Civilian deaths send top Marine to Iraq: Commandant expected to remind Marines to ‘do what is right’
An ongoing military investigation supports allegations that U.S. Marines in November killed 24 innocent Iraqi civilians without being provoked, senior Pentagon sources said Friday. Charges, including murder, could soon be filed against Marines allegedly involved, the sources said.
For those of who came of age during the Vietnam War and remember the My Lai massacre, what is alleged to have taken place in Haditha, Iraq has a distinct deja vu feel to it.
The one thing that is indisputable is that 24 innocent Iraqi civilians from Haditha are dead. Beyond that, the fog of war seems to be clouding the truth. Unfortunately, that fog may be augmented by a concerted effort to conceal what actually happened. And it’s beginning to appear that US Marines may well have killed Iraqi civilians in cold blood. Sadly, you had to know that this was bound to happen eventually….
American soldiers and marines are trained killers. The problem with training someone to kill is that it’s not a switch one merely flips on and off as needed. Particularly in a dangerous situation in which a soldier knows he is surrounded by an enemy who wants to kill him, the stress created by living under that threat can do strange things to people. Yes, the problem with training people to kill is that sometimes they will do exactly that- at a time and place where no threat exists. Then what?
An Iraqi human rights group, Hammurabi Human Rights Association, caught the scene on video, which was obtained by Time magazine. A criminal investigation ensued. Time Warner is the parent company of Time magazine and CNN.
Last week, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pennsylvania, a decorated retired Marine colonel who is opposed to the war in Iraq, said the investigation of the Haditha deaths would show that the civilian toll was higher than 15 and that the Marines killed them “in cold blood.” He said he received his information from U.S. commanders.
“There was no firefight. There was no IED that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood,” Murtha said. “They actually went into the houses and killed women and children.”
The Marine battalion commander and two company commanders have been relieved of their commands and reassigned to staff posts at Camp Pendleton, California.
The question now is what happens next? Do the Marines come clean and admit to something profoundly embarrassing and horrific, or do they continue to fudge the truth and deny what is becoming increasingly evident?
No reasonable person would believe that this sort of incident is a regular thing, but when it does happen, it needs to be owned up to and, as much as is possible, made right. Obviously, it’s not going to be possible to bring murdered Iraqis back to life. That fact cannot be altered, but we can attempt to determine what happened, what went wrong, and what might possibly be done to help ensure that a similar incident does not happen in the future. Those responsible for the murder of innocent civilians must be brought to justice swiftly, and something must be done to make it clear to Iraqis that Americans do not and will not tolerate cold-blooded murder by their armed forces.
“We do not employ force just for the sake of employing force. We use lethal force only when justified, proportional and, most importantly, lawful,” [Gen. Michael] Hagee [commandant of the Marine Corps] said, according to a copy of his speech released by the Marine Corps. “This is the American way of war. We must regulate force and violence, we only damage property that must be damaged and we protect the non-combatants we find on the battlefield.”
And we must determine how we can keep this sort of cold-blooded massacre from happening in the future, for unless we can do so, the rest of the world may well be justified in seeing the American military as little more than indscriminate, cold-blooded killers. Perhaps perception shouldn’t be reality in this case, but it will be regardless of what should or should not happen. Only we have it within our power to prove that we can learn the lessons of history. So it was with My Lai, and so it should be with Haditha.
