Something for you Jesus loving, fetus treasuring, Bible thumping Christians to chew on. Inside the minds of Marines By A. Henry Hempe Special to The Capital Times June 3, 2005 Evan Wright's "Generation Kill," a compelling account of United States Marines in action in a difficult war, is more than just an adventure yarn of men at war. It tells a story of young Marines in Iraq, all struggling to survive and be tough, but nonetheless affected by the horrors the war inflicted on the innocent. Both informative and insightful, the book offers a realistic account of the 2003 American invasion of Iraq, as well as a glimpse of the futile attempts by the U.S. to impose order in the conquered country. Wright was a reporter embedded with the 1st Reconnaissance Marine Battalion. The 380-man unit, traveling in unarmored Humvees and well ahead of other invasion forces, was following orders to deliberately seek engagement with any hostile forces lying in ambush. The Marines' supposed mission was to seize control of this treacherous roundabout route to Baghdad. Actually, Wright explains, the mission was to serve the experimental purpose of testing the effectiveness of "maneuver warfare." Copying the successful blitzkrieg tactics of German Panzer divisions in World War II, principally relying on speed, mobility and firepower, the battalion's invasion route led through difficult Iraq terrain that sheltered thousands of Saddam loyalists and Iraqi regulars, as well as alien jihad fighters from Syria, Egypt and Palestinian refugee camps, all waiting in ambush. Wright opens a curtain on the kind of war the Iraqi adventure had become. The enemy that confronted the American Marines, perceived by many Iraqis not as rescuers but as invaders, was not a uniformed, easily identifiable enemy. Even the supposedly durable troops of the elite Iraqi Republican Guard had vanished as American forces flowed into Iraq over the Iraq-Kuwait border. Organized military resistance to the Americans had dissolved early. But not for long. Just long enough for angry Iraqi soldiers to discard uniforms, don civilian clothing, find new weapons, and metastasize into small, deadly guerrilla units, obsessed with resisting what they perceived to be infidel invaders of their Muslim country. Sometimes they looked like innocent trades people, sometimes like ordinary workers or simple shepherds. And sometimes the innocent-looking civilians actually were what they appeared: innocent! As in the Vietnam conflict, sorting out innocent non-combatants from the bad guys under battle-stress conditions was not an exact science. Miraculously, although strafed with enemy fire from both sides of village streets, Wright's fast-moving Marines suffered no serious casualties. Hostile fire was suppressed by overwhelming Marine firepower, awesome enough to ventilate building walls with so many bullet holes that the walls simply collapsed. U.S. Marines, of course, are crack combat troops - some say the finest fighting force in the world - and Recon Marines are an elite within an elite. Toughened both mentally and physically by rigorous training regimens, well-schooled in the wartime crafts of killing, and bolstered by Judeo-Christian religious precepts that have long justified killing as moral when done in a righteous cause, recon and regular Marines, alike, understand that wars are usually won on the battlefield by the side that kills the most enemy troops. But the death of unarmed, non-combatant, civilian innocents is another matter, and Wright perceived that some of the young, still-hardening Marine warriors agonized over their own roles in some of those deaths. They wondered if their actions, even though justifiable under a new set of rules of engagement that understandably viewed all Iraqis as "potential hostiles," could ever be forgiven by even the forgiving Christian God many had once been taught to worship. Some were troubled enough to approach Navy chaplains with questions about sin and forgiveness. They were reassured that the killing was not a sin if the killers didn't enjoy the killing. "I'm not saying I care (about the killing)," Wright quotes one confused young Marine as saying, as he attempted to reason with his conscience: "I don't ... but I keep thinking about what the priest said. It's not a sin to kill with a purpose as long as you don't enjoy it. My question is: Is indifference the same as enjoyment?" Though initially jubilant with the successful completion of their mission, upon witnessing the lawless killing and looting chaos that greeted them in Baghdad, the euphoria of the victorious Marines was quickly drained as they began to regard their completed mission, in Wright's words, as "a Pyrrhic victory for a conquering force ill-trained and unequipped to keep order in the country it occupied." Unlike even the few weeks of pre-invasion practice in blitzkrieg combat maneuvering the Marines had received, they had received no training that prepared them for their new role of urban police. Wright quotes a seasoned Marine platoon commander as to the result: "Our impact on establishing order is about zero. As far as I can see, there's no American plan for Baghdad." Clearly, American neo-con politicians knew how to start a war. Embarrassingly obvious, however, was that when the 1st Reconnaissance Marine Battalion entered Baghdad, beyond expressing some vague and vacuous bromides about spreading democracy in a multicultural nation whose history they apparently hadn't bothered to study or understand, the