Does anybody care about this story? Have we passed into the territory where innocent people in other countries are no longer officially human? Have we given up, once and for all, on the idea that there are “rules of war” that apply to the United States? Is that Obama’s attitude, and Eric Holder’s as well? Is intentionally killing women and children now acceptable conduct overseas?
This judicial proceeding seems like it was a complete and utter joke- note the apparently lackadaisical attitude of the presiding “judge”, or whatever the hell he is. I guess this is what happens when you’re the only superpower- you can get away with this stuff because there’s nobody else strong enough to hold you accountable. America runs the world- which would be a happy ending to history if America had a conscience. These women and children who were murdered in their own homes by our troops didn’t deserve what happened to them any more than the U.S. civilians who died on 9/11. They didn’t ask to have their country invaded by a foreign army, and they didn’t deserve to be slaughtered like animals because of faulty intelligence or the derangement of burnt-out soldiers.
It’s sickening that we think so little of these people that their deaths mean nothing. They are beneath the necessity of justice, because they’re Iraqis (or Afghans, Pakistanis, etc). Merely living in an ill-favored country is now a crime punishable by death. It seems so much of the Left has lost its imagination, or perhaps everybody’s just given up. But this stuff should matter. There is still such a thing as right and wrong. Killing innocent women and children is evil- whether it’s done by terrorists, serial killers, or the United States military.
If there’s to be no regard for human rights, or human life, or justice, then what’s the point of politics? What’s the point of America? What’s the point of anything?
Here is their website http://smedleyvfp.org/
War crimes like this that go virtually unpunished do enormous damage to our international presence. Even worse, they do even more profound damage to ourselves.
As each war-crime is proven and then covered up, we add another layer of reality-denying scar tissue to our own collective nervous system. Our moral paralysis spreads as our numbness to our own outrages against humanity deadens our ability to sense the moral consequences of any national decision.
We increasingly desensitize ourselves to acts of kidnapping, rape, torture, and now murder. As we do so, our culture simultaneously becomes more and more rabid with racism, bigotry, xenophobia, and scape-goating. It is not accidental that the two go hand-in-hand.
So long as we leave the door open to “extraordinary rendition” (kidnapping), so long as GITMO stays open, so long as those who ordered torture from the Oval Office go un-prosecuted, so long as military murderers like Frank Wuterich go unpunished, we will carry a burden of ever-widening shame.
Sooner or later, this burden will crush us.
The following words come to mind:
There are plenty of people who are outraged by this complete lack of accountability.
Clearly the punishment to the soldiers doesn’t fit the crime of recklessly turning this Iraqi neighborhood into a living hell.
Nonetheless we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that our leaders from the safety of a continent away recklessly turned that whole country into a much larger hell. These leaders knew or should have known that the victims of this war would overwhelmingly be the powerless and innocent.
Unfortunately that is still not something that has penetrated into the thick skulls of our nation’s elite. Even the President last night trotted out the tired truism that our soldiers returning from Iraq should be thanked for making our country safer. There are reasons to thank the returning soldiers, but that is surely not one of them.
I admit I especially like that the local Veterans for Peace Chapter is named after Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler, though, in part because he called out the fascist putsch by Wall Street plutocrats against FDR, and in part because he had up front and personal knowledge of war as a profiteers racket. See these two links, just to start that historical education that helps keep us from repeating mistakes:
http://www.tecom.usmc.mil/HD/Whos_Who/Butler_SD.htm
and
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/butler01-by_schmidt.html
Gen. Butler made the point that the U.S. Military had been made into a debt collection agency for Wall Street, among other rather pointed comments.
The winners were General Electric, General Motors, General Dynamics, etc. Madison Avenue had more clout than the attempted Roosevelt coup d’état plotters. Eventually the country was surrendered to corporate rule. After all, “We bring good things to life.”
The actions of a few military people gunning down men, women, children are the ones that make the news. Is it any less vile when military and civilian operators of drone aircraft bomb other innocents from 40,000 feet? Or demagogues proudly announce they will expand the wars? Endless wars. Illegal wars. Immoral wars. Who is most guilty?
There is one candidate in the two party system for peace and for political freedom. I disagree with him on many issues. But peace and freedom are too important to let smaller issues blind. (Maybe he’s the most democratic of all candidates…)
“Lead me from death to life, from falsehood to truth; Lead me from despair to hope, from fear to trust; Lead me from hate to love, from war to peace; Let peace fill our heart, our world, our universe” –Satish Kumar