Bad Apple Defence

[#juan]

Massacre at Haditha: Return of the Bad Apple Defense
Posted by: lex on http://PEJ.org Sunday, May 28, 2006 - 11:39 PM


Peace News
Massacre at Haditha: Return of the Bad Apple Defense

Feral Scholar - Stan Goff - The Guardian Unlimited ran a story today about the Haditha massacre. It called the Marines who slaughtered two dozen civilians “rogues.” The bad apple defense is back. We need a new legal precedent that disallows this defense; but then again we need to put the whole war and the system that spawned it in the dock.

www.stan goff.com


Rough Apple

Stan Goff

Feral Scholar
May 28, 2006

We take a bunch of boys and raise them to believe that their sexuality is associated with the ability to menace in order to get respect. We sit them in front of television and films to see how killing resolves problems and guns attract adoring erotically objectified women. We send them to school to learn American Origin Myths about the glory of genocide. We encourage Boy Scouts where they can learn military discipline. We segregate them into a youth culture where gender policing kills their empathy. And when they haven’t been specially prepared by Daddy’s net worth for law school or medicine or management where they can sublimate all that aggression, we give them the option to work at Mickey-D’s or join the fucking Marine Corps — where, by the way, they will learn to fight dragons (you saw that ad, didn’t you) and wear spiffy uniforms.

Then we get them in Basic Training or Boot Camp, where during bayonet training they learn to holler “Kill, kill, kill!” Or “Blood, blood, blood makes the grass grow!” Instead of merti badges like they got if there were Scouts, they can earn new badges.

Then we prepare them to fight a war for lies; and prepare them with intelligence briefings and cultural indoctrination that are racist drivel, delivered often as not by a Staff Sergeant with a pickled brain who watches “Cops” in his off time. When they get to the war, there really are people who are trying to shoot them (they have just set foot on these other people’s land with guns, fercrissake… what would WE do?).

So they arrive with aggression trained for a lifetime, surrounded by masculnity police (their peers) to ensure when the time comes they show no mercy, then add fear and shake well. Their job is to beat down this population. They know it. The population knows it. it is apparent they are enemies, and since all of these people are hostile to the Marines, and the Marines have alreay learned to typify them with the term hajji (something one step down from a Homo sapien), and presto bingo alakazam! Race war. Then one of the ungrateful Arabs detonates a roadside bomb, killing one of these people who have been given the mission to beat down the same Arabs. He, of course, is long gone. That’s how a mechanical ambush works. Duh.

These Marines have already been — collectively — slaughtering civilians at an alarming rate, often in ones and twos, but in Fallujah they did so by the bushels, often as they lay abed or cowered in corners trying to hide.

So someone will have to explain to me why, after this mechanical ambush killed one Marine, there was something out of the ordinary enough to be categorized as “rogue” when these de-empathized, militaristic boys from an imperial society, freshly trained to holler “Kill, kill, kill!” leapt out and shot down 24 “hajjis,” male and female, all ages.

I’ll tell you what the rogue aspect of this was. Someone got the pictures. Just like Abu Ghraib. Anyone who thinks this was a single instance of the intentional killing of civilians, I have beachfront property to sell you in Odessa, Texas.

The one Marine who was killed will now be among the congealed and faceless mass of idealized war dead to be celebrated for their willingness to kill and die for the empire this weekend. There will be no day for the dead of Katrina. There is no day for those lost on The Middle Passage. There is no day for Wounded Knee or the Trail of Tears. There is no day for the 9-11 of women killed each year by men in the US, mostly those who claim to love them. And there will be no day to celebrate or remember the lives of those lost at My Lai or Haditha.

This day that in yet another way confers such immense and often unearned public esteem on those who bear arms for the state is part of the reason that those boys were raised the way they were, and led inexorably to them behaving the way they did. And they were not rogues.

They were us.

 

[#juan]

As long as people think the whole problem is just a few bad apples, it will never change. This was not the first time American soldiers intentionally killed innocent people. It is not even the forty first time. As long as soldiers think of all Arabs as a bunch of worthless hajjis these things will continue to happen.

 

[Jay]

As long as soldiers think of all Arabs as a bunch of worthless hajjis these things will continue to happen.

You mean like in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia?

Who really has the problem here I wonder?

 

[Jersay]

I agree totally with Juan in this. Bad apple defences is not good. It does not get at the route case of the issue.

 

[Mogz]

You can disagree all you want, but the simple fact is that you cannot lump every man or woman in uniform in with these individuals. It's a question of morals, and sadly some individuals on this planet do not have them. You can say that letting them watch violent movies, play violent video games, or that racist ignorance caused this. I watch the same movies, and play the same games, and i'll be the first to admit i've made a few dirka jokes in the last few years, however I know the person I am, and i'd never murder innocents, especially when i've been deployed to another nation. I believe strongly a soldier is trained to make a difference, and murdering innocents is the complete antithesis of the profession. I've gone through the mental training. I still remember my weapons instructor in basic training tell us the role of the C7A1 Assault Rifle:

This rifle is designed with one purpose. To kill. If you use this weapon, you will be aiming at another living being, and you will be trying to KILL that individual. No pitty. No remorse. You will kill them with it.

