A little more than three days time served for each victim:
A Marine sergeant who told his troops to “shoot first, ask questions later” in a raid that killed unarmed Iraqi women, children and elderly pleaded guilty Monday in a deal that will carry no more than three months confinement and end the largest and longest-running criminal case against U.S. troops from the Iraq War.
The agreement marked a stunning and muted end to the case once described as the Iraq War’s version of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. The government failed to get one manslaughter conviction in the case that implicated eight Marines in the deaths of 24 Iraqis in the town of Haditha in 2005.
Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, 31, of Meriden, Conn., who was originally accused of unpremeditated murder, pleaded guilty to negligent dereliction of duty for leading his troops to disregard rules of combat when they raided homes after a roadside bomb exploded near their convoy, killing one Marine and wounding two others.
Amazing.
trollhattan
Ugh. I remember when this story broke and wingnuts shrieked until they practically bled that it didn’t happen, couldn’t have happened and even if it did happen, which it didn’t, there was a damn good reason.
Gosh, I guess they were right after all.
Villago Delenda Est
Well, John, given that the warmongering shitstains responsible for sending these kids into that fucking mess all get free passes, what the fuck do you expect?
arguingwithsignposts
The servers are very slow, Cole.
Omnes Omnibus
@arguingwithsignposts: So it’s not just me….
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
So, with evidence, the best sentence they could get was three months. Imagine trying to prosecute the previous administration.
Mr Stagger Lee
And we have the nerve to lecture Germans about the conduct of war!
Sammi
We will pay for this for years to come.
jeff
We have not taken any responsibility as a nation for what we ask of these men and boys, and how we train them. Somewhere, there is a General who should be in jail, as well as one of his adjutants, and along with these guys.
gwangung
Yeah. This.
Omnes Omnibus
@jeff: Why one of his adjutants?
As far as the main topic goes, it looks like the prosecution simply did a poor job.
Ron Beasley
What they did was wrong but the real wrong was sending them there to begin with. I’m an antiwar DFH – I am also a Vietnam vet. The Vietnamese hated our guts – they would smile and take candy during the day and try to stick a knife in our backs at night. We were imperialist occupiers not freedom fighters. The troops knew that the enemy was not just the Vietcong but nearly everyone – when the gun fire happened you thought everyone was the enemy and you were usually right. The same applies to Iraq and Afghanistan. While I can’t justify such actions I can understand them. The guilty are the chicken hawks who sent them there.
Calouste
Amazing? You mean amazing that they actually were convicted? Normally American soldiers get away with killing innocent foreigners.
virag
there’s no way in hell that the obama administration wanted this blown up with a vigorous prosecution in 2012; it is an election year after all. given all the shit that has gone down it easy to focus on especially abhorrent and tragic cock-ups like this one and forget all the other cock-ups that started when dick cheney got his excuse to live his wet dream.
otoh, certain random acts get chosen for medals, which is bullshit, so it seems especially craven to fail to pursue the prosecution of murder for our chosen heinous cock-ups.
clayton aka corner stone squared
It doesn’t matter that the servers are slow. Cole, as a military man and someone who supported the premise that this one singular event — for lack of a better word — enabled, please tell me you have more to say.
It did happen in while you were still in the throws of victory, as I recall. Tell me I am wrong.
I fought with people on blogs and in real life — I almost lost my government job over fighting over this.
And you can only add a few words? Really? Just those few words?
This was before Beachum or whatever his name was. This was when the wingnuts were calling John Murtha a traitor. I don’t even want to look it up, but perhaps you were too at that point.
I almost lost my job over standing up to the overwhelming pro war nonsense that was coming into my state email.
You cannot tell me you have so few words . . . amazing is all you can come up with? I don’t think you said a damn thing about this.
It’s nothing when thinking about the lives lost just to vindicate one other life. 2005 and 2006 were brutal for everyone in Iraq. And all you can say is “amazing”?
Fuck you John Cole with a red hot poker.
Schlemizel
@Omnes Omnibus:
Gee, you think they are really bad lawyers in the USMC JAG? I bet there are some damn fine lawyers there and it just so happens they dropped the ball on this one job. Quelle surprise
mclaren
Why does America even pretend it has a justice system? Why not simply build mountains of the skulls of innocent victims and drink liquor out them while laughing uproariously?
Having descended into abject barbarism, Americans might as well get to enjoy the panache and energy that goes with being a barbarian. Go for the gusto! That’s the brave new world into which America has entered on his daring voyage into lawlessness and torture.
General Stuck
Iraq. The nightmare that keeps on giving. And we haven’t even got to act 2 yet.
burnspbesq
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
The case fell apart. The witnesses that the prosecution thought it had weren’t going to testify the way the prosecution anticipated they would. They made the best deal they could given the weakness of the case.
Omnes Omnibus
@Schlemizel: I did not say they were bad lawyers. I said that it looks like the prosecution did a poor job. Two completely different statements. I also am not drawing conclusions or speculating as to reasons. Seriously, given that the story of the massacre had already come out, isn’t it better for the military to be seen taking serious action against the perpetrators? I think so.
Schlemizel
@Ron Beasley:
And this story is so familiar. Guys moving through a small town, ambush injures a couple of Marines, next thing you know locals start dieing.
Horrible things happen when you send kids to war. They happened in the Civil War, they happened in the Spanish-American war, WWI, WWII, Korea, Viet Nam. every.damn. war. And these kids come back damaged in ways you can’t imagine. This is a cost of war that never gets accounted for.
There should be an eternal hell just for the bastards that do this to our kids and to the world.
Schlemizel
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m suggesting that it is very surprising that good lawyers could do such a poor job & that it took them 6 years to fail.
It just seems so convenient.
No, it is not better to be seen taking serious action. Now they can pretend was just a case of collateral damage while in a fire fight when they found no weapons and no spent casings – or and they shot 5 unarmed guys because they ran away when confronted by armed Marines.
burnspbesq
@mclaren:
Before you get all sanctimonious on us, look at yourself in the mirror and honestly ask yourself whether you would have acted any differently than those Marines if faced with the identical circumstances. If you say “yes,” you’re lying. Shit happens when people you know and love start dying next to you. Sucks, but there it is.
Omnes Omnibus
@Schlemizel:
Good lawyers fuck up all the time. Bad ones get lucky too.
AA+ Bonds
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’m pretty sure you mean “these murderers”
burnspbesq
@Schlemizel: @<a
I’m suggesting that it is very surprising that good lawyers could do such a poor job
No prosecutor can outperform the evidence. It's possible to argue with some force that this case should have been dropped after other members of the same unit were acquitted.
clayton aka corner stone squared
They didn’t have to kill those people. Really, there was no reason. Perhaps you didn’t follow this on incident very carefully.
Otherwise you wouldn’t be making statements like this:
They are volunteers.
All of the other wars you reference are when it was a draft.
These guys were volunteers.
There should be a hell for people who don’t understand the difference between a volunteer and a draft.
You clearly never served.
AA+ Bonds
@burnspbesq:
Oh goody we have the old pro-war BJ chickenhawk clique out for one last grab at the brass ring
It’s possible to argue with some force that your case should have been dropped after Cole apologized
AA+ Bonds
Shit happens when we go into unjust wars – specifically, murdering psychopaths are put into situations where they can slaughter women and children and suffer “three months confinement” and a reduction in pay
Omnes Omnibus
@AA+ Bonds: Shit happens when we go into just wars too.
burnspbesq
@AA+ Bonds:
I’m highly confident that if Villago (who is a vet, in case you’ve forgotten) meant to say that, he would have said it.
The case against these Marines sucked from day one, for a variety of reasons. There were acquittals in prior courts-martial arising out of the same incident. If I had been SSGT Wuterich’s counsel, I would have advised him to reject the deal and go to trial. I think he would have been acquitted.
