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Why Haditha isn't My Lai.
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee

Joined: 25 May 2003

Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 6:51 pm Post subject: Why Haditha isn't My Lai.

Quote:

fighting words
The Hell of War
Why Haditha isn't My Lai.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, June 5, 2006, at 4:47 PM ET

Unjust though the assumption may prove to be, let us imagine that the Marines of Kilo Company did indeed crack up and cut loose in Haditha that day. Something like this has certainly been waiting to happen. I wrote in this space almost a year ago about a warning delivered to the U.S. commanders in Iraq by their British counterpart Gen. Michael Jackson. He told them that their "zero tolerance" force-protection measures, which allow for the use of deadly fire if anyone comes too close, ran a serious risk of losing Iraq. (Recent clumsy skirmishes in Kabul, though they do not involve any allegation of deliberate murder, make the same point in a different way.)

It's thus a bit harder than one might like to argue that a Haditha-type incident would have been an "isolated" one. The combat in Iraq and Afghanistan is overwhelmingly political, and there is no soldier who doesn't know that it's imperative for this reason�to say nothing of any moral objections�to use his or her firepower with exact discrimination. If this principle is not being meticulously observed, then it means that there is a rupture in training and discipline, which would be a serious enough story in its own right.

However, all the glib talk about My Lai is so much propaganda and hot air. In Vietnam, the rules of engagement were such as to make an atrocity�the slaughter of the My Lai villagers took almost a day rather than a white-hot few minutes�overwhelmingly probable. The ghastliness was only stopped by a brave officer who prepared his chopper-gunner to fire. In those days there were no precision-guided missiles, but there were "free-fire zones," and "body counts," and other virtual incitements to psycho officers such as Capt. Medina and Lt. Calley. As a consequence, a training film about My Lai�"if anything like this happens, you have really, truly screwed up"�has been in use for U.S. soldiers for some time.

The other difference, one ought not need add, is that in My Lai the United States was fighting the Vietcong. A recent article about the captured diary of a slain female Vietnamese militant (now a best seller in Vietnam) makes it plain that we were vainly attempting to defeat a peoples' army with a high morale and exalted standards. I, for one, will not have them insulted by any comparison to the forces of Zarqawi, the Fedayeen Saddam, and the criminal underworld now arrayed against us. These depraved elements are the Iraqi Khmer Rouge. They have two methods of warfare. One is the use of random murder to create a sectarian and ethnic civil war�perhaps the most evil combination of tactics and strategy it is possible to imagine. The other is the attempt to alienate coalition soldiers from the population.

Even before the fall of Baghdad in 2003, Saddam's foreign minister, Naji Sabry, wrote a memo about how to combat the increasing fraternization between advancing Americans and Iraqi civilians. Send some suicide bombers to the scene, he recommended, and force a wedge between the two. The Americans would then learn to distrust anyone who approached. As with the foul policy above, the awful thing about this charming policy is that it works. Which leads us to one very important conclusion: Any coalition soldier who relieves his rage by discharging a clip is by definition doing Zarqawi's work for him, and even in a way obeying his orders. If anything justifies a court-martial, then surely that does.

It's not amusing to see fascist killers hiding behind human shields and then releasing obscene videos of the work that they do. Nor is it rewarding to clean up the remains of a comrade who has been charred and shredded by a roadside bomb. To be taunted while doing so must be unbearable. The humane George Orwell, writing of his life as a colonial policeman in Burma in Shooting an Elephant, told his readers that there were days when "I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest's guts." But he did not, in fact, succumb to this temptation. And the British were unwanted colonial occupiers in Burma, while the coalition forces are�until further notice�the guests of Iraq's first-ever elected government and the executors of a U.N.-mandated plan for the salvage and reconstruction of the country.

