sentence from Tim.
This is *dangerously* close to an excuse, not merely an explanation. Why? Because the thing we are talking about is not only about killing innocent people, but *knowingly* walking into a room, seeing innocent people cowering in a corner, then pulling the trigger.
Andrei
Face said it far better than I did just now.
Redleg
Cassidy,
You don’t know what you’re talking about if you really believe the U.S. forces could “pacify” the Iraqis in 2 weeks.
Any soldier and student of warfare knows that burning the f-ing village to the ground isn’t going to pacify anything. As a soldier you should know that military discipline and adherence to the conventions of war are absolutely essential to the success of the operations and the safeguarding of U.S. military personnel in the war zone. A lack of discipline leads to poor mission performance, poor unit cohesion, poor decision-making, and sometimes fatal actions.
On another note, I may be a liberal who opposes this war but I am also a former Army combat arms officer. All your bad-ass talk makes me think you’re more a keyboard commando than a real GI.
jg
Add that to John’s point that this Marine has been experiencing some nasty shit for an extending period of time and I think we’ll have the complete picture to talk about. You can’t remove the Marine from where he’s been and put the situation in a vaccuum while accusing others of ignoring factors.
Redleg
Cassidy,
Please note that I’m not questioning your bona fides in regard to your military service. The insulting and partisan tone of your post and the statement that we could pacify Iraq in short order just read like so many of the swill penned by the neocon war-lovers.
The Other Steve
So what unit did you serve in Cassidy?
Please don’t tell us you were with the 101st chairborne. That would make baby jesus cry.
canuckistani
It’s a pity we don’t have a medical definition of “monster” to make things clearer. I’ll toss my definition out there – someone willing to inflict violence on the innocent because he has no sense of right or wrong.
That is what is in my mind when I call the killers “monsters”, and I’m not absolving anyone up the chain of command whose errors have led to putting monsters into a position where they can kill the innocent, or for putting men into a situation where they can turn into monsters. But these men have gone beyond the limits of any acceptable civilized conduct.
Davebo
If this is so, then why did we invade Iraq?
We had the most direct and effective form of foriegn policy at Iraq’s doorstep, and it was working! Inspections, unfettered access, life was good!
But sadly, by that point there was no turning back. And it certainly had nothing to do with diplomacy.
Now, if you wanted to argue that a well placed carrier air group is a direct and effective form of foreign policy there are some historical precedents to support that claim.
But tanks and soldiers? I just don’t see it. Then again I’m an old airdale.
jenniebee
What an amazing object lesson in what it takes to convince a fence sitter that “typical” libs are pussified feel-gooder idiots. Andrei, Pace et al can’t even decide what to blame (the marines? or maybe the marine corps? or maybe…)
Bollocks. War is the natural breeding ground of atrocity, and the decision to go to war is the decision to turn people into killers and make nesting grounds for inner demons. If you want someone to blame for this, may I suggest that you look to the signatories of PNAC, because this murder and a score of others like it is exactly what they have been working to make possible since the day they decided that a US takeover of Iraq was a pretty good idea. It wasn’t their primary objective, but it was an inevitable by-product of it and they didn’t give a fuck – and they still don’t give a fuck – if a few hundreds of thousands of people die and a few tens of thousands lose their souls killing them, just so long as in the end Baghdad has a McDonalds, an Exxon station and a Haliburton office.
Cassidy
1) The most effective form of diplomacy of any advanced nation is it’s military. Stop misreading that into advocating war. As having been there, I will always consider that one of the alst options. That said, when you use your military, more often than not, you get what you want.
2) Redleg, once again, it has nothing to do with right or wrong, that’s another debate. Very simply, an army with our capabilities could pacify Iraq in very short order. That’s not machismo. It’s objective fact. The neo-con pipe dream is based on fantasy of gushing, exported democracy, happiness. My assessment is based on having interacted with the Iraqi’s. You can’t paint with a broad brush. Strong arm tactics work with some and not with others. In Iraq, an iron handed policy would work. The culture itself is weak and willingly follows the strongest.
3) Steve, I was with 3rd ID for OIF III. I am not a “commando” or Special Forces, or a Ranger (although I do have ambitions to go to the school next summer). I’m very simply one of the faceless “grunts” who has done the front line thing and taking the anti-depressants to prove it. So yes, Redleg, I am a real “GI”.
yojoe
During the second day of the investigation there was testimony from 2 other Marines that were at Haditha.
http://dreadnaught.wordpress.com/2007/07/18/haditha-update-lcpl-tatums-article-32-day-2-2/
Tim F.
Brachiator,
A number of people have misread me on this thread, but you take the cake. No intelligent reader could possibly interpret my post as diminishing the awfulness of our Iraq war. Precisely the reverse is true. In fact your reading of my post is so bizarro-world that I have to assume that you’re new here. Skim the archives, find out where I stand on the war and then tell me if the post still reads the way you thought it did.
jg
Maybe the strongest among them but not the strongest in the world. I don’t see them laying down for the white man. I see the white man coming to lay down the law as providing the exception to your rule.
Face
You’re willing to chalk up–incredibly–cold-blooded slaughtering of innocent women and children to “nasty shit” in a “situation”, or that war breeds atrocity…as if these guys suddenly have absolutely ZERO control over their brains and body.
I am very ill-equiped to comprehend how one can remove and eliminate responsibility for such a graphic, purposeful, and ridiculous crime to “fog of war”, and continue to claim these soliders are completely unable to control the triggers of their guns simply b/c they’ve been in Iraq for months.
Cassidy
Most truthful thing you’ve said all day.
Face
Take your self-rightous bullshit and fuck off. I’m thankful you served in the military. I see that makes you the expert in all things military. I’m relieved to know that it seems to bother you not a whit that other Marines are doing so freely what Manson will get the chair for.
Cassidy
I don’t need you to be thankful. I do what I do for my own reasons, not for you.