AA+ Bonds
Rest assured, for every pampered BigLaw brat that is satisfied with this result, there will be roughly one million Arab Muslims who will experience . . . shall we say . . . a little discomfort concerning the country I love?
AA+ Bonds
@burnspbesq:
Look, we all understand that BigLaw has hobbled your sense of moral outrage. We just don’t relate to it
AA+ Bonds
Some of us, after all, are pragmatically attempting to preserve America as a bastion of freedom, not one of terrible injustice
Omnes Omnibus
@AA+ Bonds: That doesn’t meant that there was a case case that could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a military court.
AA+ Bonds
“Slaughtering children? I dare say, Sergeant . . . damned shame about that reduction in pay! Had I been your counsel, I’d have gotten you a medal!” –a sad fuckin person who forgot what it was like to be a kid
Jamie
I think I hate this guy for his freedom, too.
But don’t you dare question their professionalism, you unpatriotic motherfucker.
Yes, war is hell, I get it. That doesn’t absolve people who go on murderous rampages against innocent people.
TG Chicago
Silver lining: this tragedy is the reason we’re out of Iraq now.
The Iraqis saw this, and demanded that they be given jurisdiction over these atrocities. We refused, so we had to leave.
At least some good came out of this massacre.
clayton
Posts like this should come with a disclaimer about John Murtha.
Omnes Omnibus
@AA+ Bonds: Where in this thread or anywhere on this blog has anyone defended or spoken approvingly of the actions of Wuterich or any of the other marines involved?
burnspbesq
@AA+ Bonds:
I don’t expect to do so, but I hope I live long enough to see the day when you have a clue. About anything.
MoeLarryAndJesus
Meriden has long been known as what passes for a KKK hotbed up here in New England.
http://www.myrecordjournal.com/meriden/article_48c34b5a-5369-11e0-ab11-001cc4c03286.html
Maybe the prick will run for Mayor on the
KKKGOP ticket.jl
Listening to the pundit analysis for a minute or so.
They are, like, calling play by play in a football game.
A little inside tactics and money talk, a clip of the action, the a follow up commentary on the action.
What they need is Madden to do it (except I doubt you could pay him enough):
“Lookee there, Newt’s center of gravity was too high, and Mitt knocked him back, that let the self deportation through into the secondary (white arrow thingee drawn on the screen), even though it is so slow it should be a sure backfield stuff for a five yard loss.”
clayton
@TG Chicago:
Exactly.
People like John Cole and his followers can say anything they want and pretend that they supported the other side when this happened, but in the end, this and many other events like it made it easier to get out of Iraq.
The embassy is another matter.
Catsy
@burnspbesq:
You may be a big enough sack of amoral shit to think this is true of yourself, but don’t you dare presume to speak for the rest of us.
I can’t even begin to wrap my head around what it was like for those men to be there. What I can get my head around is whether or not I would be on board with murdering two dozen unarmed civilians in retaliation for someone else killing some of my friends–unarmed civilians that included an elderly grandmother and a man in a wheelchair.
Fuck that shit.
Sometimes I think you routinely take unpopular devil’s-advocate positions not because you actually believe them, but out of some flavor of reflexive contrarianism. And then you pop off monstrous horseshit like this that makes me think that no, you really are just that big of an asshole.
Villago Delenda Est
@clayton aka corner stone squared:
Asshole, I have served. In Germany, in Korea, in Honduras.
And slamming these kids as “murderers” may give one a smug sense of self-righteousness, but the fact of the matter is they didn’t sign up to be puppets in Dick Cheney’s quest for more petrodollars, or a deserting coward’s need to one up his old man.
There are people responsible for putting these kids in a fucking impossible situation where their reaction is to lash out at those they think would kill them, and they’ve got the means to do so. Those people are sitting back in air conditioned offices in places like the White House, the Pentagon, the Heritage Foundation, Hugh Hewitt’s office, the headquarters of National Review and the Weekly Standard. They are not driving down a dusty road somewhere in Mesopotamia with the strong possibility of finding themselves, after a loud explosion, taking their hand out of the puddle of goo that is what is left of their buddy’s intestines.
This does not excuse what was done. It merely attempts to inform why these things happen, and why the circumstances for allowing them to happen should be strenuously avoided. This does not excuse the chain of command whose inattention gave these kids the opportunity to commit atrocities. Shit like this happens in wars. War itself is an atrocity. Those responsible for sending these kids into this mess have not paid a price for it. It’s pretty obvious that barring the arrival of the Vorlons, they probably never will.
fuzz
@TG Chicago:
That was more the Blackwater shooting in 07. There was an article in the NYT recently about how Iraqis working as laborers at a base closing were actually burning documents related to this (the Haditha case) to cook.
AA+ Bonds
@burnspbesq:
In my experience, white collar professions have an immense warping effect on people who have trouble separating their moral selves from their work.
Kind of like how Greenwald carries the adversarial system into electoral politics and thinks he has to defend Ron Paul’s virtue to make good points about indefinite detention, or how Ron Paul thinks that as an OB/GYN he offers a sane position on Griswold v. Connecticut
It’s not too late to rebuild, man; you’re out of the worst part of the game now; you’re allowed to get pissed off when terrible people do terrible things, people who aren’t even your clients, and get off scot free
some guy
@burnspbesq:
shorter burnsie: War Crimes? eh, Shit Happens.
jl
Aftergame analysis is funny.
‘one step in the general, one step in the primary’
Now, ontological debate on ‘defining themselves’ Or, is that semantics.
Oh oh, they brought up the flirtation between Paul and Newt, a little coy sexytime insinuendo from the announcers SEEXXXXYYYY, eh? You bet, you dithering old TV person caked with make up on your face and nothing to say.
AA+ Bonds
In other, extremely similar news,
Costa Cruises offers discounts on future trips . . . to survivors of crash that killed 15
Gust Avrakotos
Not Republican Cole still trying his damndest to be a not republican.
AA+ Bonds
^ That’s also your Real Deal AA+ Bonds post as requested by Soonergrunt in a previous thread, as it is the front page top headline of FoxNews.com right now
Corbin Dallas Multipass
“I just have so much access, I wouldn’t want it any other way.” – “Campaign Embed” for Rick Perry as highlighted by NBC News post debate.
Kola Noscopy
You say this is “amazing,” John.
I say it is to be expected.
Of course, Bradley Manning must spend the rest of his life in jail, but never mind that…
MikeBoyScout
There is a reason Dick Cheney is called Darth Vader.
Dick and the asshole who said “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time,” are known WAR CRIMINALS.
What these soldiers did is terrible, but those who put them there in the position to do what was done is what needs to be addressed.
Kola Noscopy
@Villago Delenda Est:
Actually, I agree. As long as the top tier of war criminals go unindicted and unpunished, why the fuck should some grunts waste away in jail for much smaller crimes?
Gus
“Shit… charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in the Indy 500.”
Linnaeus
I agree that those who were in leadership positions should be held responsible as well as those who pulled the trigger. But does anyone seriously think that will happen? Ever?
Kola Noscopy
@jeff:
Jeff, I submit that no matter how awesome the training, this type of atrocity is an unavoidable consequence of war, particularly open-ended wars where the troops have no clear idea of why they are there and when they’ll go home.
It’s pleasing to think a clean, tidy, decent war can be fought. But there is no such thing.
clayton
@Villago Delenda Est: Of course, because John Cole wouldn’t admit to what he had supported, you missed what I had written before.
I wasn’t responding to your comment, wherever it might have been, but at the time, and now, our military is volunteer.
Sure they didn’t volunteer for what Dick signed them up for.
My point was that this one incident was blown up back when it happened. And John Cole, to add so little as a couple of words to a very big deal — Cole deleted my first comment — is just pathetic.
Rail on me. Fine. I’m just saying that at the time, Cole was on the other side, and for him to just pass it off in a couple of words is just crap.
