by citizen
If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long.
George W. Bush, speech at West Point in 2002
That seems to be the logic use in defense of the atrocity at Haditha. I am ready to agree with that logic, but do disagree that this logic was actually being followed in Haditha or in Iraq in general. Nor has the government given us reason to expect that this logic is actually driving the so-called national policy of the United States.
In Haditha, Iraq – a Time report:
Dr. Wahid, director of the local hospital in Haditha, who asked that his family name be withheld because, he says, he fears reprisals by U.S. troops, says the Marines brought 24 bodies to his hospital around midnight on Nov. 19. Wahid says the Marines claimed the victims had been killed by shrapnel from the roadside bomb. "But it was obvious to us that there were no organs slashed by shrapnel," Wahid says. "The bullet wounds were very apparent. Most of the victims were shot in the chest and the head–from close range."
A day after the incident, a Haditha journalism student videotaped the scene at the local morgue and at the homes where the killings had occurred. The video was obtained by the Hammurabi Human Rights Group, which cooperates with the internationally respected Human Rights Watch, and has been shared with Time. The tape makes for grisly viewing. It shows that many of the victims, especially the women and children, were still in their nightclothes when they died. The scenes from inside the houses show that the walls and ceilings are pockmarked with shrapnel and bullet holes as well as the telltale spray of blood. But the video does not reveal the presence of any bullet holes on the outside of the houses, which may cast doubt on the Marines’ contention that after the ied exploded, the Marines and the insurgents engaged in a fierce gunfight.
The officers that allowed have no solid grounds for explaining to their troops that they have suffered for any good reason, nor that their deaths and soul-crimes have been in true service to the nation or the folks back home. These Marines have been damned by a military policy that is not national, not at the service of the U.S. as a people, or even as a country. Whether or not these Marines have gotten as far as Smedley Butler had figured out that they’re working for this era’s version of United Fruit and Standard Oil, it is a certainty that these troops have been damned to hell by the same ‘national’ policy makers when they also damned Iraqis to life in hell.
For democracy?! Tell that to these Marines. Or tell it to the Iraqis in this or any village.
One wonders, who do these ‘national’ policy makers consider the enemy? They seem to hate and fear most of all anyone serious about serving the nation. Look at whom they smear and spy on the Bill of Rights. Look at how they seem to read it.
We are taking about treachery, or as a former Supreme Court Justice of the U.S. said upon the opening of certain earlier trials against men and women who betrayed their nation by leading it into hell:
Our position is that whatever grievances a nation may have, however objectionable it finds the status quo, aggressive warfare is an illegal means for settling these grievances or for altering these conditions.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson opening the Nuremburg Trials
How does the current President of the United States recommend we defend ourselves were someone to threaten to betray and attack the nation:
We cannot defend America and our friends by hoping for the best. We cannot put our faith in the word of tyrants, who solemnly sign non-proliferation treaties, and then systemically break them. If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long.
George W. Bush, speech at West Point in 2002
Words to live by.