I never said it didn’t bother me. What they did was wrong and they will be court-martialed for it. What bothers me is the “look…gotcha” attitude of so many people who really are ignorant of military life. To paint us all as bloodthirsty, “cowboys”, when the vast majority of us are very professional, hard working people, is pathetic and self-righteous. You are cherry picking on a level that shows how much in common you have with another 28% of the country.
jg
Being ill equipped or well equipped has nothing to do with anything. No one is trying to remove or elimintate responsibility. We all know the Marine shouldn’t have done what he did. He was wrong no matter what the cause. We’re just saying there was a cause.
And he’s not a soldier. Soldiers are in the Army. Calling him a soldier is probably more insulting to him than calling him a monster.
ThymeZone
Utter disdain pretty much sums up the entirety of your posts here. You seem to have it for everyone here, you paint all those who don’t go along with your narrow views with a broad and condescending and dismissive brush, and you pretend to talk as if you represent whole bunches of people like you, as if all “real GIs” are part of your “we” and think like you do.
You, sir, are full of shit, and haven’t said a word, that I can find here, that illuminates the Haditha situation in any way, shape or form.
Brachiator
To the contrary. I have nothing but respect for the military and the job that they are doing. But it infantilizes them to suggest in any way that committing atrocities is an understandable reaction to provocation or pressure. And even if everyone agreed that this was an “understandable reaction,” it is utterly irrelevant to the political or plain human dimension of war, since it would be pointless to suggest that an explanation like this could ever be acceptable to the surviving family members of anyone murdered by a soldier.
I don’t think that you diminish the awfulness of the war at all. I just think that your analysis underestimates how the Iraq conflict is different from other wars and misses how the Bush Adminstration’s lack of any coherent policy undermined anything it might possibly hope to accomplish through military action.
I don’t think that Haditha illustrates why modern armies, “constrained by modern rules of conduct, usually lose wars of occupation. “ Whether the US military kept their gloves on or took them off is irrelevant. We are nothing more than handmaidens to chaos in Iraq. Increasingly, the conflict is going on despite our presence, and Bush’s announced goals, plans and strategies mean nothing to the various factious fighting according to their own regional, national and religious interests. I don’t think that most of the insurgents care what provokes us; the worst of the fundamentalist forces easily make up reasons to whip up their hatred of America.
Cassidy
Well, that would include you reading the whole thread and actually being part of the reality based community, as opposed to paying it lip service, as you normally do, with ultra-liberal notions. You and your ilk are no better than Bush and his 28%.
Zifnab
Yeah, I’m going to have to go with Thyme-“Bomber pilots are just terrorists who don’t blow themselves up”-Zone on this one.
Frankly, while idea that marines are a pack of Bruce Willis Diplomats makes for a nice screenplay, in real life we both know that marines aren’t there to make peace. Marines exist to kill people until there’s no one left to kill back.
Marines make good diplomats like assault rifles make good scalpels. Busting in a muscling people up doesn’t make them your friends, it makes them your quiet enemies. Sending soldiers into Iraq didn’t pacify the population. Dropping bombs on Lebanon didn’t bring about peace in the Middle East. Nuking Tehran won’t usher in a violence free utopia. Stop pretending otherwise. Wake up and get real.
Cassidy
Yeah….not a real high bar for credibility. But, you get what you pay for.
jg
I don’t see how. Why would we bother to train them to maintain discipline in stressful situations if it wasn’t understandable that they could lose discipline in such a situation?
Who said this would be an acceptable explanation to victims families? That’s absurd. You can’t possibly be thinking anyone here is saying the families don’t have a right to be royally pissed at what happened.
grumpy realist
I think what Tim and John (and a lot of the other commentators here) are saying is: given the stress, the never-ending-ness, the lack of perceived improvement, and getting stuck in the Iraqian hellhole, it wasn’t surprising that some soldiers cracked and carried out monstrous actions.
And yes, the responsibility ultimately must be shared with the idiots who put the soldiers in such a situation, failed to support them, insisted that Results Were Everything (no matter if they broke the rules getting the results) and demanded that they act like a set of military wind-up figures all for the sake of Bush’s ego….and continue to die, with no way forward and no hope.
Of all the betrayals of the American people that Bush has carried out, I consider what he and his syncophants have done to the US Military is one of the most painful.
poppinfresh
Was that directed at me for calling Marines killers? Because that’s what they do, and they’re damn proud of it- as well they should be. It’s their fucking JOB.
But that doesn’t make them appropriate counterinsurgents, no less when their commanders seem incapable of giving them training and orders to make them more appropriate to the job. Keeping them in Iraq to “kick ass” in Haditha and Fallujah and a dozen other places isn’t fixing ANYTHING. I could give you some long explanation as to why- the study counterinsurgency is part of what I do- but a dozen other people in this thread have already made the same point, so my credentials are irrelevant. Anyone with a brain can figure this one out. I’m surprised someone who served with the Third hasn’t heard the talk about Marines and their fuckups by now, since its pretty much the number-one topic of conversation among Army officers charges with managing COIN ops.
Oh, and my entire family- four generations- has been serving in the military back to the first world war, so aim your trolling elsewhere, since it’s not going to work on me.
Cassidy
Understandable does not equal acceptable. I don’t get why that is so hard.
It is perfectly understandable how a combat soldier could lose control after mnay months of warfare and the immediate death of a “family member”, in a society full of people who are to chickenshit to tell you who the insurgents are or that you’re approaching something that explodes at the end of their driveway.
Tsulagi
Redleg,
Who was engaging in the bad-ass talk there?
As a former officer also, I believe you missed the gist of Cassidy’s posts. If I’m not mistaken, that gist was contrary to what some may believe, you cannot use Haditha to broadly characterize those serving in Iraq or anywhere else. An event like Haditha gets plenty of ink because it is an anomaly. That’s a good thing.