I almost lost my job over this event. It doesn’t even compare to the people who died.
You can decide where you land.
Keith G
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Different types of court run by different people with different agendas.
Kola Noscopy
@Jamie:
please kindly explain precisely what the word “patriotic” means to you.
Thanks.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kola Noscopy:
Anyone who committed a war crime should be prosecuted and if found guilty, serve time. That starts with the Commander-in-Chief and works its way down the chain of command to PV2 Snuffy Smith who killed some Iraqi child who looked at him funny.
This won’t happen of course. RHIP. Snuffy Smith gets time making big rocks into little rocks, the deserting coward gets prime seats at the World Series.
TANJ.
clayton
fixed for you KN.
I don’t know why you get to comment while AL and BHF get to delete my comments.
Maybe Cole knows you.
Kola Noscopy
@Catsy:
You are an idiot, but we knew that.
You have NOOOOO fucking clue what you’d be capable of in a war zone; no one does. To pretend otherwise is beyond arrogant. Oh…but you’re one of the self righteous know it alls regarding the Sandusky case too, aren’t you?
Ol’ Batsy knows exactly how she would perform in each and every imaginable circumstance. She alone in all of history is immune to the stresses and mindfucks of war or traumatic emotional damage; she is INDEFUCKINGSTRUCTIBLE.
Well, at least you’re somewhat consistent. If full of shit.
Villago Delenda Est
@Linnaeus:
Unfortunately, no. Like I said in my last post, TANJ.
Which infuriates me no end.
If the soldiers (Marines, in this case, but we’ll go with “men at arms”) under my command ever did what these soldiers did, I don’t know if I could live with myself. The fact that they did what they did would be a direct reflection on my leadership, which would be found wanting by default.
Make no mistake. They might be trained, they might be volunteers, but they’re still kids. Kids who are pumped up on adrenaline, in a situation where they are in fear for their lives, fear for their buddies’ lives, and they react purely on instinct and the training they’ve received for when they’re under fire. In the wake of that, they’re still overdosed on adrenaline and they’re not in their right minds. They do terrible things that have no justification at all, their sense of time and space is warped by all the noise and dust and cordite around them, their emotions are rampaging.
Terrible things happen. Which is why war should ALWAYS be a last resort, not something you casually do because you have your own need to one up your old man or secure government loot for your cronies. Or demonstrate how macho you are 30 fucking years after you wussed out of your generations’ war.
Kola Noscopy
@Villago Delenda Est:
This. And the rest of your comment too.
Even though I normally loathe you with the passion of a thousand olive oil orgies, and wish an eternal lake of fire upon you and your descendants until the fifth generation.
The Republic of Stupidity
But at least Jose Padilla got 17 years and 4 months in prison for of “conspiring to kill people in an overseas jihad and to fund and support overseas terrorism…’
And look at how many people he killed!
Uh… wait a minute…
Marked Hoosier
I was worried, till I saw it was 24 Iraqis that died. Thank gawd it wasn’t 24 people whose only sin was living there…
clayton
@Kola Noscopy: Neither of you seem to understand that the military as a job and the military as the draft inherently has a difference.
What both of you ignore is that Cole defended this man back in the day.
But you both have reasons to ignore it.
And here is Bill Moyers claiming that Obama is worse than Bush on my teevee.
virag
he woulda been totally cool if he’d used a drone to kill those folks. the cia probably woulda bought his lunch that day.
Jay
Frank Wuterich is from my home state, and I’m sure Joe Lieberman, my home – state senator, has already sent him a congratulatory note.
Monsters.
agrippa
@mclaren:
that is a pretty asinine post.
even for you mclaren
fool
agrippa
@Ron Beasley:
I agree
Soonergrunt
@AA+ Bonds: I’m sorry, what?
Lojasmo
@Catsy:
Though I agree that burns is a consummate contrarian, those who answer “absolutely no way” have never been through military indoctrination, and have ABSOLUTELY not been in battle.
Hey, burnsbq: are you a defense lawyer?
Hill Dweller
@clayton: Is Moyers saying Obama is worse than Bush on a specific issue, or is he saying Obama is a worse President?
David Koch
See. I told you so.
I’ve been telling you this for years.
You’re just not going to get convictions on waterboarding Khalid Sheik Mohammod and Abu Zubaydah, when you can’t even get convictions on Haditha.
General Stuck
If I remember correctly, sergeant Wuterich was accused of flagging down a taxi cab driving by, ordering outside its four male occupants, then mowed them down. I don’t see how that falls under anything but murder. The rest of the killing was done entering homes, and could maybe be argued on split second decisions grounds. But not the execution of the first four.
Villago Delenda Est
@clayton:
Cole may have defended the deserting coward back in the day, but finally, at long last, he saw the light about the entire fucking thing. It was a long time coming, but yes, he finally figured it out. He’s confessed he was an idiot. What more do you want from him? He said he was wrong, terribly wrong. This is more than a lot of people who supported this monumental clusterfuck can say.
I opposed this thing from day one. I knew it was doomed to bloody failure. When the fucking planes flew into the WTC on that beautiful late summer morning in NYC, I knew that the shit was going to hit the fan in a big way. A fucking man-child finally had an excuse to play with live toy soldiers. I knew that, I said it to anyone who would listen. John Cole was not one of those people.
He is now.
Villago Delenda Est
@General Stuck:
Agreed. It was flat out murder. There was no military necessity involved in the wildest stretching of the words “military necessity”.
Linnaeus
@Villago Delenda Est:
I don’t disagree, and, like you, I also think that those who commit war crimes need to be held responsible from top to bottom.
I also thought the Iraq war was madness from the get-go and said so to anyone who cared to hear it. Our government made the decision to engage in it, and since made the decision to do nothing about those who prosecuted it. Now we as a nation are going to have to deal with that somehow.
Kola Noscopy
@clayton:
I’ve given Cole more grief than most over his former Bushian Years of Shame.
and I get the diff between draft and volunteer, generally speaking. War is hell, and I think those responsible for commanding others INTO hellatious situations that could have been avoided need to be prosecuted first.
WyldPirate
@agrippa:
Says you after your lizard brain grapples with the definition of satire and stumbles on the first syllable of the word….
Soonergrunt
@General Stuck: If that’s what he did, then yeah, that’s murder. Getting evidence that will support a conviction, OTOH…
And there have been convictions. There are men serving time right now.
@Villago Delenda Est: I was against Iraq from the very beginning, as well. I almost got relieved over my opposition to the invasion of Iraq when I was in Kuwait on a different mission. I wasn’t directly threatened with a prosecution, but I was reminded that Article 94, UCMJ carried the death penalty. When it looked like we were going to get re-tasked, I did my best to train up my squad on MOUT. When we did get re-tasked, I did the best job I could to accomplish my missions and bring my men home safely and with honor.
pseudonymous in nc
@Villago Delenda Est: a-fucking-men.
There are probably GOPpers who want those Marines to be in the Super Bowl honor guard. Haditha was a flat-out case of running amok, red mist, berserkergang, pick your own regional idiom. It’s a gift of war that keeps giving, and will keep giving for decades to come.
wilfred
Whether it’s Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine or soon to be Iran, Arab/Muslim blood is cheap.
Empire.
Kola Noscopy
@Soonergrunt:
I’m skeptical, but maybe you can help me understand the concept of actively taking part in and thus enabling and supporting a clearly ignoble, dishonorable enterprise, and yet somehow leaving it with “honor.”
General Stuck
@Soonergrunt:
True dat
MacKenna
Off topic and yet somehow related. This is just fucking unbelievable.
How Low Will A Deranged Republican Sink? How About Slaughtering A Pet Cat For “Politics”?
[…]
Those are some values. These people are CERTIFIABLE.
Villago Delenda Est
@wilfred:
Unfortunately, for guys like the deserting coward, the blood of the American proles they send to do battle with Arabs and Muslims is just as cheap, and expendable.