Was he right? Very. Did it somehow affect me in to thinking taking a life was meaningless? No. The same is the case with U.S. Marines. Yes, the killed civilians, and they'll do it again, in fact there is not a nation on this planet that is free from the guilt of murdering innocents. The Brits did it extensively in Northern Ireland, we did it in Somalia, the Australians did it in East Timor. War is well, and trying to sugar coat it, or find some issue with society behind the killing is pointless. Yes, innocents were murdered in Iraq, I find it appalling, especially when those people have already suffered enough. I will not however lump those who committ war crimes in with every Soldier, Sailor, Airman, and Marine in the United States. That is a grave injustice.

 

[darkbeaver]

The fact is that this type of murder is common in conflict zones, and common to war in general, we're only hearing about this one because it got to the press, which it wasn't supposed to , embedded journalists are the control method of the day. Falluja is another case in point that has been underreported in the western press, hundreds of civilians are thought to have been sniped by the American army, ambulances and hospitals were targeted whole city blocks were blown up with the people still in them and aid trucks and personel were kept from the victims for days while they died. These are acts that bear collective guilt, it's just part of the terrorism of war, those who commit the acts are terrorists, a uniform exempts nobody.

 

[aeon]

As long as soldiers think of all Arabs as a bunch of worthless hajjis these things will continue to happen.

You mean like in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia?

Who really has the problem here I wonder?

That is coward and retarded at his best, by changing quote of a user to fit your view, at least change it, and put your name under it, if you are a man.

 

[Jay]

WTF are you talking about?

 

[aeon]

WTF are you talking about?

You change the quote of #juan, and still put his name under it, to me , it is a coward act, i just had to say it.

 

[Jay]

Well your wrong...it is copied word for word.

 

[elevennevele]

Re: RE: Bad Apple Defence

Was he right? Very. Did it somehow affect me in to thinking taking a life was meaningless? No. The same is the case with U.S. Marines. Yes, the killed civilians, and they'll do it again, in fact there is not a nation on this planet that is free from the guilt of murdering innocents. The Brits did it extensively in Northern Ireland, we did it in Somalia, the Australians did it in East Timor. War is well, and trying to sugar coat it, or find some issue with society behind the killing is pointless. Yes, innocents were murdered in Iraq, I find it appalling, especially when those people have already suffered enough. I will not however lump those who committ war crimes in with every Soldier, Sailor, Airman, and Marine in the United States. That is a grave injustice.

Mogz, these cases are getting extreme with US forces. The frequency, the types of atrocity, and the sense of apathy or continual coverup by the government that is in the end responsible for the policy; it's not defensible, it's not isolated, it’s not unique to the US forces, and it’s not comparable to actions of other western democracies of this age.

Unless you tell me you've been embedded with the US forces in Iraq and fighting alongside them, which you shouldn't be, considering our noninvolvement, you can't tell everyone how ethical the US are being with their war in Iraq. Also, times were suppose to have changed from the learning experience of Vietnam. If the US again repeats atrocity when they have history to know better, then there is no defense for them.

Neither does past guilt of anyone, or your history lesson justify new guilt in an age where we ‘should know better’. Way better.

You are speaking out for them simply for sharing the uniform but not the Iraq involvement.

 

[Jersay]

I read a news report discussing how it was government policy to kill refugees or civilians in South Korea during the Korean War.

So I don't think it is just a few bad apples. It is parts of the military officers and NCMs that allow fanatical f*ers to go around and resulting in deaths of civilians.

 

[darkbeaver]

The other wholly predictable reaction was voiced by Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who told reporters that the Haditha massacre was a case of a few bad apples, an isolated incident -- just as he had said after the abuses at Abu Ghraib were revealed. "I don't want the actions of one squad in one city on one morning to be used to symbolize or characterize or tar the actions of our great troops," he said.

But the truth is that the story is unique only in that the evidence that a terrible crime took place appears to be too great for "plausible deniability."

Consider just a few reports:

# A team of eight Amnesty International staffers reported on a host of abuses by coalition forces, including the killing of two unarmed kids -- one 12 years old -- during house to house searches.

"Many of the coalition soldiers and military police engaged in law enforcement do not have basic skills and tools in civilian policing," Curt Goering, a member of the Amnesty team in Iraq, noted.

# The Associated Press reported that "Iraq's U.N. ambassador accused U.S. Marines of killing his unarmed young cousin in what appeared to be 'cold blood'" during another house search in Anbar province. The ambassador, Samir Sumaidaie, wrote that the troops had smiled after the "killing of an unarmed innocent civilian." He believed it was "a crime that may be repeated up and down Al-Anbar."