Cassidy doesn’t sound like any keyboard commando. He sounds like many of those that make up the steel of our forces. Intelligent, well trained, often largely apolitical, and one who is focused on doing his job and doing it well.
As far as “pacifying” Iraq in two weeks? No. However, if we didn’t give a shit about civilian casualties, using the firepower we have we could immediately and significantly lessen our own losses. The reason we don’t is because we do care about innocent civilian casualties. Day in and day out our forces exercise extraordinary restraint. I think Cassidy also made that point.
Probably wasting time since some seem unable to fathom this kind of position, but even given what I just wrote, I believe anyone perpetrating something like Haditha should be identified and held to the highest standards of accountability. That’s also a good thing.
Cassidy
Wouldn’t be the first time an Officer didn’t hear the Sergeant…lol. J/K,
ThymeZone
Uh huh. Yeah, you’re done here. You might want to try a different handle, you’ve pretty much worn this one out.
What a wanker. Probably a spoof.
ThymeZone
Well, after about 120 or so of those two-week cycles, we seem to have not pacified it.
Whoops! The best laid plans of mice and blogspoofers ….
Shall we call these fortnights “Cassidy Units?”
Cassidy
Nope, just a Democrat who’s tired of narrow-minded liberals ruining my party.
Cassidy
It isn’t about the number of troop Thymezone…it’s about the willingness of the American people to let their military go as far as it has to, to pacify violent sectors of Iraq. You can’t negotiate with the enemy. They are convinced of their righteousness. To successfully combat them, we’d have to be willing to do what is necessary, even beyond what is right.
Like I said, we could. We just won’t.
jg
what’s an ilk anyway?
ThymeZone
Oh, you are absolutely right. That’s why the Second World, Korean and Vietnam wars are still going on.
In fact, “Negotiate Only With Friends” is the cornerstone of diplomacy.
You’ve descended into satire, compadre. Really.
I have a little tip fer ya: One Cassidy Unit from today, you won’t be here.
Place your bets, ladies and germs.
ThymeZone
Big deerlike animal with broad antlers?
jg
You mean THIS enemy right? Not all enemies.
Idf so then I agree. Reliogiously motivated people cannot be negotiated with. IMO its the point behind a separation of church and state.
Not in pre-emptive wars. We pacified the heck out of Japan. We firebombed the entire Japanese mainland during night runs. Most of the structures in WW2 Japan were made of wood BTW. Then we dropped fat man and little boy. I wasn’t around at the time but I’m pretty sure the american public was OK with that.
Imagine if it actually was Iraq behind 9/11? yikes.
Cassidy
And you’ve descended into the typical Liberal/Conservative/Same thing tactic of trying to avoid admitting you don’t actually have an argument. Fortunately you admit it every time you speak.
ThymeZone
Uh, can you point me to the “arguments” you have made here?
Mostly I see a lot of chest beating, self justification, boasting about putative military experience, and shitting on other commenters. Where are those arguments hidden, again?
Cassidy
You’re not much for reading comprehension are you?
Wilfred
Depends of the context, in this one – Sergeant Ilko.
The Other Steve
What I find most interesting about Cassidy’s responses here is how he attacks people for stereotyping the military, by stereotyping the responses here.
There’s some 150 or so posts in this whole thread, and maybe 30-40 different posters. Of those there are like 2 or 3 who have taken this gotcha position, the remainder of them including JC and TF(our proprietors) have had a decidedly different take.
Now why would Cassidy want to do this? Why would he want to stereotype and battle strawmen?
Could Cassidy be a troll?
The Other Steve
Wait. I’m lost in a swirl of circular logic here.
Let me see if I get this all straight.
We invaded Iraq because we were going to bring them freedom and democracy and save them from evil people.
But they don’t appear to want us to be there, and our soldiers get attacked frequently.
So Cassidy is advocating that we need to unleash our full military might and kill as many people as possible to make them understand that we mean business.
But, and here’s where the bizarro wingnut logic comes in.
We apparently can’t leave Iraq, because if we did that then the Iraqis would start unleashing their full military might and kill as many people as possible to make them understand that they mean business, and that’s umm bad, like ok?
So instead of allowing some third party group that we really don’t like anyway, look like the bad guy, Cassidy is advocating that we should make the US look like the bad guy.
Can you please explain what your end goal is?
The Other Steve
Iraq isn’t a pre-emptive war. It’s a preventative one. That is, Iraq wasn’t lining up on our borders ready to attack. Nobody ever claimed they were.
Instead they claimed that Iraq might be a threat 10-15 years in the future, so we had to destroy the country because this would make them like us more.
It’s actually simpler than that.
In a war which you have to fight, because there is a grave threat, the public will support it totally.
In a war that flat out simply doesn’t matter to our national security, but is only being fought so a bunch of politicians can cream their pants. Well, the public will tolerate as long as it’s short, sweet and doesn’t cost any blood or treasure.
The Other Steve
You’re new here. Most of us have been around here since like 2003, and are used to cracking jokes about how much John Cole hates America.
You came in with your self-righteous, “Liberals hate America” bullshit and you got your ass handed to you because of it.
Do you want to try again? Maybe some reading comprehension on your part, trying to understand the various positions and where people are actually coming from before accusing everybody of hating the military.
Rome Again
Methinks Cassidy is enrolled in a certain college course in WV. ;)
Cassidy
No, I’ve been reading here for quite some time. I don’t normally comment because I don’t like being lumped in with self-righteous liberals. Oddly enough it takes a group of people like you to make me look conservative. I guess that all these years of voting Democrat is immaterial
Really. lol…I have yet to see one of you make a decent argument beyond letting out your inner disdain for us military folk. You’re lack of honesty is disgusting. Unfortunately, the narrow minded, neo-libs like you make the rest of us democrats look bad.
My reading comprehension is just fine. Your backpedalling is funny.