@pseudonymous in nc:
Those kids who came back from that gave their lives for their country. The lives they knew before are gone. In its place is another life that is marked by nightmares of what they did. And if for some reason they don’t have nightmares, it’s seen by people on the streets of this country in their sullen visages. Because you don’t do shit like that without it affecting you, no matter how much you claim otherwise.
So much death. So much pain.
WyldPirate
@clayton:
In some ways he is. Take for instance the fact that the US didn’t start the didi mau out of Afghanistan immediately once OBL was offed. All we are doing now is propping up a scumbag government destined to fail and pissing away American lives and resources.
WyldPirate
@MacKenna:
I saw tis earlier today. That’s some seriously demented Dahmer-esque shit.
Kola Noscopy
@WyldPirate:
I wonder if we’re too deep into this thread for there to be a full-on O-Troll swarm in response to this comment.
Because, of course, you’re exactly right. And the O-Trolls hate that.
Villago Delenda Est
@WyldPirate:
I agree.
I imagine the thinking here is we need to keep a presence in order to keep an eye on Pakistan’s nukes.
They can’t say that, for obvious reasons. The situation is delicate.
But we should STILL unass the AO with Osama gone. The only reason to go into Afghanistan in the first place was to get him. He’s been got. Bye bye!
Gilles de Rais
First and last correct thing you’ve said.
@Catsy: Doesn’t matter what “you’re on board with”. I know your type, woman or man, and if you had a gun in your hands when something went “boom” near you, everyone near you would die. Emotionally brittle and inflexible folks like yourself are the worst in combat situations, and hilariously enough for the purposes of this discussion thread (although its a lot less funny in real life) those folks like yourself are the ones who lose their shit under fire and end up shooting a bunch of civilians. Or fellow soldiers.
Kola Noscopy
@Gilles de Rais:
giggle…
WyldPirate
@Villago Delenda Est:,
@Soonergrunt:
Good to see vets who understand the utter immorality of war, yet know what their duty is.
I got out once I really began to understand the carnage a combined arms TF could inflict on mere inanimate objects. I knew I couldn’t lead people into a conflict I disagreed with. Fortunately, I didn’t have to and my only regret is that I didn’t do it as soon as I admitted to myself that I couldn’t.
MoeLarryAndJesus
@burnspbesq:
Spoken like a “man” who has a necklace made out of human ears hidden in his cellar.
WyldPirate
@Villago Delenda Est:
No doubt that this is likely the biggest reason behind the continued presence, but that genie escaped the bottle long ago with the loads of ill-secured and missing fissile material scattered all over Eurasia.
It seems to me that in doing this WRT to Pakistan is worrying about the molehole while ignoring the potential avalanche on the big damned mountain of boom-boom shit to the north.
fleeting expletive
Way, way OT. I am enjoying watching two of my favorite silly movies tonight. There’s Eurotrip (on HBO) and also “Priscilla Queen of he desert” on Logo. I’m in the mood for the silly, after today.
Anne Laurie
@wilfred:
Don’t worry, there will be plenty of American blood spilled over the next several decades around military bases, suburban tract homes, and homeless hangouts as PTSD — not to mention brain trauma — provides the “blowback” for you to get your R*I*G*H*T*E*O*U*S on. Women and children and passers-by and shelter workers, as well as ex-military. You will never lack for opportunities to gloat, unfortunately.
Hunter Gathers
Mitt Romney’s tax rate for 2010? – 13.9%
Yeah, this will go away in a few days. Not.
pseudonymous in nc
@Villago Delenda Est: I have a friend who’s a PTSD counsellor at the VA, and has been since 2004.
Like I said, it’s a gift that keeps giving: there will be terrible domestic happenings for the next half-century that will make the local news, be headlines for a week, and then forgotten outside the families facing the aftermath. A human minefield.
PIGL
@burnspbesq: Bullshit. It’s a failure of command, of doctrine, of training and of individual responsibility. Don’t try to justify it by your revolting appeals to group cohesion.
pseudonymous in nc
@Hunter Gathers:
So, basically the self-employed Medicare/SocSec rate, plus change.
$3m to the IRS, $1.5m to the LDS (so, a full tithe).
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Anne Laurie: It’s almost like he’s saying that with relish, enjoying it.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@burnspbesq: ‘
I’d say that the odds are pretty good that I wouldn’t have reacted that way. I’ll say the same thing about you and pretty much everyone else on this thread. I’m playing the odds, of course, since most of the soldiers we had in Iraq never did anything like this.
People seem to be conflating the fact that, if a country goes to war, then things like Haditha will happen with the idea that if an individual goes to war, then that specific person will do such things. The latter emphatically is not true, and it’s an important distinction.
You should never go to war unless you are prepared for these kinds of incidents to occur and can justify the war in spite of them. At the same time, we also need to hold individuals accountable for their actions. Yes, it would be nice to see Cheney, et. al. in the dock, but the fact that we won’t doesn’t change the fact that these individuals are murderers. Being at war is not an excuse for their actions.
Where I do agree with burns is that it looks like the chances of getting a conviction were slim. That says some pretty repellant things about those who sit in judgment. It also suggests that the chances of getting a conviction on Cheney is so remote that no ethical prosecutor would bring charges even if he thinks Cheney is guilty.
MoeLarryAndJesus
It is apparently an unfair demand on American troops to ask them to behave better than the bad guys in Steven Seagal movies.
Let’s just make that the new standard and make assholes happy.
Or something.
Wait, no, let’s call assholes assholes and become a decent country somewhere down the line, if that’s possible.
dmbeaster
@burnspbesq:
So I guess murdering local innocents while enraged is just to be expected, and nothing to be done about it? As tough as the war was for those marines, we have some standards. Murdering women and children in a fit of pique violates them.
And yes, this is one of the reasons why I opposed the war – that the warmongers advocating it had no appropriate standards for deciding when to pull the trigger on a war. Cause this kind of crap happens, and you better have a pretty damn good reason for plunging into that madness.
And it is hard to bust the chops of these foot soldiers when the leadership responsible for so much wrong pay no price.
Conservatives complain that there is no accountability – yet they somehow overlook this most fundamental obligation to be accountable for this crap.
May they burn in the seventh level of hell.
Villago Delenda Est
@pseudonymous in nc:
Yeah, and there are fewer and fewer who can relate and even begin to understand what the fuck is going on.
The only thing I can tell people is if you don’t want to pay for VA clinics and read about tragedies involving vets, stop fucking creating them. In the alternative, expect that the cost of your grand little adventure as seen on CNN is a hell of a lot higher, and lasts a hell of a lot longer, and there is no way to switch to The Disney Channel to get away from it.
MoeLarryAndJesus
I’m wondering if burnspbesq has a signed 8×11 of Rusty Calley on his desk.
Why wouldn’t he, given his comments in this thread?
Soonergrunt
@Kola Noscopy: I do not believe that you really honestly wish to even attempt to understand this concept, but to use it as a rhetorical cudgel, but here’s a very brief statement (trying to compress years of training, indoctrination, and experience into a few paragraphs) in the hope that this really isn’t a fool’s errand:
Neither I nor other personnel are responsible for the nation’s decision to go to war or not to do so, any more responsible than other voters and tax-payers like yourself are responsible for that. In a democracy such as ours in which the military is subordinate to the civilian authority, the military does not get to choose which orders will be followed and which ones will not, saving those rare cases where those orders would be clearly illegal.
The order to enter a village and kill every military-aged male is demonstrably illegal, but the order to execute one’s assigned missions within the context of national policy as determined by duly-elected representatives of the people of the US–there was something passed by Congress called an “Authorization for the Use of Military Force” if memory serves–is not an illegal order, and must be obeyed under pain of Court-Martial, potentially including the death penalty.
