Originally Posted By gadzuux And why not? Hasn't the military damaged their own credibility enough for you yet? If not, what will it take? And if iraqi "civilians" are crying wolf about the US military, isn't that still significant? To me it signals that we do not enjoy the support of the very people we're trying to "liberate". They never asked for any of this. And regardless of what the theo-cons will tell you, there's a rationale argument that can be made that things are NOT better now than under saddam - they're worse. If this were just a short-term 'interim' disruption, that would be one thing. But there's nothing to indicate that this unrest is short-term. In fact, it could be reasonably stated that our very presence in iraq is perpetuating the insurgency, and it will last for as long as we're there, and then get worse when we're gone. The bush administration will tell you that no one could have predicted this situation, and hope that the dwindling numbers of faithful will believe it. Unfortunately plenty of people did predict it, and published it before we invaded. Sure, hindsight is 20/20, but foresight can be pretty accurate too. But they didn't want to hear any of it because they knew better. Most americans have seen through their lies and ineptitude by now, but that 30% is still clinging to the mythos that america can do no wrong, and any evidence to the contrary can be waived off as the "liberal media" or "activist judges" or "left-wing whackos" or "commie pinkos". These are the people who are outraged at the press for daring to publish stories like haditha - they truly don't want to know. More to the point, they don't want anybody else to know - it messes with their simplistic black/white thinking. >> Even if events have some validity, it isn’t the military that is the problem, it is the terrorist form of combat they are having to deal with. << Agreed. And that traces back directly to the leadership that I keep harping about. This task is about "nation-building" and is not something that the military was ever trained to do. Nor are they suited for it. You wanna kill people - call in the marines, they're good at that. But if you want to forge a new nation out of the shattered remnants of an oppressive regime, that's not a task for tanks and bullets. And we're seeing the results of this miscalculatin on a daily basis.
Originally Posted By tiggertoo <<And why not? Hasn't the military damaged their own credibility enough for you yet? If not, what will it take?>> If you are referring to Abu Ghraib, I would say a few soldiers certainly have. But the US military consists of almost a million and a half service men and women. Even the safest cities in the world have a certain percentage of bad apples (albeit small). But as attractive as it may seems, the military shouldn’t be viewed as a monolith in the same way all Muslims shouldn’t be viewed as terrorists. <<And if iraqi "civilians" are crying wolf about the US military, isn't that still significant?>> But the question is, who is a true civilian (non-combatant) and an insurgent playing the role as a civilian non-combatant and whether is they are actual civilian making the claims or insurgents, terrorists impersonating Iraqi civilians? The lines are blurred as it is for the military, why would it be any different for us? <<These are the people who are outraged at the press for daring to publish stories like haditha - they truly don't want to know. More to the point, they don't want anybody else to know - it messes with their simplistic black/white thinking.>> You know I’m not one of those black and white people and I absolutely think cases of brutality should be investigated. My only concern is that treating the accusations as truth before the accounts have been validated ONLY serves the purpose of those who hate the US. And considering the likelihood for faux accounts by civilian impostures of US brutality, we should view these cases with a wary eye. <<And we're seeing the results of this miscalculatin on a daily basis.>> …as are the boots on the ground in Iraq. The soldiers are trying to do a job with two hands and a foot tied behind their backs. They cannot really go after insurgents because they masquerade as civilians and they cannot go after civilians for the very reason we are discussing issue. You are absolutely correct when you say that our military is not trained to “nation-build.†They are also not trained to police a large populace in the manner they have been asked to do. They are however trained to fight Soviet/European style conventional warfare; on that stage they have no equal. The Bush Administration wants their cake and eat it too, in that, they hoped that they could uphold rules of conventional warfare against an insurgent........something (can’t really say army or forces can I?). The two are absolutely incompatible. And essentially the military is paying the price for such wishful thinking.
Originally Posted By cmpaley >>I'll be the first to sling mud at abusive priests, but it's the entire catholic church that we're tarring, not the gay community. << Ah yes, anticatholic bigotry...one of the last remaining socially acceptable public hatreds. :-(
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>At this point it's unreasonable to expect any accountability from the leadership of the military - the pentagon and the joint chiefs. They're only too happy to point to these transgressors and say that it's all their fault without any acknowlegement of their own culpability.<< But if a group of soldiers acts on their own and decides to shoot an unarmed civilian, knowing that is not an acceptible action, how are the joint chiefs to blame here?
Originally Posted By gadzuux For committing our military to an untenable and unwinnable scenario. For committing the military to a task and then giving them insufficient resources to accomplish it. Many of these reservists signed up for the 'one weekend a month and two weeks a year' reserves. Yes, they took the risk and they lost, but now many of them are on their third and fourth tours? For these most twenty-somethings, up to half of their adult life has been spent in iraq. Hardly surprising that we're seeing pathological behaviors out of them now. Bush and cheney made certain at the outset that the joint chiefs were populated by "yes-men" who were prepared to go along with whatever they were told to do. Anyone with a dissenting viewpoint was cashiered out years ago. So some manner of culpability is theirs. But as I've pointed out, there's no accountability within this administration so it doesn't matter.
Originally Posted By trekkeruss <<Hardly surprising that we're seeing pathological behaviors out of them now.>> It's these wide swipes you take that are objectionable. <<So some manner of culpability is theirs.>> I guess we can blame the guy that invented guns too.
