The logic of war crimes in a criminal war
Bob Morris @ Jun 2nd 2006 15:46 - Category: Unfiled ;
From the national ANSWER Coalition listserv comes this clear explanation of why the massacres of civilians in Iraq is no aberration.
By: Mara Verheyden-Hilliard and Brian Becker (Verheyden-Hilliard is a civil rights attorney and co-founder of the Partnership for Civil Justice. Becker is the National Coordinator of the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition.)
The logic of war crimes in a criminal warÂÂ
When U.S. marines carried out the savage and systematic execution of Iraqi families and small children in Haditha last November, it was initially reported as a “battle” with “insurgent casualties.” A photo of a kneeling Iraqi civilian moments before he was murdered was taken by a Marine using his cell phone camera. Other pictures of the corpses of small children, families lying in pools of blood in their homes, students gunned down in a taxi are all part of the documentary evidence.
The massacre in Haditha took place one year after a much larger massacre of civilians in Fallujah. Four to six thousand civilians are estimated to have been killed in Fallujah in November 2004, according to credible independent sources reporting from the ground. The truth of Iraq is that there were other massacres almost every week in between the events that have made Haditha and Fallujah famous cities: famous in the way no city wants to become well known throughout the world. The attack on the people of Iraq and ensuing occupation by the United States government has caused the deaths of well over 100,000 Iraqi people (the British medical journal, The Lancet, reported an excess of 100,000 dead eighteen months ago).
“Ethics Training” to Prevent Massacres
Now that the butchery in Haditha is making headlines in the United States, high ranking officials in the Pentagon as well as the President are promising an investigation. They have even announced “ethics training” for combat troops. The implication is that something unusual happened when unarmed civilians, including terrified small children and their mothers who were trying to shield them, were riddled with bullets by U.S. soldiers. Were they rogue soldiers lawlessly breaking ranks from an otherwise pristine mission aimed at liberating Iraqis? That is pure fiction. Those who criticize the management of the war are talking complete nonsense when they say that the actions of these Marines will make it “harder to carry out the mission in Iraq.”
The Haditha massacre will not make the Iraqis think differently about the United States or Bush. It will only confirm their view, an outlook shaped by the cruel, cold-hard reality of the past years.
A Routine Phenomenon