–As a side note–do you really want to go down that path to make precedence for the guys with the best guns to decide that they aren’t going to do what the civilian authority orders? The proper, legal answer to that problem in our system is impeachment of the President. The other Constitutional remedy is for the people of the country to take some kind of responsibility for what the government does, and vote the bastards out at the next election. That didn’t happen, did it?
So as a military leader (I was a newly-promoted Staff Sergeant in charge of eight other men) I was responsible for everything that my squad did or failed to do. I was responsible to train them to standard on all the tasks that were considered essential to successful infantry operations, and to lead and supervise them in the subsequent execution of those tasks. This training and leadership necessarily included a working understanding of the Laws of Land Warfare, US laws and military regulations and international treaties to which the US is a signatory that govern the conduct of armed forces on the battlefield in the presence of enemy personnel, enemy civilians, enemy prisoners-of-war, other non-combatants and persons hors-de-combat, the property of such persons; tactics, techniques, and procedures that are within the scope of the law as well as those that are not. You make certain that they know and understand the rules of engagement
So you get your missions, and you train, and retrain, and brief, and rebrief, and supervise and lead and supervise some more and make sure that your subordinates understand that you hold them to high standards, you expect them to hold each other to high standards, and that you yourself are also held to high standards and answerable to higher authority. You make sure that your subordinates know what the law says, and how it applies to them, and (most importantly) why we obey the law, and lastly, what they can expect will happen to them and to you for failing to uphold the law. And then you keep training that, just like you keep training how to enter a room or clear a hallway or search a vehicle.
So when it comes time to go out on missions, you lead your men to accomplish the lawful missions that you’ve been given and to not violate the laws and customs of war. You lead them to accomplish the mission and not unnecessarily insult, harass, defame, or attack those persons who are not engaging or attempting to engage your unit in combat. All that stuff that I did for my men was done for my by my superiors, and I presume for them by their superiors.
So when I say that I did everything I could do to accomplish my missions and bring my men home safely and with honor, I mean that we accomplished every mission assigned to us, and that we did not break the Laws of Land Warfare. That we did, whenever possible, take steps to mitigate the risks to civilians and their property in our areas of operations. We did everything we could to ensure that high standards were known and accepted within the unit. Those personnel who broke laws or regulations were dealt with swiftly in my experience, and while I never personally witnessed anything like a war crime or a crime against a civilian, I did witness and have occasion to deal with lapses of discipline. My best friend was relieved of his position in Afghanistan because he was a weak leader, unable or unwilling to enforce standards in his platoon, and letting one of his squad leaders do whatever he wanted. He’s a great guy to have a beer with, and smart as hell, but he had no business being a Platoon Sergeant. One of my first duties as his replacement was to relieve that squad leader, and one of his junior team leaders. The SL for challenging my authority, and the TL for not being able to replace his boss. The 2LT Platoon Leader should’ve been relieved as well, but I was stuck with him.
Would something bad have happened if that platoon was allowed to continue deteriorating? We’ll never know, but we do know that these kinds of things are extremely rare in units where the leadership enforces the standards.
I served three combat tours. One in Iraq, and two in Afghanistan. At the end of every tour, I knew that my men had accomplished the missions we were assigned to accomplish, and that we did so without violating any laws, or doing anything of which we, or the people who love us, would be ashamed.
Villago Delenda Est
@Soonergrunt:
One of the consequences of wars like those in Iraq and Afghanistan is that you have a hemorrhage of the types of leaders you really need to have to enforce those standards that make these sort of atrocities less likely to happen.
I think it was terribly telling that several division commanders…general officers who were being groomed for the highest positions in the Army…decided to retire after their tours. I know that there was an exodus of mid level NCOs (the backbone of any Army) as well as Captains and Majors. Those who are left behind are even more under stress, and officers and NCOs who would have been on the bubble found themselves off it simply because there were billets to fill in the TO&E and they were all that was available.
When you lose good leaders in the middle like that, the whole organization is going to feel the strain, if not right now, tomorrow, and the day after that.
The most junior officers, and freshly minted NCOs, need strong role models to guide their own development. If they’re not around, things start to suffer. What happened in Haditha reflects that deterioration of leadership.
Samara Morgan
@clayton aka corner stone squared: oh jaysus mary and joseph.
nearly all Americans supported it. it was REGIME CHANGE.
and it fucking never works, and we cant seem to stop trying inspite of repeated EPIC FAILS.
Nobel Prize winner Johan Galtung says that anglo-saxon protestant America was infected by the Chosen People eumeme by the Jews. That is the actual proximate cause of AmerIsrael and the twin decade long horrorshows of Iraq, and Afghanistan, not Cheney’s bloodthirst and greed or Bush’s intransigent WEC stupidity.
Samara Morgan
@Villago Delenda Est: for cripes sake quit with the chain of command bulshytt.
Bush tossed our young soldiers into an immoral, unwinnable, and unjustifiable 10 year meatgrinder.
@Soonergrunt: This shit happens in ALL wars. There is no ” Just War Theory” for the warzone population.
The difference naow is social media, and al-jazeerha and reuters and the internet and wikileaks.
Now atrocities get coverage, and the US cant control the global media to shape the narrative. That paradigm has in turn fueled the rise in classification.
Its the only way we can cover shit up anymore.
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
@Samara Morgan:
So you’ve moved from word-salads about evolution to word-salads blaming the Jews for the fucked-up state of America? How… impressive.
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
@Samara Morgan:
And you cheered him on all the way. Let’s not forget these little historical details, eh?
Samara Morgan
@Cole
Not “amazing”.
Pragmatic.
We had to (at minimum) hand down substantial sentences for the Iraqi Rape Squad because we were still engaged in Iraq at the time. Likewise hefty sentences for the Afghan Kill Squad because we still trying for regime change in A-stan and Panetta was trying to negotiate permanent air bases when the story broke.
Now it fucking doesnt matter if the Iraqis scream blue murder. We have no presence there, we were forced to turn over all 505 bases to the Maliki government.
Why pillory those troops for zero gain?
For “justice”?
hahahahaha!
btw do you know the name of Malikis political party?
Its Dawa. In arabic that means The Cure. in islamic contest it is conventionally used as Islam is the cure.
its really the same as the MB’s slogan Islam is the answer.
stupid americans.
Samara Morgan
context not contest.
Jamie
please kindly explain precisely what the word “patriotic” means to you.
Thanks.
I had thought the sarcasm was clear, apologies. Just to be perfectly clear, I was saying that the obvious reaction from Certain Corners will be that murdering a bunch of brown people doesn’t matter much, because we are superior, and anyone who questions that is disrespecting the military, who are the best people ever, because freedom. Therefor, as a consequence, anyone who points out that a bunch of innocent people are we’re murdered by people who are getting off basically Scott-free are by definition America-hating hippies who hate our troops.
Does that clear things up?
Samara Morgan
@MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson:
Johan Galtung, Nobel prize winner and father of Peace and Conflict Doctrine.
am i responsible for Viet Nam when i wasnt even born yet?
American exceptionalism and the judeo-xian nation are simple extentions of the Chosen People eumeme.
America has always been a fan of regime change…..but it rarely works.
Samara Morgan
@Jamie: Haditha doesnt matter NAOW.
We already got the bum’s rush out of Iraq.
There is no point in pillorying those soldiers for what Bush did to them.
Samara Morgan
for what Bush and America made them into i guess.
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
@Samara Morgan:
I am sure you think you are saying something meaningful.
Samara Morgan
@MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson: no i blame Protestant America.
Explains Newts rise perfectly, dontcha think?
Samara Morgan
@MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson: oh, i am. you just dont have the IQ chops to understand it.
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
@Samara Morgan:
Inasmuch as a very general quote explains anything about a particular circumstance.
Villago Delenda Est
@MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson:
Yes, I’m sure she thinks she is, too, but she’s not. You know how she missed my first comment about guys like the deserting coward. Her reading comprehension problems again rear their gorgon-like tendrils.