This is the reading comprehension part. I said we could. It’s an objective assessment of the situation. To fight an insurgency, you must destroy it. The base of support for any insurgent movement is the people. If you break the will of the people to support said movement, then it has no power base from which to operate. That’s standard military tactics.
I really do love that circular illogic you guys like to use though. It’s been amusing me for years.
Well, I did name who I was “arguing” with many posts earlier. I’m assuming you skipped over that 9as well as many other parts) in your hurry to prove you have mastered reading comprehension.
ThymeZone
Another failed troll-spoofapalooza bites the dust.
Yawn.
I guess it’s another night of House and Garden TV for me.
It’s what all we he-man former ROTC types watch when we are out to promote freedom, democracy, and the pacification of annoying war zones.
Like Cassidy, I speak for an unseen horde of like-minded superior people, so you are well advised to take me seriously. I speak truthiness.
Rome Again
Right, you’re about as Democratic as Joe Lieberman. Take your BS somewhere else, you’re not fooling anyone.
Rome Again
I thot you were READING?
Cassidy
Now this is just fun. The ultra-liberals can’t get everyone to group think with them, so now they’ll cry and insult and sulk until they drive yet another poster away from this site.
Hilarious.
I like HGTV. Gardening is relaxing. It takes the mind off of the hard work I do that most of America, especially the pansy ass liberals are too scared to do.
Rome Again
You call yourself a Dem? Get serious! Nobody could believe in democracy and hold the view that a large percentage of democrats are lazy and won’t do the hard work you would. Fuck off troll.
ThymeZone
I can out-mulch you any day of the weekend, ASSidy.
Now excuse me, I have homework to do so that I can keep America strong, and free.
(tip of hat to Rome for the apellation)
Cassidy
Prove me wrong…go see your local recruiter.
Excuses in 5, 4, 3,…
Way to elevate the debate there….yeah.
Rome Again
Yes, you do. Get to it mate.
Rome Again
That’s right, everyone on this board is eligible to go to Iraq. Perhaps you should realize there is this little thing called age that doesn’t allow me to qualify? And which base are you blogging from again?
And if you have a desire to kill people, why don’t you go? I don’t kill people, I don’t believe in it, sorry.
Actually, your strawman is disdainful. You think I look bad because I won’t go fight in a war which I don’t believe in? You’re looney toons. Fuck off troll.
Cassidy
According to your all’s logic on this thread, unerstanding is incomprehensible. So either you can or you can’t. Anything else is a cowardly excuse.
I have been, thank you. I don’t desire to kill anyone. I just don’t feel bad about doing it, if that’s what I ahve to do.
Struck a nerve did I? Just be honest. You’re a hypocrite. You’ll sit here and vehemently defend your own cowardice, according to your logic anyway, yet you’ll deride others for having the same type of convictions as you.
A little clue…most service members don’t care about iraq one way or the other. We care about our mission and we care about our fellow service members.
Face
I never painted “us all” as anything. In fact, I thought I was quite clear that I respect the military greatly. My beef was soley on Tim’s seemingly passive attitude toward these criminals (alleged) in his post. I’ve since become absolutely stunned to see the number of others who agree with him. Wouldn’t be a blog without some disagreement.
rachel
And some dimwits to add flavor.
Rome Again
I defend my cowardice? It takes more strength to NOT kill than it does to kill, asshole. Fuck off, why don’t you finally?
Rome Again
and here we have it folks, someone who gets caught up in propoagandist lies and feels that justifies killing other human beings. How QUAINT!
Rome Again
No, actually, I can’t, AND I won’t.
I am too old, and I cannot kill human beings for power-hungry propagandist war games set up by divisive warmongers
who seem to think that humans are not one family but meant to fight one another because of invisible lines in the
dirt that turn the world into a board game of Risk. Fuck that!
I’m over 42, so, what, are you going to drag this poor middle-aged woman to the killing field to make sure I
done my duty before I die? I bet if we recruited a bunch of middle-aged women, this war would be
so much more the better. Ha!
By the way, “your alls?” Did they teach you how to speak like that in your military training? The Urals are
mountains, they’re in Russia, which means you probably would hate them.
ThymeZone
I think Cassidy thinks he was talking to Sundance Kid.
Rome Again
Apologies for the double spacing, my text file that I saved this post to did that, because I tried to post it about 12 times, gave up and saved the post for later.
Rome Again
That’s the problem with war, soldiers are taught to kill, so they can’t really care about Iraq. You said so yourself.
Idiot!
kory
John Cole Says:
“Why is it that every time we discuss this issue there is some dipshit who can not grasp the difference between understanding why soldiers do what they do and CONDONING what they do?”
Why is that there is always some dipshit who cannot grasp the difference between “explaining” morally repugnant actions in a way that implicitly attempts to condone, and coming right out and condemning the moral atrocity by calling it what it is?
Tim writes:
“Nobody is arguing that American soldiers are monsters because they killed innocent people at Haditha, merely that American kids are human.”
What’s with the “Nobody is arguing”? The soldiers who wantonly killed innocent people at Haditha and elsewhere are indeed monsters or the word has no meaning. I’d hate to bump into some “kids” who are “human” according to your definition. And as for “isolated cases”, read the Nation and Vanity Fair articles.
Cain
You guys are taking this way more emotionally than you should. Let’s just take Cassidy’s idea through it’s logical conclusions.
I don’t think there is enough troops to do what you recommend which is a full blown smackdown. Politically, it’s a bad move because the President has been saying so much about how much the Iraqis want freedom and suddenly going apeshit is going to reflect pretty badly on Bush (and the base). So don’t expect any smackdown soon. They should have done that when they took over the country and immediately provided jobs. (devil finds work for idle hands)
If you did do a full smackdown, do you think that Shiites (or Sunnis) from other countries would stand idly by watching Americans (eg foreigners) kill muslims? It’s one thing when Al-Qaeda does it but by God when it’s Christians killing Muslims. You can bet some Imam is going to be out there saying it’s the fucking crusades again. By your own admission you’ve said that you can’t argue with religious zealots. Well, they’re all linked across the middle east. Those Iraqi borders are going to be pretty porous. You’ll have a general war. I don’t think you want that. So let’s not go apeshit and start “pacifying” people. You’ll reap the storm.
