From 'Gook' to 'Raghead' I spent some time recently with Aidan Delgado, a 23-year-old religion major at New College of Florida, a small, highly selective school in Sarasota. On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, before hearing anything about the terror attacks that would change the direction of American history, Mr. Delgado enlisted as a private in the Army Reserve. Suddenly, in ways he had never anticipated, the military took over his life. He was trained as a mechanic and assigned to the 320th Military Police Company in St. Petersburg. By the spring of 2003, he was in Iraq. Eventually he would be stationed at the prison compound in Abu Ghraib. Mr. Delgado's background is unusual. He is an American citizen, but because his father was in the diplomatic corps, he grew up overseas. He spent eight years in Egypt, speaks Arabic and knows a great deal about the various cultures of the Middle East. He wasn't happy when, even before his unit left the states, a top officer made wisecracks about the soldiers heading off to Iraq to kill some ragheads and burn some turbans. "He laughed," Mr. Delgado said, "and everybody in the unit laughed with him." The officer's comment was a harbinger of the gratuitous violence that, according to Mr. Delgado, is routinely inflicted by American soldiers on ordinary Iraqis. He said: "Guys in my unit, particularly the younger guys, would drive by in their Humvee and shatter bottles over the heads of Iraqi civilians passing by. They'd keep a bunch of empty Coke bottles in the Humvee to break over people's heads." He said he had confronted guys who were his friends about this practice. "I said to them: 'What the hell are you doing? Like, what does this accomplish?' And they responded just completely openly. They said: 'Look, I hate being in Iraq. I hate being stuck here. And I hate being surrounded by hajis.' " "Haji" is the troops' term of choice for an Iraqi. It's used the way "gook" or "Charlie" was used in Vietnam. Mr. Delgado said he had witnessed incidents in which an Army sergeant lashed a group of children with a steel Humvee antenna, and a Marine corporal planted a vicious kick in the chest of a kid about 6 years old. There were many occasions, he said, when soldiers or marines would yell and curse and point their guns at Iraqis who had done nothing wrong. He said he believes that the absence of any real understanding of Arab or Muslim culture by most G.I.'s, combined with a lack of proper training and the unrelieved tension of life in a war zone, contributes to levels of fear and rage that lead to frequent instances of unnecessary violence. Mr. Delgado, an extremely thoughtful and serious young man, balked at the entire scene. "It drove me into a moral quagmire," he said. "I walked up to my commander and gave him my weapon. I said: 'I'm not going to fight. I'm not going to kill anyone. This war is wrong. I'll stay. I'll finish my job as a mechanic. But I'm not going to hurt anyone. And I want to be processed as a conscientious objector.' " He stayed with his unit and endured a fair amount of ostracism. "People would say I was a traitor or a coward," he said. "The stuff you would expect." In November 2003, after several months in Nasiriya in southern Iraq, the 320th was redeployed to Abu Ghraib. The violence there was sickening, Mr. Delgado said. Some inmates were beaten nearly to death. The G.I.'s at Abu Ghraib lived in cells while most of the detainees were housed in large overcrowded tents set up in outdoor compounds that were vulnerable to mortars fired by insurgents. The Army acknowledges that at least 32 Abu Ghraib detainees were killed by mortar fire. Mr. Delgado, who eventually got conscientious objector status and was honorably discharged last January, recalled a disturbance that occurred while he was working in the Abu Ghraib motor pool. Detainees who had been demonstrating over a variety of grievances began throwing rocks at the guards. As the disturbance grew, the Army authorized lethal force. Four detainees were shot to death. Mr. Delgado confronted a sergeant who, he said, had fired on the detainees. "I asked him," said Mr. Delgado, "if he was proud that he had shot unarmed men behind barbed wire for throwing stones. He didn't get mad at all. He was, like, 'Well, I saw them bloody my buddy's nose, so I knelt down. I said a prayer. I stood up, and I shot them down.' "
That was disturbing. The bizarre thing is that there is such a disconnect between the mission we are told they are on(to help the Iraqis toward freedom) and their actions. It is almost like they feel they are at war with Iraqis rather than trying to help them. I can see where that disconnect might lead to resentment, increased resistence etc. A lot could have prevented with proper training for the situation.
I don't want to diminish or excuse the actions of these soldiers but to a certain extent I can understand it. War by its nature is dehumanizing and even in a highly disciplined modern army I imagine to be able to effectively kill your enemy you will have to dehumanize them. To be to kill on order I think you have to dehumanize yourself. We should expect our soldiers to be held to the highest standards and I hope that the perpetrators of these events were disciplined but I don't think we can expect there to never be such behavior. This is why I believe that war should never be entered lightly and avoided as much as possible.
I hear you, but we are being told that the Iraqi people aren't the enemy. That's where I see such a huge disconnect. They are supposed to be the ones we are trying to help. Helping them is the mission. Dehumanizing those that we are helping seems counter-productive.
If this account is true, I don't want my children to ever think this is the way an American behaves. We are not perfect people, but we were once decent and good people by a vast majority. Oh yeah there were always American scoundrels. But our reputation was one of having noble character. That was what being an American meant. I don't blame 'war' for that kind of behavior anymore than I would blame crime on a police officer murdering an innocent suspect. There IS something very disturbing about this kind of behavior. YES there is great pressure in Iraq, the kind of pressure that squeezes out the true character of a person. Seems like Mr. Delgado has it. I don't think we can defend our soldiers for cruelty if it is true.
Disturbing but I'm not surprised. You send off a bunch of college aged kids thousands of miles away for an extended period of time and you can't possibly expect them to have the discipline of an experienced vetern. Anything I hear on American TV or radio, I just assume it's about a magnitude or two worse than what they are telling us. You can bet your ass that this war is about money and more money. It's about funding the defense giants like Northrop Grumman and Haliburton. America has been in 'wars' with more countries than Europe and China put together (last 100 years). We are a country built on war and sustained be war and have become a superpower through war. Ironic.
Just like the Vietnam war, you have infiltration agents designed to seed mistrust between the soldiers and the populace. We've all heard stories of normal cars becoming suicide bombs at checkpoints, random bursts of shooting on streets or cases of sniping. Furthermore, those insurgents have to stay somewhere, so who is housing and supporting them? That stuff will put any soldier at edge. Some police officers have gone through that process too, so it might not even be a product of millitary psychology. I'm not condoning their actions, but they are there and we are here. The people who put them there are still in office, so this is what we'll continue to see from our soldiers. They're still our soldiers, and they're still Americans.
The people who put them there are still in office, so this is what we'll continue to see from our soldiers. They're still our soldiers, and they're still Americans. I agree. This is what we are supporting in the continuing occupation of Iraq. Maybe we can start to agree that since Iraq is not a serious threat to our country, we can withdraw from the occupation so that our American soldiers don't contune doing these type of actions which just creates ill will toward all Americans.
This reminds me of something I heard a while back. Policing and war are two different things. Trying to make warriors into police men does not work. These kids are trained to break sh*t and kill people. Not to protect and serve.