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
@Samara Morgan:
Child, given your persistent logical blunders, failure to write even approximately intelligent English, and endless capacity for blending ignorance and arrogance, I’d suggest you think long and hard before talking smack about someone else’s IQ.
Samara Morgan
@Villago Delenda Est: i object to your continuing chain of command bulshytt apologia.
the New Event, what has changed, is social media and globalization.
America cant get away with atrocity management anymore, and cant cover it up except by classifying the shit out of it.
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
@Villago Delenda Est:
She’s a sort of Mozart of Gingrichian triviality combined with the rhetorical panache of Rick Perry.
Samara Morgan
@MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson: i maybe arrogant but im not ignorant.
perhaps you can point out a logic blunder? link or gtfo.
;)
@Villago Delenda Est: i dont care about your personal distaste for Bush. My point is that Bush is not an aberration of American culture. He believed Americans are a chosen people that have the right to impose regime change on other nations at our will.
He also believed Gog and Magog were trying to destroy Israel.
;)
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
@Samara Morgan:
One glance at your inability to write English would seem sufficient demonstration of your ignorance. Of course, we haven’t discussed your logical blunders, your inadequate understanding of how to build an argument, your misleading quotations and your amazing capacity to get hold of the wrong end of any given stick with a triumphant inevitability.
Samara Morgan
@Villago Delenda Est: Bush was totes mainstream American exceptionalism.
im sry to keep rubbing your noses in it, but American exceptionalism is just more chosen people bulshytt. America was built on land stolen from red men with labor stolen from black men.
In the “fog of war” american soldiers commit atrocities, just like other soldiers.
the difference is, social media prevents coverups.
And if Americans cant accept the truth of what we are, it will just happening.
Jamie
There is no point in pillorying those soldiers for what Bush did to them.
See, I disagree. I think killing innocent people is always wrong, whether or not you have a psychopathic leader. Checks and balances are not all procedural games in the polity- grunts and working stiffs have a veto.
Let me ask you – if a group of Boston cops unloaded on an extended family for no good reason, killing 20-odd of them, how would you react? cops don’t make the law, after all – they just enforce it. Pillorying them for what our masters did to them would be unfair, right?
Samara Morgan
it will just keep happening.
Samara Morgan
@Jamie:
oh, i do too. like i said, there is no just war imho. soldiers are taught to break the common taboo of humanity, killing other humans.
I think the Haditha perps should get severe punishment like the other rogue soldiers in the Iraqi Rape Squad and the Afghan Kill Squad.
In you cop analogy those cops would be punished by the rule of law.
In the fog of war, and in our inglorious exit from Iraq, the Haditha dead have no representation….no voice in an American court. Those soldiers should have been tried in Iraq in my opinion.
The Haditha dead, like the Gharani dead, were just more brown people collateral damage from one of America’s endless and doomed regime change failcakes.
Pat In Massachusetts
Amazing in a very disgusting sort of way.
Samara Morgan
@MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson: you never give links.
you just sling amorphous unsubstantiated adhoms.
i am sry about the l33tspk….
but after all, this is not a doctoral dissertation.
its a combox on the interwebz.
i haz my own flavah.
doan liek it?
you are welcome to argue substance, or scroll past, or pie meh.
Samara Morgan
@wilfred: Arab/Muslim blood is cheap.
Perhaps cheap perhaps but not cost viable.
Iraq and Afghanistan cost 14.3 trillion dollars plus our souls, our dignity, and our honor.
And in the long run a decade of meaningless war tanked our economy and cost us our credibility as the last super power.
America is the Powerless Hyperpower naow.
;)
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
@Samara Morgan:
You just don’t get this argument, logic or courtesy stuff, do you? Have you ever considered that your “flava” is boring, stale and derivative? That your “ideas” are all just bits and pieces you filched from other people? You like to talk about Romney being a Mormon and his problems with evangelicals as if it was your original insight, but Amy Sullivan was discussing it back in 2005! When will you do some growing up and stop being such an ignorant little jerk?
Samara Morgan
@MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson: im not making an argument, its a data dump, and i care fuckall about courtesy.
you can chose for your bigselves.
i am logical, i uniformly support my theses with linkage and empirical data.
i have never read amy sullivan so it WAS an original insight, based partly on empirical data FROM COLORADO where i LIVE.
Lojasmo
@clayton:
No…Cole knows you, nattering troll.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan:
Provide links or other empirical evidence to support that assertion.
arguingwithsignposts
@Samara Morgan:
bwahahahahahaha
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
@Samara Morgan:
It’s been all over the internet for years. Sullivan was just one of the commentators to pick up on it. I doubt she was the first, frankly, because she isn’t usually a “thought leader”. And no, you don’t usually support your half-baked “arguments” with data or links. It’s all word-salad and matoko_chan being adolescent.
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
@arguingwithsignposts:
She’s running for Resident Lunatic, for Pete’s sake!
Soonergrunt
@Villago Delenda Est: Yup. And one of the consequences of that is that people who should never have been promoted get promoted because they meet all the other requirements, and there’s holes that need filling. So you get my friend, who was a decent, but not exceptional Squad Leader without enough experience in over his head as a Platoon Sergeant.
And you get that in the officer corps, too. The problems just keep compounding, and when the war is over, it’s these less-than-ideal leaders who have to put the Army back together again. Hopefully, enough of the good ones stayed and will be able to make something good happen.
Soonergrunt
@Samara Morgan: Young one, I know that you have a point to make, and so what I actually said was irrelevant to your purposes, but please try to address the actual statement I made, if for no other reason, than to change things up and keep us guessing. Thanks.
Chris
@Soonergrunt:
This thread is probably dead by now, but as a civilian who reads about this stuff but has never been close to experiencing it in person, I wanted to thank you very much for taking the time to explain all that. Don’t know if it’s what Kola was looking for, but I was glad to get a chance to read it.
Samara Morgan
@MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson: i do link.
and you dont.
im not old enough to have read amy sullivan, sry.
@arguingwithsignposts: hres a link for you AWS.
“Our” EDK is learning.
Soonergrunt
@Chris: Thanks, Chris. As I said, that comment was a very brief dissertation on a subject that I spent a lifetime in classrooms, training exercises, philosophical discussions, briefings, and actual real world experience trying to live up to.
Samara Morgan
@Soonergrunt: i understand what you said.
you said Haditha was a result of a breakdown in chain of command, in the grunts disobeying the rules of warfare the officers laid down.
i think that is blame shifting.
i think the blame rests on the CinC and the will of the American people, which was regime change.
in a way we agree.
Samara Morgan
@Soonergrunt: and i was WRONG too.
i do think tolerance, religious freedom, and freedom of speech would be great for all humans.
but you where i was REALLY WRONG?
it cant be done with force of arms.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: well, did amysullivan ever talk about dead-baptism?
because i saw that first hand.
one of my friends in grad school found out his grandfather had been dead-baptized.
he was horrified.
Samara Morgan
@arguingwithsignposts: know what AWS?
we are living in Distributed Jesusland™ right naow.
that is what midterms were all about, and Distributed Jesusland™ is just the 2008 Jesusland map minus the majorityminority cities.
And WECs are now 50% of the GOP, up from 40% in 2008 exit polling.
im sorry you arent smart enough to understand OODA loops and non-linear systems theory, but you should have been smart enough to see Kain was a grifter.
Kola Noscopy
@Jamie:
Yes, thank you. :D
burnspbesq
@PIGL:
No fair reading of anything I have written in this thread supports a view that I believe the actions taken at Haditha to have been justified. “Understandable” and “justified” are not synonyms.
If you want to make shit up, that’s fine. But try to make up marginally intelligent shit.
Catsy
@Gilles de Rais:
You don’t know jack shit about me, sparky.
Wrong again.
LOL. Keep digging.
