Shameful reactions to Haditha 'atrocity'

From http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_859.shtml


Shameful reactions to Haditha 'atrocity'

Linda S. Heard June 1st 2006

In last week's column, I highlighted the massacre of innocent men, women and children, carried out by up to a dozen Marines in the Iraqi town of Haditha. In it, I quoted Representative John Murtha, a highly decorated ex-Marine, who is distressed at the unprovoked attack.
Since, a US government official has described the Marines involved as suffering "a total breakdown in morality and leadership." Three commanders have already been suspended, while three perpetrators may face trial for murder.

Nine others are likely to be tried for dereliction of duty and filing a false report. Moreover, photographs taken by US Military Intelligence have emerged showing the terrible barbarity of this premeditated revenge attack.

John Murtha has now gone a step further suggesting there has been a cover-up. "This investigation should have been over two or three weeks afterward and it should have been made public," he says, adding, "This is worse than Abu Ghraib."
An article titled, "Revealed: How US Marines Massacred 24," published in the New York Times, reads, "One [photograph] portrays an Iraqi mother and young child, kneeling on the floor, as if in prayer. They have been shot dead at close range," Others, says the paper, show victims "shot execution-style in the head and chest in their homes."

There are also gruesome and highly disturbing photographs circulating on the Internet, purporting to have been taken at the murder sites.
The responses to my last week's column, mostly from Americans, were shocking. Whereas one might have expected abhorrence at what is being described as Iraq's "new Mai Lai" or at the very least regret, most of the emails I received were from individuals out to attack the messenger, in this case me.

Notwithstanding that the story was published in the Army Times, under the headline "Murtha: Marines killed Haditha civilians in cold blood," most of my critics were either in complete denial that such an incident could have been carried out by their nation's finest, berating me for what they perceived as "anti-Americanism." Some were venomous, while others contained unprintable language.
One email under the subject line: "Good luck and Good Night," whose author used either a fake email address or closed the account directly after he wrote to me, read thus.
"Today you wrote that nine-year-old Eman Waleed said that everyone was asleep when US soldiers entered. The next passage says her dad was reading the Quran. Hmm, what shall we make of that? Everyone was slaughtered except Eman.

"Can it be that the soldiers' trigger fingers were scratched (or maybe they ran out of bullets) just in time to spare Eman's life. (This) smells of the 'Qurans being flushed down the toilet at Guantanamo Bay' thing, all over again."
Another emailer, who presumably hails from Florida, described my depiction of the slaughter as "completely absurd and believable only to the psychotic members of society who seem to live in a reality all their own."

In the meantime, my column had been posted on a well-known right-wing American website, where it attracted 119 comments. Oddly, none of them displayed any hint of disquiet over the behaviour of the Marines under investigation. Rather, their outrage was reserved for John Murtha and yours truly.
One poster's reaction was to "nuke the Middle East," adding "thank you very much Dishonourable Rep. Jack Murtha." He was later to write "if you can't stand behind our troops, stand in front of them."
A few of his co-posters rushed to the website of Murtha's Republican challenger Diana Irey to donate campaign funds.

The fact that this murderous troop has the support of even those 119 posters is worrisome. Surely, nobody should defend the indefensible based on some false notion of patriotism.
Military personnel should act as ambassadors for their country and behave according to international rules of law and the Geneva Conventions that were drawn up as a result of atrocities committed during the Second World War. There should be a difference between real soldiers and ruthless thugs with public opinion the final arbiter.

If the public, as represented by the 119 posters on the Free Republic website, condones such behaviour or seeks to excuse it, then not only is its members giving their country's soldiers a license to kill arbitrarily, they are altering the fundamental psyche of their nation.
To quote a well-known rationalist intellectual, Felix Adler, "Love of country is like love of women -- he loves her best who seeks to bestow on her the highest good."
The "Freepers" -- as members of the Free Republic website have come to be known -- may also like to contemplate the words of theologian Howard Thurman who said, "During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable, even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism."

In short, people who glorify soldiers who purposefully assassinate women and small children are as misguided as those who glorify the blowing up of crowded buses, trains and marketplaces.
Does the donning of a uniform render its wearer impervious to justice? The Nuremberg trials indicate not.

From the standpoint of objective morality, there is not one hairsbreadth of difference -- apart from sheer scale -- between the men who slaughtered children at a school in Beslan and those who forced their way into Iraqi homes in order to shoot 2- and 3-year old toddlers.
Murtha says he "will not excuse murder." With respect to the opinions of those who emailed me last week, and to the 119 posters on the Free Republic site, neither do I and neither should they.