neo-con politicians had not formulated an effective end-game strategy. Based on current media accounts, it is by no means clear that they have yet devised an effective one. For although Wrightpurports to tell only the story of an invading Marine battalion in Iraq, his book's title also serves as an apt and prescient summary of the current Iraqi situation. Obviously undeterred by simplistic promises of "democracy" that even an election has not yet produced, the murderous violence continues, and "Generation Kill" continues to hold sway. Sadly, American troops continue to be victims of both buried roadside bombs and ambush. Suicide bombers, on foot or in autos, have become lethal weapons of frequent choice for both foreign jihad and local rebels. Iraqi insurgents continue to target their own countrymen thought to be in league with the Americans. Just as tragic as the mounting list of American casualties, of course, is the continuing "collateral damage" that consists of Iraqi women, children and other civilian innocents caught between both indiscriminate attacks of insurgents who apparently seek a civil war and aggressive counterinsurgency measures. It's still a bloody war, and it seems far from over. Although not a Recon Marine, Madison resident A. Henry Hempe was honorably discharged from the Marine Corps Reserves, in his words, "more years ago than I like to admit." He is a longtime Wisconsin attorney and arbitrator. Published: 1:54 PM 6/3/05
Parents Are Right to Protect their Children from the Military (link) by Jacob G. Hornberger, June 6, 2005 A recent front-page story in the New York Times reported growing opposition among parents to the U.S. military's efforts to contact and recruit their children to join the U.S. armed forces. In the process, parents are also discovering some uncomfortable things about the federal government. One thing parents are learning is that federal funds to local school districts have less to do with federal concern that children aren't learning in public (i.e., government) schools and more to do with opportunities to extend federal control over American families. Do you remember the much-vaunted No Child Left Behind Act? That Act requires school districts to give the military access to the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of high-school students as a condition of receiving federal funds. So, if a school district says "No, we won't give the military the information it seeks to recruit our students," it loses its federal welfare even if all those children are supposedly "left behind" as a consequence. Obviously, the biggest reason for parents' opposition to the military's recruitment efforts would be to protect their children from losing their lives and limbs for no valid purpose. After all, ask yourself: What parents would place a higher value on the installation of an Islamic Shi'ite regime in Iraq, even a democratically elected one, than they would on the life or limbs of their own child? (U.S. officials, of course, do claim that the deaths and maiming of U.S. personnel, as well at the deaths and maiming of tens of thousands of Iraqis, have been worth it.) But another important factor should be going into the thinking of every parent -- and, for that matter, every person who is contemplating going into the military: There is no way to reconcile killing an Iraqi citizen, including one who is defending his nation against an unlawful invader and occupier, with God's sacred commandment against killing, given that the U.S. government is wrongfully in Iraq because Iraq never attacked the United States or even threatened to attack our country. That makes the U.S. the aggressor nation in this conflict and the unlawful and immoral occupier of a sovereign and independent country. That means that the Iraqis who have been killed and who have yet to be killed as part of the U.S. invasion and occupation are just as innocent as the victims on 9/11 in the sense that none of the Iraqi victims had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks and none of them lived under a government that attacked or even threatened to attack the United States. Thus, U.S. soldiers who kill or maim Iraqis as part of what is called a "war of aggression," a type of war barred by the UN Charter and punished at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, will ultimately have to struggle morally and religiously with what they have done. Some soldiers will undoubtedly say, "I didn't know I was going to have to invade an innocent country when I signed up and, anyway, I'm killing for my country," as if orders by their government to wage a war of aggression excuse them from exercising the conscience that God gave them. But that excuse is not even available to new recruits: They're going to have to explain to God why they signed up knowing that they were going to have to kill innocent people as part of a military force that wrongfully invaded a country and persisted in occupying it with no more purpose than to establish a political regime that it was hoped would be more friendly to the U.S. government than Saddam Hussein's regime was. Parents are wise to protect their children from the U.S. military and its wrongful invasion and occupation of Iraq, not only in the hope of protecting the lives and limbs of their children from being wasted in a wrongful and destructive cause but also in the hope of ensuring that their children are not put in the horrible moral dilemma of either killing innocent people or being killed.