There is no respectable way of having this both ways. Those who say that the rioters in Baghdad in the early days should have been put down more forcefully are accepting the chance that a mob might have had to be fired on to protect the National Museum. Those who now wish there had been more troops are also demanding that there should have been more targets and thus more body bags. The lawyers at Centcom who refused to give permission to strike Mullah Omar's fleeing convoy in Afghanistan�lest it by any chance be the wrong convoy of SUVs speeding from Kabul to Kandahar under cover of night�are partly responsible for the deaths of dozens of Afghan teachers and international aid workers who have since been murdered by those who were allowed to get away. If Iraq had been stuffed with WMD warehouses and stiff with al-Qaida training camps, there would still have been an Abu Ghraib. Only pacifists�not those who compare the Iraqi killers to the Minutemen�have the right to object to every casualty of war. And if the pacifists had been heeded, then Slobodan Milosevic, the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein would all still be in power�hardly a humanitarian outcome. People like to go on about the "fog" of war as well as the "hell" of it. Hell it most certainly is�but not always so foggy. Indeed, many of the dilemmas posed by combat can be highly clarifying, once the tone of righteous sententiousness is dropped.

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His most recent book is Thomas Jefferson: Author of America. His most recent collection of essays is titled Love, Poverty, and War.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2143011/
Copyright 2006 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

On the other hand

Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue

Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 7:47 pm Post subject:

Thanks for posting that, Joo. Hitchens is far and away the most eloquent spokesman for his side of the debate.

But I am curious about one thing. What do you think about this paragraph Joo?

Quote:

The other difference, one ought not need add, is that in My Lai the United States was fighting the Vietcong. A recent article about the captured diary of a slain female Vietnamese militant (now a best seller in Vietnam) makes it plain that we were vainly attempting to defeat a peoples' army with a high morale and exalted standards. I, for one, will not have them insulted by any comparison to the forces of Zarqawi, the Fedayeen Saddam, and the criminal underworld now arrayed against us. These depraved elements are the Iraqi Khmer Rouge. They have two methods of warfare. One is the use of random murder to create a sectarian and ethnic civil war�perhaps the most evil combination of tactics and strategy it is possible to imagine. The other is the attempt to alienate coalition soldiers from the population.

Do you share Hitchens regard for the Vietcong?

Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 7:49 pm Post subject:

On the other hand wrote:

Hitchens is far and away the most eloquent spokesman for his side of the debate.

His politics are a mystery to me...

Bulsajo

Joined: 16 Jan 2003

Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 8:02 pm Post subject:

ditto.

On the other hand

Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue

Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 8:43 pm Post subject:

Quote:

On the other hand wrote:
Hitchens is far and away the most eloquent spokesman for his side of the debate.

His politics are a mystery to me...

He is a liberal atheist who hates religion more than almost anything else in the world. But he currently regards the Muslim religion as more of a threat than other religions, so is now giving his tentative support to the War On Terror, despite the fact that many of the people leading that war are Christians.

bignate

Joined: 30 Apr 2003
Location: Hell's Ditch

Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 8:47 pm Post subject:

Gopher wrote:

On the other hand wrote:

Hitchens is far and away the most eloquent spokesman for his side of the debate.

His politics are a mystery to me...

Yah, he has that dialectical flip-flop thing in overdrive for sure Razz

....comes out with some interesting points.....

Enjoyed his essays though...

Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 8:49 pm Post subject:

On the other hand wrote:

Quote:

On the other hand wrote:
Hitchens is far and away the most eloquent spokesman for his side of the debate.

His politics are a mystery to me...

Ah.

So that is how he could write that diatribe against Kissinger and then support the wars in the Middle East.

On the other hand

Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue

Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 10:01 pm Post subject:

Quote:

Ah.

So that is how he could write that diatribe against Kissinger and then support the wars in the Middle East.

Precisely. And upon reflection, I should retract my use of the phrase "tentative support" to describe Hitchens' contribution to the war effort. "Enthusiastic edorsement" would be closer to the mark. (It is his support for Bush and Company in general that would best be described as tentative.)

The Onion had a pretty hilarious satire on Hitchens' post-911 image a while back. In order to fully appreciate the joke, you have to keep in mind Hitchens' pre-911 reputation as an erudite English intellectual.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27996

Hollywoodaction

Joined: 02 Jul 2004

Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 10:44 pm Post subject:

On the other hand wrote:

Thanks for posting that, Joo. Hitchens is far and away the most eloquent spokesman for his side of the debate.

But I am curious about one thing. What do you think about this paragraph Joo?