Originally Posted By jonvn You probably are going to see some bad behaviors from some of these guys (and girls), unfortunately. Not from all of them, of course, but it's the same thing after ever war. And the harsher the conditions, like this or Vietnam, the worse the behavior is afterwards. Best thing now, though is that we have some drugs that may help a lot of these guys. One guy I know takes like 3 psychoactive drugs a day to battle whatever is wrong with him now. If he didn't, would he be a suicide? A killer? Who knows.
Originally Posted By gadzuux >> It's these wide swipes you take that are objectionable. << I'm sorry you feel that way - I think my comments are grounded in reality. It's entirely foreseeable that some of these soldiers who have spent the last several years in a hostile environment and surrounded by death would devalue life as a result - especially iraqi lives.
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder I would agree with post 25. It is inevitable that some of these guys would crack. I don't think anyone is suggesting the Marines at issue here went on some sort of a "thrill kill". Within the context of the war they find themselves fighting, what happened with them likely made sense at the time. To that end, most definitely, whoever is responsible for them being there on a third or fourth tour HAS to share a good portion of the responsibility. The longer this war goes on and the longer it is run under the same policies in place now, the more bad incidents we're going to have.
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom <a href="http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/davidlimbaugh/2006/06/06/200015.html" target="_blank">http://www.townhall.com/opinio n/columns/davidlimbaugh/2006/06/06/200015.html</a> <<<Where are O.J. Simpson's and Bill Clinton's defenders to complain about the "rush to judgment" concerning the alleged Marine atrocities in Haditha? Why are their sympathies free flowing for criminal defendants, but nowhere to be seen when military personnel are accused of wrongdoing? What has been reported about the Haditha tragedy is that a terrorist improvised explosive device (IED) blew a Marine in half, literally, and wounded several others. Afterward, our soldiers responded to the attack, killing 24 men, women and children. We don't know for sure yet if the killings were indiscriminate or even if those killed were victims, as opposed to being armed, hostile and threatening to our soldiers. We do have reports that Haditha is a terrorist hotbed -- referred to by some as a miniature Taliban-like state -- in which the terrorists rule with an iron fist and perform daily executions of those not sufficiently obedient to their rule, or Sharia law, or who knows what else. We are told that Haditha citizens live in fear and may prefer to cooperate with the terrorists purely for self-preservation. Reportedly, a preliminary military inquiry found evidence that the attacks were unprovoked and that earlier statements by certain Marines that the civilians were killed by a roadside bomb rather than gunfire have been discredited. Admittedly, the allegations are highly troubling, as is the initial finding that some Marines may have made false statements in their initial reports. But we must remember that at this point, they are just allegations. While much of this seems damning, there are anomalies in the reports that point toward mitigation of the Marines' conduct. There is evidence, not yet conclusive, that Marines received small arms fire from the houses nearby and returned it. Sometime thereafter, the Marines rushed the houses and killed those inside. Previous media reports on Haditha have told of civilian complicity in attacks against U.S. and Iraqi soldiers. A 12-year-old survivor admitted that she knew in advance of the plot to ambush the Marine convoy with an IED detonation. If she knew, how likely is it that her parents, other family members and neighbors were unaware of the plan? Let me be clear. If our soldiers killed unarmed, non-hostile, innocent bystander-type civilians, even if in a rage over the murder of their colleague, they deserve to be punished in accordance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice. No nation holds its soldiers to higher account than the United States and that will certainly be true in this case. But unlike some others, I prefer to operate with a presumption that it is unlikely, but far from impossible, that our troops would behave that way. While an enraged group mentality could have overcome them, it is hard to see how the indiscriminate slaughter of wholly innocent noncombatants would quench any thirst they may have had for revenge. We must be wary of those who insist they support the troops yet are eager to believe the worst about them before we have even heard their side of the story. We must be especially resistant to efforts to extrapolate from this isolated incident the conclusion that a climate conducive to atrocities permeates the entirety of our fighting forces, as happened with Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. The overwhelming majority of our soldiers are honorable, decent and good people who would not and do not participate in such behavior. They are also engaged in a noble and necessary mission, though the longer the war lasts, the more that fact becomes obscured. The anti-war left has already tried and convicted the accused soldiers. The media have called it a war crime, a massacre and an intentional act to send a message to Iraqis. How they know these things is impossible to divine. Congressman John Murtha (D-Pa.), who is apparently entitled to make any outrageous statement against the war with impunity because of his military record, is somehow sure -- without the benefit of admissions from alleged perpetrators, and certainly not a trial -- that the incident was "much worse than reported in Time magazine. … Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood." Murtha conveniently expressed his findings in his May 17 press conference, in which, for the umpteenth time, he called for the United States to withdraw its troops from Iraq. Other anti-war politicians and activists will throw circumspection to the wind and exploit this tragedy, perhaps not out of genuine humanitarian concerns, but to discredit the war. It would be nice to believe otherwise, but their track record of accentuating and exaggerating events to smear the entire U.S. military and its mission is consistent, long and reprehensible. No matter how this turns out, let's remember the true character of the overwhelming majority of our soldiers. David Limbaugh is a syndicated columnist who blogs at DavidLimbaugh.com. He is also the author of Persecution and Absolute Power: The Legacy of Corruption in the Clinton-Reno Justice Department.>>>