While their killing Americans, they might have some fun and kill their Shiites if they are Sunnis and vice versa. IT’s a distinct possibility that you can’t discount.
cain
elchubs
As a currently deployed soldier (C co. 2/505 82nd ABN)in Samarra Iraq I’ve seen all manner of hideous shit. I’ve been hit by IED’s, shot at, and seen friends get wounded and killed. Never once has anyone in my company gone into someone’s house after a fatal attack and thought it was a good idea to kill everyone cowering in a back room.
Of course you’re going to feel rage and frustration, that’s totally normal I think but once you commit murder you cross a threshhold that you can never again back away from. I don’t presume to speak for the other guys in my unit but to me it seems that your soul is too heavy a price to pay for some temporary statisfaction and fleeting feelings of revenge.
Those Marines should fry for what they did. I also think that the blame for these kinds of things goes all the way to the top but just like the Abu Gharib issue the buck will get passed to the grunt’s at the bottom. Meanwhile the Generals and Politicians will escape unscathed.
Cassidy
Lol..wow, did I tap into some liberal guilt. That’s awesome!
My favorite part is the resorting to pointing out typos since you don’t have an actual argument; another tactic you employ quite frequently on this blog.
And we’re not one family, save that shit for the ficiton section. That’s the biggest load of crap I’ve heard all day.
(mimics Rome’s wailing and ganshing of teeth) “I won’t kill for blood and oil…waaaa…waaaaa….ChimpyMcHaliburton….waaaaa…”
Stop being such a retard. It takes very little strength to sit at home and be a parrot for MoveOn. My willingness yo fioght and kill if necessary has nothing to do with whatever asshole currently sits in the office. But youd know that if you actually read what I wrote.
I like Russian culture; very rich and full of life. Some of my favorite authors are Russian. I find it’s history, especially pre-revolution, fascinating.
The Other Steve
Ok, definately a troll.
You’re no DougJ though. Possibly a reborn Darrell.
The Other Steve
Thank you, elchubs, for offering an experienced point of view on the subject.
Face
what he said.
canuckistani
Rock on, elchubs. Get out of there and get home safe.
Cassidy
Funny…I said something similiar a few posts back. There goes that lofty reading comprehension again.
God, I can’t wait until the Democrats stop pandering to mealy-mouthed ultra-liberals. You guys are no better than the neo-cons.
Cassidy
Been there and done it Elchubs. I know what you’re feeling. The anniversary of the night we lost two tanks is aproaching, so even when it’s over, you still live with it.
Come home safe, brother.
Rome Again
What part of I’m too old did you not get, moron?
Liberal guilt? No, I haven’t the slightest bit of “liberal guilt”. I don’t feel bad about truly caring about humanity, such that Jesus said we should do, even if I don’t like that man personally. His ideas of humanitarian love were spot on, even if a lot of his other stuff wasn’t.
Your willingness to fight and kill is misguided.
Rome Again
You know, there is a party already out there that shares your values, why not join it?
Rome Again
Jesus disagrees.
Rome Again
Really, would you like to provide me with some examples? I do this frequently? How about you show me just five? I mean if I do this frequently as you say, with the amount of time I spend posting here, it shouldn’t be too hard to come up with just five, huh? By all means, go hunt them down and let’s see them, please. Now is your chance to embarrass me, cASSidy, hop to it.
elchubs
Thanks for the support guys! One more thing though…. someone above mentioned that service members don’t care about Iraqis and the mission in Iraq in general.
It wasn’t always that way…I was involved in the initial invasion when we were treated as liberators and not as occupiers. But after four years without a clearly defined mission, escalating violence, and the general perception that our senior leadership (Brigade Commanders and above)are more interested in sucking up instead of presenting an honest picture of the situation on the ground, the average joe has just one concern…..surviving. I might be wrong but I think you’ll find that alot of the people that think this war is pointless are the ones fighting it (not the fobbits who hang out at the major bases and airfields but the guys out patroling and taking contact on a daily basis).
It’s hard to stay motivated when you have to deal with a hostile population and ineffective and next to worthless Iraqi security forces. Just when you think you’re making progress idiots like these marines have to go and mess things up. It would be hillarious if it wasn’t costing Americans and innocent Iraqis their lives. With all these worries it’s no wonder that the average combat soldier stops caring.
ThymeZone
Updated.
(Troller’s reference: My first post to the thread, yesterday at 10:00 am, said “We have the best military in the world.” Please make sure that all comments are grounded in that statement of mine henceforth.)
Oh, and Cassidy? Would you mind identifying yourself to your fellow list members? Thanks.
Rome Again
This wouldn’t have happened if we had an actual plan and an exit strategy after Shock and Awe! The blame for this shouldn’t be placed at the feet of those Iraqis defending their country, it should be placed with the planners of this war, which turned into an occupation because we had NO PLAN.
Cain
Elchubs,
Respect and Honor to you. I hope you come home safe. If you do let me know, I’ll hoist a drink in your honor. :-)
Cassidy,
I think you’re having just a little too much fun baiting Rome Again, who is a compassionate person. I don’t think what you’re doing is fair. You should accept views different than yours. I totally understand yours and I’m in agreement. But at this stage of the war, your ideas won’t work. We are in a civil war situation, not just in a insurgency. I’m not clear what the rules are in that situation.
Anyways, great thread everyone. I especially loved hearing from people doing military service.
cain
ThymeZone
Precisely. And if we had had a real government, they’d have studied the history of the region, and carefully studied the history of the British occupation, and carefully analyzed the realities of Hussein’s situation, and listened to Colin Powell, and NEVER GONE IN THERE IN THE FIRST FUCKING PLACE.