Quote:

Do you share Hitchens regard for the Vietcong?

You've watched too many Chuck Norris movies. Laughing

Just playing the devil's advocate here, but you think it's fair to take offense at his reference to the Vietcong while ignoring his attempt to associate the civilian victims of the American soldiers to Zarqawi and the Fedayeen Saddam?

Last edited by Hollywoodaction on Mon Jun 05, 2006 11:02 pm; edited 1 time in total

On the other hand

Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue

Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 10:50 pm Post subject:

Quote:

Just playing the devil's advocate here, but you think it's fare to take offense at his reference to the Vietcong

I personally don't agree with Hitchens' article. I'm assuming that Joo does though, so I'm curious as to whether he shares Hitchens' admiration for the Vietcong. That's all.

On the other hand

Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue

Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 10:56 pm Post subject:

I will say, though, that I question Hitchens' portrayal of the Vietcong as being light-years removed from the Iraqi insurgency. I'm no expert on these things, but I've heard stories about the VC employing and exploiting civilians in ways similar to what Hitchens' describes the insurgency as doing. In fact, I've been told that such tactics partially explain why the soldiers at My Lai behaved as they did.

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee

Joined: 25 May 2003

Posted: Tue Jun 06, 2006 4:59 am Post subject:

On the other hand wrote:

Thanks for posting that, Joo. Hitchens is far and away the most eloquent spokesman for his side of the debate.

But I am curious about one thing. What do you think about this paragraph Joo?

Quote:

Do you share Hitchens regard for the Vietcong?

I agree with him that Al Qaeda is far worse than the Vietcong.

On the other hand

Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue

Posted: Tue Jun 06, 2006 6:11 am Post subject:

Well Joo, he didn't just say that AQ is worse than the VC. He said that the VC was...

Quote:

a peoples' army with a high morale and exalted standards

So do you agree or disagree with this, Joo? I'm just curious.

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee

Joined: 25 May 2003

Posted: Tue Jun 06, 2006 6:22 am Post subject:

I disagree with Hitchens on the Vietcong, but are not nearly as bad as Al Qaeda. I am sure you don't agree on every point with those opinions you value.

deadman

Joined: 27 May 2006
Location: Suwon

Posted: Tue Jun 06, 2006 8:39 am Post subject:

I don't find anything disagreeable with the Hitchins article, but I'm having trouble working out exactly what the point of it is, or rather, what your point is Joo.

1st paragraph:

Quote:

Unjust though the assumption may prove to be, let us imagine that the Marines of Kilo Company did indeed crack up and cut loose in Haditha that day. Something like this has certainly been waiting to happen. I wrote in this space almost a year ago about a warning delivered to the U.S. commanders in Iraq by their British counterpart Gen. Michael Jackson. He told them that their "zero tolerance" force-protection measures, which allow for the use of deadly fire if anyone comes too close, ran a serious risk of losing Iraq. (Recent clumsy skirmishes in Kabul, though they do not involve any allegation of deliberate murder, make the same point in a different way.)

Ok, so the conditions are such that something like this has been "waiting to happen"

2nd paragraph:

Quote:

It's thus a bit harder than one might like to argue that a Haditha-type incident would have been an "isolated" one.

Ok, so it's not likely to be isolated.

Quote:

The combat in Iraq and Afghanistan is overwhelmingly political, and there is no soldier who doesn't know that it's imperative for this reason�to say nothing of any moral objections�to use his or her firepower with exact discrimination. If this principle is not being meticulously observed, then it means that there is a rupture in training and discipline, which would be a serious enough story in its own right.

Ok, it's a highly charged political situation.

Quote:

However, all the glib talk about My Lai is so much propaganda and hot air.

Sure, it might be used glibly, or for propaganda purposes,

Quote:

In Vietnam, the rules of engagement were such as to make an atrocity�the slaughter of the My Lai villagers took almost a day rather than a white-hot few minutes�overwhelmingly probable. The ghastliness was only stopped by a brave officer who prepared his chopper-gunner to fire. In those days there were no precision-guided missiles, but there were "free-fire zones," and "body counts," and other virtual incitements to psycho officers such as Capt. Medina and Lt. Calley. As a consequence, a training film about My Lai�"if anything like this happens, you have really, truly screwed up"�has been in use for U.S. soldiers for some time.