Who Cares? (link) Suicide bombers unleashed another day of hell across Iraq today, killing at least 18 and wounding over 67. Four of them struck Iraqi Security forces, along with US military convoys around Baghdad. Despite the huge US-backed Iraqi security operation throughout the capital city, attacks there continue unabated. The small city of Rawa near Al-Qa'im was bombed again by the US military Sunday night. The military admitted to the bombing, but claimed that there were no civilian casualties. Today on Al-Jazeera the satellite channel flashed footage of flattened civilian homes, as well as people in the city claiming that seven civilians were killed in the bombings. In Hawija (near Kirkuk), three suicide car bombers struck Iraqi security checkpoints today, killing several Iraqis. Meanwhile in Tal-Afar (near Mosul), fierce clashes erupted between the Iraqi resistance and American soldiers. These are ongoing as I type this. It continues to be clear that the plans of the Bush Administration in Iraq either do not include the protection of Iraqis, they don't care, or both. I received an email from someone today along these lines which I found interesting: "I operated out of Camp Anaconda, near Balad. What almost everyone, both in uniform and those as contractors, agreed on (was) the objective of the Bush Administration's long term (plan) is focused primarily on oil. Hearts and minds are secondary, far behind the issue of petroleum products, as the US continues to compete for resources around the world. I hope more media conversation is forthcoming on this issue." Also along these lines, an Iraqi friend of mine who is a doctor in Baghdad told me that when he was in Ramadi yesterday, US soldiers attacked the Anbar Medical School while students were taking their exams. As he said, "They (US soldiers) smashed the front gates of the school in a barbaric way using Humvees'and terrorized the female students while arresting two students while they were working on their exams. They then lay siege to the homes of the dean of the university, along with homes of lecturers, even though their families were inside." My friend also reported that after he recently visited Haditha (remember "Operation Open Market") he found that a large number of civilians had been detained. "They even detained a friend of mine and his father because they found papers in their home about an upcoming demonstration,"(Note: I thought US is all for marching for freedom?) he told me. Recently, the US-backed Iraqi "government" announced it had detained nearly 900 "suspected militants." A "suspected militant" in Iraq looks more and more like anyone in the wrong place at the wrong time when Iraqi or US forces conduct an operation. Of course the looting of homes during raids continues along with the detentions of innocent Iraqis. So much so that as a result of the huge "security" operation in Baghdad, Laith Kuba, a spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari found it necessary to make the following statement: "Some people complained there are cases where soldiers took advantage and helped themselves to cash and other items. One doesn't rule it out. The complaints I heard from people were the aggressiveness of some of these forces as they do things. Some people have half-hinted that they have copied some of the mannerisms of other foreign troops. I think that is a valid criticism in some cases."
I guess it is ok for the administration to use a low standard of evidence(Challabi) to start a war, but not for anyone else to talk about it? Actually, I agree with you. These reports are unsubstantiated, and hearsay. They haven't been verified, and don't have corraborating evidence to support it. I just wish that those that support the administration and use that criteria to dismiss those opposing the war, would use the same criteria when examining the evidence supporting the war.
Classic. It reminds me how Bush administration insisted it was Iraq's responsibility to prove it didn't have WMD.
that wasn't the Bush administration that said that...that was the United Nations' standard. it's a typical standard in courts, as well, in cases where someone is required to "make an accounting."
Uh, nice try at trying to change the subject. wnes- US troops are looting houses for cash in Iraq!!!!! ima- Really? Prove this is true. wnes- Prove it's NOT true. ima- You made the accusation, the burden on proof is on you. wnes- Whatever, NO BLOOD FOR OIL!
Actually it goes like this: me: someone claimed "US troops are not conducting themselves in a way to win hearts and minds of Iraqis, for instance ..." you: why should we believe it if it was from anti-war blogger me: I'll take your claim over theirs if you can disprove it you: why do I need to disprove it? (but refused to do anything substantative to buttress your claim) me: typical Bushism
OK, I'll use your (flawed) logic. I got an email from someone saying Bill Clinton ordered 9/11. PROVE IT'S NOT TRUE!
Hey, the portion of the article you particularly rejected was not an opinion of the blogger, but a direct quote from a spokesman of Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari (a US ally I believe?). Take that to him! Moreover, if you feel outraged about all the conspiracies and lies on US military misconduct, why don't you do something more concrete, for example urging Congress to stop all the "smear campaigns" against our troops? It would be more noble than your typical "I don't believe anything from antiwar blogger" denial.
i believe it. i thinks it's do to the fact that he and bush sr. signed that huge contract with nike to do commercials together.
me: "Buh-bye." you: "I wanna say something important!" me: "Buh-bye." you: "I'm Joe Carry-on, let me through, I'm a big man. I don't check nothing." me: "Buh-bye." you: "I'm cool, I wear a suit, no way am I a loser." Well, you're wrong, now buh-bye!
wnes, I am your side about the issues, but... It is the job of the person who makes the charge to prove the charges. You have provided some type of evidence, that is kind of shoddy. Those that disagree can shoot down that evidence or offer contrary evidence etc. You did have good point about the part in disagreement coming from the al-Jaafari. That part is real evidence, and nobody has discredited it at all. I wouldn't want the good points you brought up to be ignored while people argued over who had to prove or disprove what.