And today we’d be looking at Perma-GOP for the next twenty years, and general smiliness across the land.
Instead, we’re in shit up to our armpits and we have to embarass ourselves with this tragic Haditha story.
The end.
Rome Again
Cain, don’t worry about fair. Nothing in life is fair, and I have no problem defending my point of view. Is he baiting me? Or am I baiting him?
I just love to have pro-war “Democrats” come here and tell me how they fight in Iraq and don’t give a damn about anyone but American forces.
Cassidy
Yeah, you’re right. I tend to get that way around dogmatic people of any political bent. Extreme political stances aren’t grounded in any kind of reality…ironically, a partial explanation for the Islamic extremism, and Neo-Conservative idelogy we’re all dealing with tday.
Not sure what you’re talking about.
I’ll clarify…it is a frequent tactic of the more liberal commenters here. When provided with an argument and world view that doesn’t fit within your narrow minded liberal utopia, you, collectively, turn the thread into an insult fest and frequent “gotchas” of grammatical erors. Generally, that’s the point that shows you’ve been beatena nd are unable to carry-on any kind of ratioanl debate.
Elchubs…the man to the left and right. That’s all the motivation you need.
Cassidy
Assumptions wil ruin you…I’m not pro-war. I was opposed to this war from the beginning. But my political views mean nothing in the face of my professional obligations. And in the end, my opposition matters for naught. I voted for people who reflect my views, but it doesn’t change the fact I have a job to do.
ThymeZone
Heh. From the looks of this thread, you aren’t sure what anyone is talking about.
Including yourself.
But, carry on. The thread is now as dead as your act.
Tsulagi
The most concise, reasoned post I’ve seen in this thread.
Rome Again
Excuse me, you said:
Let’s have them bozo. Produce five examples or your argument is wrong.
Rome Again
Gee, the way you fantasize about war in this thread, no one would ever have guessed.
You took an oath that says your duty is to the Constition of the US, against all enemies foreign and domestic. It seems to me your duty as a soldier would be to NOT obey the orders of a known enemy of the Constitution, including one who currently sits in the Oval Office.
You have been derelict in your duty.
Rome Again
Constitution, I can’t spell, shoot me!
Cassidy
And now Rome has dropped into raving lunatic territory with a minimal understanding of the Constitution.
Thymezone, you’ve marginalized yourself with nothing important to say beyond insults. You have the debating skills of a child…a petulant child who’s sulking because your simplistic reasoning has been challenged.
Rome Again
Oh, please, master troll, point me to the error of my ways.
The Constitution is being trampled on in spades and you don’t believe it? You’re no Democrat, you’re Joe Lieberman’s best friend.
ThymeZone
You’re done, man. Shut the fuck up, for crissakes.
Isn’t there a neighborhood cat you can set on fire for entertainment today?
Go find something to do.
Cassidy
You’ve shown an obvious disdain for the military profession. This kind of simplistic ideal is what marks you as a raving lunatic, with no place in a debate of real ideas. If you had an iota of knowledge about the Constitution and what the military oaths mean, you’d be ashamed to have said that. You and Bush have so much in common, it’s disgusting.
Is this part of that lofty liberal exchange of ideas, or does this come from the reality based community. Just admit it. You don’t have an original idea in your head and the only things that come out of your mouth are simplistic rehashes of well worn-out opinions. This liberal utopia yo’ve fashioned in your mind does not exist. People like you are too fascist to actually let people have real freedom and a real exchange of alternate ideas.
Go back to your group-think. It’s fun to actually watch how much you have in common with the legion of Limbaugh fans.
Rome Again
I obviously have a disdain for killing innocent civilians who happen to live in a country that we went into and created war on trumped up pretenses. Go back into your hole, little man!
elchubs
You’ll find no argument from me here Rome Again. The only thing I take issue with is…..
It’s true that there are motivated Iraqi units (mostly Iraqi Army) but from what I’ve seen they’re few and far between. Most of them are more worried about settling sectarian scores than defending their country. Samarra is a majority Sunni city and of course the geniuses in Baghdad send us two national police brigades that are almost 80% Shia. The commanding general of the regiment is even associated with JAM (Jaish al Mahdi).
Also the MITT (kinda like American coaches for Iraqi units) teams are pretty undertrained for this type of mission (more of those awesome command decisions typical of this war). Infantry units, not a bunch of dudes with different MOS’s and almost no direct combat experience, would be better suited to training their Iraqi counter parts.
The Iraqis look forward to patroling with us and tell us all kinds of horror stories about the MITT guys abandoning them in the middle of fire fights and other ridiculous shit.
I don’t blame the Iraqis for what they do or fail to do…..their training or lack there of is just as much our fault as theirs. Compound that with the idiotic decision to liquidate the old Iraqi Army (guys with years of experience fighting the Iranians) and you have a recipie for disaster.
Cassidy
So do I. That’s why I haven’t done it. But I’m not blinded by an irrational hatred that stops me from understanding how young, American men can finally be pushed far enough to snap. The world isn’t as black and white as you neo-liberals, much like your neo-con bretheren, would have us believe.
I don’t believe I’ve said anything contrary to this. But the reasoning for war is immaterial and a little to old to debate. The reality is that we are there and people like me have a job to do, whether we agree with the war or not. And, as I’ve said before, we don’t do it for Bush, or Cheney, or even you…we do our job because our fellow servicemembers need us to. So, whether you like it or not, every time one of you decides to slander the military, you’re speaking ill of the 99.9% of the Armed Forces who have the maturity and strength to put their personal beliefs aside and perform multiple difficult tasks,simply because we took anoath to do so to the best of our abilities.
Unfortunately, civilians like you, will continually gorge yourself on ideas and opinions aboutt he military, when you ahve absolutely no comprehension of the kinds of decisions we have to make every day.
