April 6, 2010

• Collateral Murder

  Six.

  This video was leaked through WikiLeaks a site that has broken numerous impressive stories. Amongst the documents they've leaked include:
  -the Climate Scientist Emails
  -the Standard Operating Manual for Guantanamo
  -offshore loan documents from Iceland
  -documents pertaining to toxic dumping off the coast of Africa
  -documents showing the US government's plan to destroy wikileaks
  -microsoft's global criminal compliance handbook which details what personal information they collect about people
  -CIA reports of plans to figure out how best to manipulate public opinion in France and Germany
  (most of these come from this)

  To date none of wikileaks documents or videos to my knowledge has ever been shown to be a fake. The staff of wikileaks researches and documents every story before they release them.  The video below was recently confirmed to be authentic by the US military.

  Here is the video. It is one of the most disturbing things I've seen in a while pertaining to the war in Iraq.
  

  Some things not mentioned in the video that are important to note:
  1. According to wikileaks, the quality of the video is significantly worse than what the people would have seen had they been there. There was considerable degradation in the decryption process.
  2. At the time of the incident Reuters tried to get this video released and was denied.
  3. This was the Pentagon's cover story as reported by the New York Times via Dan Froomkin

  "The American military said in a statement late Thursday that 11 people had been killed: nine insurgents and two civilians. According to the statement, American troops were conducting a raid when they were hit by small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. The American troops called in reinforcements and attack helicopters. In the ensuing fight, the statement said, the two Reuters employees and nine insurgents were killed.

  "There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force," said Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, a spokesman for the multinational forces in Baghdad."

  4. According to wikileaks, what had actually happened is that unconfirmed gunfire was reported in the vicinity some time earlier. They didn't know the source at all and for all they knew it could have been a car backfiring. The military sent in the helicopters afterward to investigate.
  5. The FULL video is available on the wikileaks site and was released prior to the smaller edited version I've posted.
  6. In the FULL video there is a third attack by the same helicopter within the same hour as the two displayed above. In this third attack missiles were fired into a building. Wikileaks' investigation found that there were at least two families inside who were killed.
  7. According to wikileaks there was only one person amongst the eight men killed in the first encounter who was armed and he was not armed with an AK47.
  8. The children who were wounded survived and there are pictures available of them online.

  You can learn by watching today's DemocracyNow coverage of the incident. Or read more at Glenn Greenwald's blog who has been talking about the story for the last few days.

  Some of my own observations:

  Notice how throughout every step of the encounter the soldiers frame their report in such a way as to increase the likelihood that their superiors will give them the ok to fire. It seemed like they wanted to be able to kill these people.

  For example, in the first encounter they see two people that MIGHT have guns. One of them has a camera, and another is talking on a cell phone.  None of them are shooting at anybody or even involved in any kind of conflict with one another or anyone. Nobody is pointing weapons at the helicopter. Yet the soldiers call in that they see five or six individuals with AK47s and a possible RPG.

  The second even more glaring example is when the van pulls up. The soldiers describe the van as coming "to pick up bodies and weapons".  They make the van out to be scavengers or possible terrorists. When in reality as the video plainly shows the men were trying to pick up the wounded individual not "the bodies". 

  It strikes me as entirely possible that by the second incident the soldiers involved knew that they had done something wrong and wanted to leave no evidence or witnesses behind. They seemed almost panicked when it seemed like an Iraqi civilian might take the one remaining wounded somewhere to get help. They beg for an order to shoot. Similarly the one soldier wanted the wounded camera man to pickup a weapon earlier so he could shoot him. It seemed like they wanted to leave no witnesses.

  Now don't get me wrong. I don't think the soldiers themselves are solely to blame any more than I did with Abu Gharaib. And it's obviously easy to second guess here from the comfort of our homes. No. It's their commanders that create this environment that justifies this behavior that deserve the lion's share of the blame. And even beyond them it's the civilian leaders who brought us into this war and don't set the expectations from the top level down that encourage better behavior.

  The soldiers are doing what they were trained to do. They've desensitized themselves to brutal violence because that's what they have to do. That's what happens during war. We know that human beings all kinds of normal regular people are capable of truly horrible things when put into unusual circumstances. There's a boatload of psychological literature to that effect. Environment matters a lot.