Hey, jackass? I’ve been shot at. It scared the ever-living fuck out of me, like it should any sane person. Somehow I managed to not grab the nearest person and throw them in front of my to save myself, or take out my fear and anger on someone else afterwards.
I’ve been in life or death situations. I keep my head.
I’ve had firearms training. I have never had to point a gun at a person and I hope I never have to.
You categorically and demonstrably don’t know the first fucking thing about me. Like burns, you just assume that everyone else is as big of an amoral piece of shit as you are.
But keep up the projection, if it’s what helps you sleep at night. I don’t even want to know what kind of fucked-up things you did to make you think everyone else is just as fucked up.
Kola Noscopy
@Soonergrunt:
SG, thank you for your concerted effort to flesh out your position for me.
I also note how you begin your comment by attempting to place me in a box of YOUR choosing, as per usual, but whatever…
I get it: You’re really good at learning, internalizing, and implementing laws, regulations, and procedures; and also apparently good at directing others to do the same.
But you seem to be missing the core of my question: If the core rationale for a war of aggression is morally flawed, as in the case of Iraq built on a foundation of distorted intelligence and mass hysteria, what difference does it make how well you follow and implement laws/regs/procedures that enable the killing and destruction? How does doing so make you and your men honorable in service of a dishonorable goal?
Is the immoral war built on lies and deception made fine and dandy by the fact that the country waging it enacts its own “laws” to cover its own ass and then says “well, we didn’t break any laws?” Ummm…no.
Since I’m of full blooded German background, I will feel free to go full-on Nazi: Were death camp guards and other Germans serving the Holocaust machinery rendered morally clean by the fact that they were following legal orders/rules/procedures really well? Didn’t Nuremburg and human decency hold otherwise?
My question is not a complicated one, and could be answered in a few sentences. Your need to go into a multi paragraph extrapolation on the ins and outs of command and control indicates either a conscious or unconscious desire to obfuscate the issue.
Sounds to me like you knew going in the war was bullshit. Seems to me your higher duty was to not take part in it.
And no, I do not know what I would have done in your position. But I did not PUT myself in your position, as you chose to do as a member of the U.S. armed forces.
Finally, the idea that even those of us who loudly and energetically opposed the war before it started are as responsible and culpable for the killing and destruction as are the majority of Americans who slobbered over each other to get it started and the military men and women who did the hands on killing, is utter horseshit. I hear you trying to ease your own conscience by casting blame where it doesn’t belong.
Ultimately, isn’t the construct of “country” and “patriotism” simply man made bullshit to trap people into thinking that way? Why am I responsible for anything, good or bad, that the u.s. government does, in all its monolithic, gargantuan power, simply because I happened to be born within the country’s man-made borders?
People here throw around the concept of “projection” at BJ so often that it loses its meaning, but here you seem to be projecting your own angst where it doesn’t fit. That may make you feel better, but it doesn’t make it true.
Paul in KY
Speaking as a former USAF officer, he should have been executed, Calley too & Medina.
I hope they at least process him for discharge. You cannot have him leading troops.
Villago Delenda Est
@Samara Morgan:
Well, this is all well and good, but utterly irrelevant to what’s being discussed here in the thread.
Go back, VERY young and inexperienced Padawan, and read Soonergrunt’s excellent description of how competent military leaders work to minimize the odds of atrocities like this happening. This is all very relevant to the actual crime being discussed. If you slow down and read it carefully, you might just learn something.
No one here has argued that these Marines out of control should get a free pass due to American Exceptionalism. Some of us WANT to actually elevate the US military to an exceptional position, and when we served took active steps in that direction. This does not mean we don’t acknowledge the problems with exceptionalism that is used to provide cover for the commission of war crimes. Quite the contrary, we want action taken when war crimes are committed. Our effort is to live up to the ideal implied by American Exceptionalism, not use it as a crutch to wave away criticism.
Having said all that, shit will happen in war, because at the cutting edge level young men and women are tossed into horrendous situations and the experience and character of the leadership they have has a direct correlation to how they respond to these horrendous situations. Without those leaders, there is a distinct possibility that they will react in ways we’d rather they did not.
Furthermore, this is a consequence of using war as a policy option other than the last defensive resort, not a “we need to toss some shitty country against a wall” to demonstrate how tuff we are policy of those wonderful chickenhawks, the Neocons.
Paul in KY
@burnspbesq: That is part of being a soldier. That kind of stuff (having comrades blown up & getting their brains on you) has happened since the Revolutionary war & we prosecuted men who lost it back then.
If you are a heathen barbarian, yes you act just like he did. A U.S. freaking Marine is supposed to have some honor & perspective.
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: Sgt Wuterich being a murderer doesn’t excuse in the least the vile shitstains that put him & all our military in there in the first place.
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: IMO, he was conducting an impromptu reprisal for the attack on his squad. In my book, that gets you into Nazi territory & a hangman’s noose. Only for him though, his men were following his orders (it would have been nice if the 2nd in command could have realized that Sgt. Wuterich had gone loco & stopped him).
Villago Delenda Est
@Paul in KY:
Where have we seen this scenario play out before? Some Oliver Stone production, IIRC.
The problem with impromptu reprisals is that odds are good that you’re reprising against people who had nothing to do with it other than they are fellow countrymen of the people you’re fighting against.
Nazi country, indeed. Great way to win hearts and minds. FOR THE OTHER SIDE.
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: That is why when you don’t have those strong role models, you have to make an example out of someone to show the troops, in a stark manner, that you don’t go off murdering kids when your unit takes casualties.
They don’t do it anymore, but having his whole regiment mustered out to watch his execution would have sent a firm message.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kola Noscopy:
Well, one could say that.
But one could also point out that despite the fact that you opposed the war, you participated in it because you have a moral obligation, as a leader, to take care of your soldiers and to guide them through that war in such a way that they have the best chance of coming through it whole, mentally, morally, and physically.
A tall order, to be sure, but that’s what leadership is about. Preparing your soldiers for their jobs, and guiding them so that they commit no acts for which they’ll be obliged to answer later on for. Always fraught with danger given the nature of war itself.
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: I tell you what scares me. In this case & others we’ve seen, they essentially did get away with it.
So the next time our troops are in some Iraq-style situation, it will be harder (IMO) to have control over the troops when they have empirical evidence that they can get away with stuff like that.
Samara Morgan
@Villago Delenda Est: American FP is and has always been regime change.
And American Exceptionalism is what Americans think gives us the right to prosecute regime change.
And this wont change until Americans can admit that Ameican exceptionalism is a LIE.
There is no American exceptionalism. there is a nation of anglo-saxon protestant heritage that took the mantle of the “chosen people” from the jews, and built their country on land stolen from red men with labor stolen from black men.
Villago Delenda Est
@Samara Morgan:
You know something? You’re as narrow minded about the term “American Exceptionalism” as any of the WECs you talk about all the time.
Your petulant obtuseness is as annoying as hell and why you are considered a borderline troll around here.
If you get your head out of your ass for a bit, you might find that while people actually agree with you about “there is a nation of anglo-saxon protestant heritage that took the mantle of the “chosen people” from the jews, and built their country on land stolen from red men with labor stolen from black men.” This is pretty much the Christianist take on what America is supposed to be all about.
It’s not how the country was founded, however, when more than a few Founding Fathers were profoundly disturbed by the presence of those who wanted to expand slavery among them and saw the inherent contradiction of the ideals stated in the Declaration of Independence with the reality of life in the 13 colonies.
That’s neither here nor there to what I wrote, which was about a set of ideals that have been warped, in part by people like you not paying fucking attention to their origins, only to what they’ve morphed into for some Americans, about equality and humaneness that gets lost in your self-righteous indignation and attacks on people who are actually on your side and want to live up to the ideals that the Revolution was, in part, fought over.