Cassidy
I do.
There lack of training is a direct reflection of their ability to get out of any kind of hard work. There lax attitudes on patrol and on missions, directly reflects the laziness that is a cornerstone of their culture.
I blame the Iraqi people. IED’s go off 50 feet from a house, yet all the residents will swear they know nothing. I’m sorry, but burying a couple thousand pounds of explosives in the ground isn’t a 15 minute exercise. So instead of stopping the insurgents, or warning us that there is a boom bomb in the road, they stay quiet and more Soldiers die because of their cowardice.
When you try to interface with the culture and get their help, you constantly get “God Willing”. That’sa short way of saying that they are too chickenshit to help.
That whole country isn’t worth the life of one American Soldier. The best thing we could do is leave and let them slaughter themselves into oblivion.
Cassidy
I do.
There lack of training is a direct reflection of their ability to get out of any kind of hard work. There lax attitudes on patrol and on missions, directly reflects the laziness that is a cornerstone of their culture.
I blame the Iraqi people. IED’s go off 50 feet from a house, yet all the residents will swear they know nothing. I’m sorry, but burying a couple thousand pounds of explosives in the ground isn’t a 15 minute exercise. So instead of stopping the insurgents, or warning us that there is a big bomb in the road, they stay quiet and more Soldiers die because of their cowardice.
When you try to interface with the culture and get their help, you constantly get “God Willing”. That’sa short way of saying that they are too chickenshit to help.
That whole country isn’t worth the life of one American Soldier. The best thing we could do is leave and let them slaughter themselves into oblivion.
Rome Again
Wrong, two wrongs don’t make a right. You start out creating war on trumped up pretenses, you’re in hot water before you even get past the initial beginning of the war. You can’t say “well, no matter that we lied to get ourselves in here, now let’s bulldoze them into submission to make sure we didn’t just open a can of worms” unless you’re absolutely NUTS!
Anybody who goes into Mesopotamia and expects to win, whether having studied the region and it’s wars or not, is simply lost. You had the odds against you BEFORE going in.
Oh, I’m just a civilian. I’m also a taxpayer, who helps to pay your freaking paycheck (and that of Congresspersons and Chimpy’s too), and don’t you forget it. The Constitution says the country belongs to “We The People” not the man sitting in the oval office. You seriously need a lesson in constitutional law.
elchubs
You can only get kicked around for so many years before you just stop caring. Alot of the average Iraqis that I talk to (since we’re in a small patrol base and we walk everywhere I get to talk to alot of folks) are pretty hard working and they’re not afraid to tell us that things will get better once we leave. Most of them seem kinda disappointed in us. They thought that Americans would give them a better life.
So far it’s worth the lives of 3,600+. I honestly hope that after our inevitable exit the Iraqis find some way repair the damage that has been done to their country and we can start to fix ours.
Rome Again
Of course you do, because you seem to believe that anyone who isn’t a member of your American military is obviously an ENEMY.
Let’s just get this over with right now, shall we? I don’t believe in the enemy line, I don’t believe in the fear that has been generated, and I’m not someone who believes in conventional wisdom at all. I think quite differently from you, and you will never see me falling for the message to the masses that brown people are bad, they need democracy and we must bring it to them. All are false propaganda and I will never buy into any of it.
Take your fear somewhere else, I’m sick of it.
Cassidy
I’m a realist. we can debate the right or wrongs of why we went all day long. We’d likely agree. But it doesn’t solve anything. The invasion and occupation has allready happenned. So now the question is how do we win? Well,w e could pull out and let Iraq descend further into civil war and chaos, something I’m not opposed to. Or, another option, is to brutally pacify the country and destroy the insurgency…not something I’d choose to do, but believe could be done with relative ease. I’d also be willing to do it if that’s what it took to save the lvies of my fellow Soldiers. But, what we’re doing now is not working and largely hampered by the hand wringing of civilians back home who don’t want Sodliers to die, but don’t want us to do what we need to survive. Debating the right or wrongs of the war solves nothing. The reality is that we are there.
And I didn’t start a war…but I’ll assume you didn’t mean me directly. It would be petty and obtuse of me to think otherwise.
Not true. Nothing is impossible. But yes, the odds, in the context of this Administrations plans, were against us from the beginning.
Are you a real taxpayer, or do you get it refunded at the end of the year?
I haven’t argued otherwise. But the man in carge, for all his many faults, was voted in. Deal with it. To quote Dennis Leary, “Life sucks…get a fucking helmet”. And whether you like it or not, “the man sitting in the oval office” is the Commadner In Chief of the military and does have the discretion to use that tool as he sees necessary, whether you agree or not.
Yeah…you just proved you mastery of The Constitution. I would strongly suggest you go back and review our system of elections and the powers that fall under the Executive Branch.
Cassidy
No, I beleive anyone trying to kill me is the enemy. I beleive civilian enablers that hamper us from doing our job, are at best cowards and the enemy. They are worse, because we are trying to help thema nd they won’t lift a finger to help us.
You make a lot of assumptions. I’m willing to bet on a number of other issues, you’d go “oh he’s so right”. I just don’t fall for the group think, far left mentality. Not all brown people are bad. I challenge you to show me where I’ve said that. I have said the Iraqi culture is lazy and easily led by force.
Once again, you’ve made a number of assumptions about my beleifs, simply because I won’t validate yours. so far, everything you’ve said is colored through the lens of a civilian who simply does not understand the military culture, especially that of Comabt Arms. You’re right, we do think very differently. As a public servant, I have to separate my proofesional life and my personal beliefs on a regular basis. They don’t belong together. My professional oaths and standards are more important than petty dogma.
I’m not peddling fear. Nor I do beleive the fear schtick. I’m just a Soldeir who beleives in doing my job and doing it right. Personally, I could care less what you buy into. It’s obvious you’ve ignored one set of propaganda for another, but…whatever helps you sleep at night and assuage your unecessary guilt.