  It also occurs to me that as many of the apologists who are trying to excuse this behavior keep saying, the context here matters a lot. This was at the height of the surge when violence in Baghdad was at an extreme high. It's entirely possible, maybe even likely that at this time there was enormous pressure being placed on these soldiers to "get results". They were likely in effect "unleashed" with a mandate to do whatever is necessary to maintain the peace. It's not surprising at all that some of them engaged in brutal methods. Not justifiable in the least, but not surprising. It seems likely that one of the ways the "surge" worked was by having US helicopters out over any area even suspected of having hostiles shooting anybody who moved or gathered around in public places. That kind of terror would undoubtedly reduce violence levels. But does that make it right? I don't think so. It means many civilian casualties.

  In the video it certainly seems as if the soldiers and their commanding officers are somewhat nonchalant about it all. That matters to me less though than the actions themselves. I really don't care what people laugh about when they're in brutal dangerous situations. I don't think it's wrong to have a bleak sense of humor and I think there's also a pressing need for people to desensitize themselves somehow to what they are doing in order to do the job of being a soldier. It's repulsive to civilians but not something that would make them liable for anything.

  However, what this nonchalant seeming attitude does seem to suggest is that this was perhaps not an uncommon kind of engagement.  Engagements like this, though hopefully not as extreme, could be happening every day in Iraq and Afghanistan. We're just not seeing it here in the United States. We're getting a light weight propagandized version of the war. I'm pretty sure the people in the Middle East are seeing this though. They probably see this reports of killings like these all the time. Some likely have reasonable explanations that show no wrong doings. Others undoubtedly though are much much harder to justify or even understand like this video. It just seems downright immoral.

  There are other stories being released lately about immoral US soldier behaviors and even worse behaviors by independent military contractors who would not be in these countries were it not for United States involvement. I won't bore you with going into the big huge list but there's tons of them.

  On Jeremy Scahill's twitter account he notes that there's also a LONG history of the United States killing journalists like they did in this incident. Here's what he tweeted:

  "Everytime the US kills journalists, there is a sickening silence/justification from big media. #collateralmurder #wikileaks"
  
  "The US killed a different Reuters journo in 2003 in Iraq, Mazen Dana, saying his camera was thought to be a RPG"
  
  "The US bombed the Palestine Hotel killing two journos, saying they thought gunmen in hotel were firing at US soldiers."
  
  "The US killed Tariq Ayoub of al Jazeera in Baghdad and bombed Jazeera in Afghanistan and Basra."
  
  "April 23 is 11th anniversary of Bill Clinton's bombing of Radio Television Serbia, killing 16 media workers"
  
  "But we don't talk about how the US has a long track record of killing journalists and media workers."
  
  "Iran/N Korea hold US journos--huge news. USA kills journos=silence, justification."
  
  "The US held al Jazeera journalist Sami al Hajj at Gitmo for more than 6 yrs w no charge."
  
  "The US shot Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena in Iraq."
  
  "If some Afghans so much as spilled Tom Friedman's capuccino, they'd be bombed off map. US kills Reuters journos, not a story"
  
  "Ok, end of rant for now"

  And all of this is just more reasons why war is not justifiable.  It turns monsters into regular human beings and taints everyone involved.  The real criminals here are the civilian leaders who brought us into these wars and continue to refuse to do anything to get us out of them.

  Some will try to argue that I am hurting our troops by talking about this video or that I am dishonoring them.

  But there is no honor whatsoever in this video or what happened there. There's no honor in any of the civilian deaths we've seen and heard reported. This is not morally justifiable. This is happening because we are sending kids out with overwhelming force and little guidance into foreign lands. It's an idiotic system that causes countless deaths and harm to everyone involved. And for as long as it continues unabated, we are all responsible for it.

  People say the United States has the best and most well trained and most moral and civilized army in the history of the world. If that's true, then they need to prove it. That means, NOT covering up mistakes. That means punishing the people involved AND their superiors to disincentive mistakes like this from happening again. And likewise punishing the people who cover it up. Transparency is essential for any institution for us to know that they are doing good.  Because as evidence has shown time and time again, it is impossible to simply take the Pentagon's word for it.

  That's not to say they shouldn't publicize the good things our military does as well. They absolutely should. But we need to know exactly what's going on in our name. We need to know what we've created so we can put pressure on our leaders to make changes in order to make things better.

  So Thank God for Wikileaks.

  • 8:03 pm
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