# In early 2004, senior British commanders condemned "American military tactics in Iraq as heavy-handed and disproportionate." One officer told reporters "the view of the British chain of command is that the Americans' use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They don't see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen." (The Brits have been accused of their own share of crimes in Iraq.)

# In April of 2004, there were widespread reports -- in the foreign press -- that civilians were targeted during the "Siege of Fallujah." The Pentagon was outraged when journalists reported the number of civilians killed in the city. One report quoted Dr. Rafa Hayad al-Issawi, director of the city's main hospital, saying "the dead mostly included women, children and elderly." The Iraqi minister of health, Khudair Abbas, confirmed that U.S. forces had shot at ambulances -- in Fallujah and elsewhere -- and condemned the acts as possible war crimes. Snipers who served in Fallujah told the Los Angeles Times that "there might not have been such a 'target-rich' battlefield" since the World War II battle for Stalingrad.

# In March, Knight-Ridder reported that senior Iraqi police officials had accused U.S. soldiers of executing 11 Iraqi civilians, including four children and a 6-month-old baby, in a raid near the city of Balad. The local police chief, Col. Farouq Hussein, said that the civilians had all been shot in the head. "It's a clear and perfect crime," he said.

Journalists like Dahr Jamail and Robert Fisk have all reported on other instances of civilians caught in the sites of American gunners. And these stories don't capture the "collateral damage" done by bombs and missiles.

None of this is to suggest that U.S. troops are a bunch of bloodthirsty maniacs. These are
www.alternet.org/waroniraq/36752/

 

[#juan]

You mean like in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia?

Who really has the problem here I wonder?

Don't tell me you are presenting Kuwait and Saudi as some sort of shining example. Both countries are run by sleazy, American supported, dictators. This is a typical, non sequitur, one line, reply that we've come to expect from the right wing nuts.

The point of this topic is the constant use of the "bad apple defence" to justify the mass killings in places like My Lai, and Haditha. Faluga(sp) is another example of the atrocities that have become commonplace. If I went over all the news stories of Iraq since the invasion, I would find that hundreds of civilians have been shot by Americans for one reason or another. The idea that all these killings were done by just a few "bad apples" is just absurd.

 

[Curiosity]

Juan

Watch your language.

 

[Jay]

This is a typical, non sequitur, one line, reply that we've come to expect from the right wing nuts.

Well then WTF is this? ( I know you won’t respond because of your holier than thou attitude)

As long as soldiers think of all Arabs as a bunch of worthless hajjis these things will continue to happen.

This is the typical one line, non sequitur, made up BS we have come to expect from leftists who have nothing else to back up their outrageous claims.

Your trying (very poorly I might add) to label the entire US army as Arab haters. Your wrong again. The US Army has protected Arabs states, but that doesn’t fit in to your race view of the world.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/attack/43546_chaplains20.shtml

 

[#juan]

Maybe I should have included "worthless hajjis with oil". "Worthless hajjis without oil" are called Palestinians. If there was no oil, the Americans wouldn't be there at all.

 

[Jay]

I think your prejudice effects your reason.

 

[#juan]

What May Come of the Haditha Massacre?

by Karen Kwiatkowski




CNN’s Wolf Blitzer again bumbles into old news and proudly reports it. He’s shocked, shocked, that Marines in Haditha murdered as many as 24 Iraqi civilians in cold blood last November and then tried to cover it up.

Also shocked is Senator John Warner, one of many war-loving old bastards residing comfortably in the US Capitol. Warner, icon of the aging, do nothing and morally challenged Senate that has cursed this country throughout the late 20th and early 21st century, looked very serious today after being briefed by the Pentagon brass on a horrendous bit of terroristic brutality committed by US Marines in the name of freedom, democracy, human rights, and anti-terrorism.

Warner, and McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden all stand in sharp contrast to another aging politician, Representative John Murtha, who has single-handedly made what happened in Haditha a major domestic news story. Murtha has been willing to act morally in the face of grave political danger. God bless him,



link

 

[darkbeaver]

The purpose of armed forces is to terrorize the enemy ,and the enemys civilian population, long ago the targeting of the enemy at home became the norm, in fact it has been the norm since the beginning of warfare. In our perpetual efforts to sanitize war we consistantly have used the uniform to excuse the excesses of war. While we are taught that the terrorist is the enemy, the truth is very different, the civilian
and the domestic community are the prime targets. And this is as it should be, they work in the factorys they produce the food they make it possible to conduct war, therefore we can see the justification for the WTC destruction, while that event was pivital andcommunicated over a wide spectrum it resulted in only 3000 deaths this cannot even begin to approach the carnage and millions destroyed by the empire in the last sixty years.
While the events in this act of murder are horrible,it's nothing new , they will be swept under the rug quickly enough to preserve the purity of the empire and the pricks who live in it and love it.