Now. Go back and fucking READ what Soonergrunt was saying. He wasn’t talking meta here as you insist on doing in some bizarre doctrinaire snit. If people don’t treat what you write here respectfully, it’s a pretty good example of the technique of mirroring, because you don’t treat them with any respect from the getgo. You insist on imposing your narrative and framing on everything around here, and these people are not Jeebusite dumbshits, no matter how much you imagine they are. Which is why you are mocked and considered to be a borderline troll.
toones
It is their duty to refuse an illegal order.
Period.
They are now criminals, guilty of war crimes.
Period.
With DU weapons, and multiple tours of duty it is obvious that the “plan” was to make sure as few of them as possible would return to need medical care and retirement , etc., -the idea was for them to never come back.
Cut VA, health, benefits, etc.,. and keep sending them back until they don’t come back anymore.
Feature, not bug. ask Rummy.
I for one hope that the desert swallows every single one of them and none ever return, as it will be best for them and best for us all.
Otherwise they should all be treated as war criminals.
All of them.
[other than the ones who refused and spent the years in jail.]
Sorry.
Samara Morgan
@Villago Delenda Est: pardon, but im a raging full blown troll.
and this site made me one.
what i learned from Balloon Juice since 2008.
My disillusion started with Kain and De Bore.
i have no respect for the ‘tards here that got snookered by Kain and Freddie.
i have no respect for the nasty bitter commenters that trashed ABL for being fierce and honest.
i have no respect for the BJ firebaggers and BJ emo-progs and BJ eeyores that piss and moan about President Obama 24/7.
i have no respect for the BJ morality police or the BJ crotch-sniffers or the BJ JAFIs.
and finally i have no respect for the vets that that cant bear to admit that the GWOT was always a war on Islam, that the “Mission” was always Regime Change, and that a million muslims died for the myth of “american exceptionalism”.
do you know what else i learned in the time i spent here?
Americans are not the good guys.
Americans arent even the better guys.
Americans are the stupid guys.
Samara Morgan
@Villago Delenda Est: you tell meh….who should i respect here?
John “American Interests” Cole who sold out his “baby momma” for a pat from an expat Obama hatin’ libertarian?
Anne “shariah-ridden brown babies” Laurie?
Doug “Erik Kain is a liberal” J?
Mixie?
hahahahaha
you built me.
just like America built the reavers of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Soonergrunt
@Samara Morgan: I didn’t say anything like that at all.
Soonergrunt
@Kola Noscopy: So that part wherein I stated that I doubted your desire to actually understand and that I thought that it was more about a rhetorical cudgel–I was right in the x-ring on that one.
Samara Morgan
@Soonergrunt: oh yes you did.
chain of command, americans are “better” than that, duty and honor.
blah blah blah.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan:
Bull shit. Pure, unadulterated bullshit. If you are a troll, it is because you chose to be one. Frankly, the fact that you compare your trolling to the actions of the Taliban and al-Qaeda is an insult to them. You remind me of the Keyboard Kommandos of 2003.
Kola Noscopy
@Soonergrunt:
Ummmm…no, it means that just because you offer up what you see as an explanation doesn’t mean anyone necessarily has to agree with it.
I’m certainly not the one you should look to for absolution for what the hell you took part in, and however many people you have killed and maimed and orphaned and widowed. You need a good therapist to help you with that.
Why are you a front-pager again?
Kola Noscopy
@Omnes Omnibus:
Everyone on this site is a fucking troll. That’s what gives BJ its singular flair.
THE
@Samara Morgan:
I wonder where do you get a perspective like this? Samara. The policy you are describing: Hegemony is as old as time.
It is tens of thousands of years since imperialistically inclined warlords started overthrowing the hostile leaders of adjacent tribes, and put their friends in power instead; and so they built up their networks of allies and dependencies.
There is usually a core of tribes over which you exercise direct sovereignty — your “empire” or dominion — and there is the diffuse cloud of the hegemonistic dependencies over which you exert influence and perhaps exact tribute.
Why is this “exceptionalism”? I don’t understand the term in this context. Hegemonism is one of the oldest power-strategies in the book.
THE
@THE: Sorry can’t correct the blockquote. FYWP put a premature break after the first line.
Soonergrunt
@Samara Morgan: You really, really, need to work on reading comprehension.
If you knew the things you have variously claimed to know, you would also know that rules of engagement are orders (that must be obeyed under the law) governing the use of various levels of force, among other things.
Operating Instructions =/= American exceptionalism, you stupid shit.
It really isn’t your reading comprehension. It’s the fact that I’m not saying what you need me to say in order for you to have the argument you want to have.
That’s just pathetic.
Yutsano
@Samara Morgan:
And yet…you still choose to live safely in Colorado under Mummy and Daddy’s roof. Silly rich spoiled white girl. You take advantage of everything you presume to hate.
Samara Morgan
@THE: /sigh
american exceptionalism is the idea that america is special, that americans are better than everyone else, and sooner’s rules of engagement are just an attempt to enforce that.
its the idea that America has some right/obligation to impose American culture on the rest of the worlds “inferior” culture.
think on it spock. some analysts put the cost of the GWoT as high as 14.3 trillion dollars.
what if we had spent that money on space travel or a moon colony?
The “Mission” was an Epic Fail.
Samara Morgan
@Soonergrunt: what do you think the whole fucking “Freedom Agenda” was?
do you get a by for “just following orders” ?
Samara Morgan
@Villago Delenda Est: oh bulshytt. the anti-slavery founders sold their souls to the devil to create the Union.
South Carolina wasnt gunna join unless they got to keep slaves.
cant shake the devils hand and say you are only jokin’.
THE
@Samara Morgan:
It’s more complex than that Samara. Wars are not merely won or lost. Civilizations are immortal in principle. They can fight when it suits them, break it off for a decade, then go back to it when conditions are right again. Strategy unfolds over decades or centuries. The conflict between Islam and the West has lasted arguably for 1400 years. This is just the latest round. There could be many many more.
Actually I think the war was not as bad for the West as you think. There are many reasons. Some of which I have discussed with you elsewhere.
The main weakness of Islam is its very limited time-window to make the transition to modernity. It is frittering away so much of its once-only endowment of petroleum wealth on a ridiculous fight with the West. The point is that the West can afford to waste the time and money on stupid wars. Islam cannot. Time is running out.
Look at the price trend in renewables. Come to my website and see my data. In a decade or two the oil bonus will be gone. Forever. It will be illegal on environmental grounds to burn fossil fuels. Then what? Even now the oil is of less and less importance to the USA. Every price spike reduces consumption. And this is still early days. The deeper technological revolution is unfolding at breathtaking speed. You don’t watch it. I do.
Samara Morgan
oh, Spock.
so clueless ypu are.
dar ul Islam doesnt need to be able to able to INVENT tech.
They just need to be able to exploit it.
Thus the Arab Spring.
;)
THE
Yes. But what does “exploit” mean to you?
The problem is that once the oil-income goes, the average economic level of MENA will drop significantly. Work out what OPEC contributes in oil revenues to the economy of the region.
Now remove it.
Consider if you will Saudi Arabia. Look what has happened to the population during the long oil boom. Now remove the oil income. Do you think they can just return to farming like their pre-oil ancestors did? Will the desert support the population that the oil boom created? If not what are they going to do to pay for the food imports? What does KSA manufacture if there is no more market for fossil fuels?
Do you know how dependent the population is on foreign labor and skills? Once the oil industry declines, the foreign labor will go somewhere else. Not to worry. Saudi Government keeps trying to get their domestic population into the workforce.
Of course not everyone is as bad as Saudi Arabia. But in every OPEC country the economic system is subsidized by the oil revenues, if only because the government derives its income from oil taxes. It uses its revenues to subsidize food and oil consumption, education and government services. Without oil revenues everything disappears. Without oil you can only have the wealth that you produce. You can trade some of your production for other people’s production. But your spending must balance your actual economic production in the long run.