The other difference...

So the first difference is, My Lai was "overwhelmingly probable" and Hathida was "waiting to happen".
The point about the soldier being more aware of the political situation doesn't seem to sit with the stated zero tolerance conditions of engagement in Iraq, and would not be a significant inhibiting factor in the extreme conditions the troops routinely operate in.

Quote:

I'm not sure I agree with the uniform characterising of the VC as having exalted standards. That may be true in some cases, but VC units composed of uneducated peasants operating autonomously could devolve to the type brutal tactics seen in the Khmer Rouge.

That aside, he's saying that the enemy is worse than the one which created the conditions for My Lai - fair enough

Quote:

Even before the fall of Baghdad in 2003, Saddam's foreign minister, Naji Sabry, wrote a memo about how to combat the increasing fraternization between advancing Americans and Iraqi civilians. Send some suicide bombers to the scene, he recommended, and force a wedge between the two. The Americans would then learn to distrust anyone who approached. As with the foul policy above, the awful thing about this charming policy is that it works. Which leads us to one very important conclusion: Any coalition soldier who relieves his rage by discharging a clip is by definition doing Zarqawi's work for him, and even in a way obeying his orders. If anything justifies a court-martial, then surely that does.

It's definitely a tactic of the insurgency to discourage fraternisation with the enemy, and if they do so they will surely be killed.

Quote:

It's not amusing to see fascist killers hiding behind human shields and then releasing obscene videos of the work that they do. Nor is it rewarding to clean up the remains of a comrade who has been charred and shredded by a roadside bomb. To be taunted while doing so must be unbearable. The humane George Orwell, writing of his life as a colonial policeman in Burma in Shooting an Elephant, told his readers that there were days when "I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest's guts." But he did not, in fact, succumb to this temptation. And the British were unwanted colonial occupiers in Burma, while the coalition forces are�until further notice�the guests of Iraq's first-ever elected government and the executors of a U.N.-mandated plan for the salvage and reconstruction of the country.

Ok, so the article so far has established that the troops operate under extremely difficult conditions.

Quote:

There is no respectable way of having this both ways. Those who say that the rioters in Baghdad in the early days should have been put down more forcefully are accepting the chance that a mob might have had to be fired on to protect the National Museum. Those who now wish there had been more troops are also demanding that there should have been more targets and thus more body bags. The lawyers at Centcom who refused to give permission to strike Mullah Omar's fleeing convoy in Afghanistan�lest it by any chance be the wrong convoy of SUVs speeding from Kabul to Kandahar under cover of night�are partly responsible for the deaths of dozens of Afghan teachers and international aid workers who have since been murdered by those who were allowed to get away. If Iraq had been stuffed with WMD warehouses and stiff with al-Qaida training camps, there would still have been an Abu Ghraib. Only pacifists�not those who compare the Iraqi killers to the Minutemen�have the right to object to every casualty of war. And if the pacifists had been heeded, then Slobodan Milosevic, the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein would all still be in power�hardly a humanitarian outcome. People like to go on about the "fog" of war as well as the "hell" of it. Hell it most certainly is�but not always so foggy. Indeed, many of the dilemmas posed by combat can be highly clarifying, once the tone of righteous sententiousness is dropped.

I'm confused by this paragraph. I guess he's arrived at the point of his article, but I can't put my finger on it, unless it's to say we shouldn't be too quick to object to enemy casualties. What does that have to do with My Lai, especially sice he spent the article establishing that the conditions in Iraq make it more likely that atrocities will occur?

Is he saying we shouldn't get too upset about any massacres of civilians? Is he saying its not My Lai because it's not as bad, or it's worse?

What's your analysis of the article Joo? That is, assuming you read past the title. Why did you post it?

On a personal note, I feel damn sorry for that family that got killed. Fair enough US soldiers getting upset about the deaths of their comrades - who wouldn't. But what did they expect those civilians to do? Run out onto the road shouting "Look out there's a bomb!"? Maybe they were worried that them and their families would be killed by whoever was waiting to detonate the bomb. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

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