Rome Again
Lots of people buy into conventional wisdom and say it’s reality, that doesn’t mean it is. You’ve been served propaganda and you’ve chosen to believe it. That’s all. That doesn’t make your position any more real than believing in Superman!
Cassidy
That is the problem in a nutshell. Thye want it given to them, as opposed to lifting a finger to do something about it.
I applaud your optimism…it lasted longer than mine. If they don’t care, why should we. It’s thier country.
Rome Again
Yeah? Well, if I could, I’d bet you if I walked down the same street carrying a “Bush Sucks” sign, I’d make it out alive every time. They aren’t trying to kill YOU, they’re trying to stop the powermonger you are there to fight for from advancing his goals. NOT THE SAME THING AT ALL!
Cassidy
We’re in Iraq…for whatever reason. Soldiers are dying and something must be done to change that. Despite all your political finger-pointing, Soldiers and thier families are the only ones actually dealing with this, while you comfortably “debate” its rightness.
What part of that statement doesn’t reflect reality.
And I think you continue to miss the part where I say my politics have nothing to do with my job performance. Purposely saying something over and over again, even when the opposite is on record, is lying. Stop being dishonest. I don’t beleive the left or right’s propaganda. It’s all a big pile a shit in the same port-o-let.
Rome Again
I never said you were peddling it, I was suggesting you buy into it.
Your Executive is elected by Representatives of THE PEOPLE, and if they had any balls and did their job, they are told how they can take him out too.
Those Representatives of THE PEOPLE are elected by THE PEOPLE. THE PEOPLE run the whole show, according to “THE CONSTITUTION”.
Cassidy
No, I’m pretty sure those bullets were meant for me or another troop in uniform. Hard to mistake the intent of that.
And go ahead gringo…walk down the streets of Baghdad. I dare ya! lol
That makes absolutely no sense. Shouting it doesn’t make it coherent.
I don’t think you’re little sign would keep the extremists at bay. You’d be just another American to target.
And the rest about
Rome Again
Fixed!
elchubs
I just think they’re hopeless after so many years of pointless violence.
Cassidy
Personally, I voted for Kerry. Not the best candidate, but oh well. The system did it’s job. Just because you don’t like the result, as I don’t, doesn’t mean it didn’t work. It means you lost. Better luck next time.
And I think you’re mistaken. Congress and the Senate, “those representatives”, don’t choose our President for us. The ones who elect the President is the Electoral College, which is determined in several ways, but in the end largely on how the majority of a state votes.
Are you sure you understand our electoral system and system of government?
Rome Again
You are merely a tool of Bush’s army, that’s all. They couldn’t care less about you, it’s the powermonger BUSH they are trying to stop. Got it now? Or is that too hard for you to figure out?
Cassidy
I’m sure that felt good to say, but it’s inaccurate. I’m a toll of American Foriegn Policy.
Hmmmmm…Well, i allready know that the American Gov’t and most of the people it represents could care less about us. But I’m pretty sure your average insurgent doesn’t wake up saying he’s going to symbolically kill Bush, by killing a US Soldier. Instead he wakes saying he’s going to kill an American or one of its allies. I think you’re projecting wayy too many of your political ideals on people whose culture is relatively alien to you.
I don’t make a habit of trying to decipher illogical propaganda.
Cassidy
Excuse me…tool.
Rome Again
Did I say “Congress chooses the president?” NO, I said by representatives of the people. There are various forms of representatives of the people. Perhaps I should have made myself clearer, but there are representatives in the electoral college, in Congress, in state legislatures, in governor’s mansions, in sherriff’s departments, in… shall I go on?
The fact is “representatives of the people” are the ones who have real power, not your executive. That was the point I was making, and I did not sway from that at all.
Rome Again
You are a tool of propaganda and lies, yup, that very same foreign policy, which Bush is using to play RISK on the big board.
Now, I have work to do, tata, it’s been fun.
Rome Again
Hmmmm, why does the quote from Anne Frank come to mind?
“Deep down, I still believe people are inherently good”
Yup, they’re human beings, trying to raise families and they fight against our imperialism and that makes them bad in your eyes. Fuck off, I’m done.
Cassidy
You said that elected Representatives are the ones who choose the POTUS. I’m unaware of the Electoral College being voted on. I could see that as one practice, but it definately isn’t common.
You might want to make yourself clearer next time.
The fact is that each branch of the governement has specific powers. So you don’t have to sway from anything, but you’re still wrong. Your President has the power to send troops to combat, with or without Legislative approval.
I love the optimism of the “people have the real power”, but we both know thats not true. The real power is in the hands of those who finance the campaigns.
Cassidy
That makes for good utopian fiction. Good luck with that.
It never ceases to amaze me how people like you can be so wrapped in a warped, dogmatic frame of mind. have you ever stopped to consider how much you and the pro-life crowd have in common. It’s scary to think that between the both groups you make up almost 50% of America.
Cassidy
Temper, temper…
Here’s a band-aid: CHIMPYMCHALIBURTON SUCKS! NO BLOOD FOR OIL! AMERICAN IMPERIALISM!
Feel better, yet?
Rome Again
There is no commonality, it is the other end of the spectrum entirely. The fact that they believe something and I believe a completely different thing are the only thing you can claim. Now, I’m done with you, goodbye.
Cassidy
Hmmm…dogmatic, righteously convinced of your “rightness”, illogical, emotional hysterics coupled with over the top hyperbole, narrow minded inability to see any view point outside your own…
Yup, you’re just like them.
Tsulagi
Wow, looking back in here I see Rome and Cassidy have been fighting a mighty battle for the last word. Looks like TZ didn’t have it in him to go the distance…lol. j/k
Piss on all of you, I’m having the last word. (See how long that lasts)
The last word is a shout out to elchubs. Excellent posts all. Intelligent analysis, and a great attitude. Stay safe.
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