From The Belly Of The Beast Pt. 2
February 8th, 2007
Of the stories I’ve heard from Iraq this one is the most disturbing. Several months ago I hinted at the fact that I had met soldiers who had done terrible things in Iraq but before I tell you the story allow me to put on a disclaimer.
Don’t E-mail me telling me to report this guy to the authorities and its my moral obligation and blah blah blah etc. First of all he’s not my buddy, I cant remember his name and I wouldn’t know how to get a hold of him even if I wanted, so all the moral police can kiss my booty!
I met this guy randomly who started chatting with me and wouldn’t stop, we will refer to him as “Billy Bob”. Billy Bob seemed a little….umm strange. You know the type, when they are talking you are thinking, “wow something is REALLY wrong with this guy, how am I going to get out of this?”
Billy Bob had just come back from Iraq after being injured, apparently he was doing house sweeps when he walked in on an insurgent making a whole bunch of bombs. Deciding not to go without taking some infidel soldiers with him, the insurgent bomb maker chose to detonate the bomb next to him as Billy Bob approached. The insurgents brains and intestines flew all over the place. Billy was thrown across the room and when he woke up he found his left arm and left leg torn open down to exposed bone.
Before he was injured Billy fought in the Marines for almost a year and he took pictures of everything, he showed me most of them on his iPod. I have to give it to him, this guy is a very talented photographer but unfortunately his picture taking included snapshots of almost everyone he killed and he was so casual about it. “Oh here is another guy I killed, he came out of the woods with a rocket launcher but I shot him about 5 times in the head before he could fire.”
I looked at him and he had this crazy look in his eyes and a crazed smile, I asked him “whats the worst thing you saw there?” He told me one morning they were exchanging gun fire with insurgents in a house about 400 yards away but they couldn’t see the shooters and after 3 hours of shooting the firing showed no signs of slowing down or stopping, so he and his buddies made the decision to fire a missile into the house that would penetrate the walls and explode on the inside in order to kill everyone in the building. They launched the missile and the shooting stopped, 3 days later they walked back to the house to inspect what or who they had killed. They found no insurgents inside only a pregnant women laying on the ground, riddled with metal fragments. The sun had baked her body, turning her skin black and forcing the baby out of her womb and onto the floor. His remark to me was, “I regret everyday that I didn’t have my camera on me that day, I wanted a picture of it”. He had no explanation or guess as to where the insurgents who fired on them had gone and he had no remorse for the woman and child they had killed.
Its stories like these that give me a vividly ugly image of the war and sometimes I wish I didn’t know any better.
Cross posted from Whisper of Madness
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From the Vietnam War news, I can easily imagine the same or worse. As I said in another post the Bahai Writing suggests rather vaguely that the world will experience a general political peace when women have the same equal rights (and social political power) as men. Until then. By the way, I wonder what part of the US that guy sounded like he grew up in?
*shrugs*
This is war.
Always amusing, when people expect a war without casualties – in bodies or minds.
Are we forever going to sigh and claim that all of these things are just the results of war?
If it was an actual war I might get it. But a war by definition means that two states would have to be fighting. There is no Iraqi presence in the U.S, and thus this is an occupation, not a “war” where there are casualties of innocent civilians on both sides. American soldiers went there by choice. The Iraqi people have no choice but to be dragged into this.
And uhmm… yeah I agree that hardly anyone is surprised when these things happen … but we’re human after all, we’re allowed to let inhumane things shock us, we can’t just dismiss these grave errors as the nature of war and allow them to happen over and over again.
Dehumanizing others should NOT be justified. It is not okay and normal to treat fellow human beings this way. I understand human nature but what I don’t understand is why these people are actually encouraged to dehumanize others in order to make it easier to shoot and kill. It is utterly disgusting.
“we can’t just dismiss these grave errors as the nature of war and allow them to happen over and over again.”
Suggestions?
Hm, yeah, for starters, how about allowing these things to shock us, and not telling others “eh, it’s just war!”
Because these things aren’t normal and shouldn’t be treated as such.
As far as expecting a war without casulties its never been acceptable and according to rules of engagement known civilian casulties have always been avoided. As a matter of fact the U.S. supposedly had an opportunity to assassinate Osama Bin Laden but did not engage because it was during a wedding or funeral or something like that and there were civilians everywhere.
Besides all that, this isnt a hippie protest against the war I am simply highlighting sad and disturbing events expierienced by far too many soldiers. My hearts not too cold and black to not find this upsetting.
Esra’a -
Being shocked won’t help you. As I have said, this is war. And in war, this IS normal. This is what war is all about – dead people.
DBS – yes, all the armies of liberal democracies have both a policy and standing orders of avoiding civilian casualties when possible. And my heart IS too cold and black to find unintentional civilian casualties upsetting – I’ve buried too many friends and seen too many mutilated corpses for that.
A combat soldier, BTW, has two options in this regard – go insensetive or go insane. I know people who chose the second option… and the first is better by far. Which is exactly why soldiers need not to care. What good is a soldier who cannot kill?
It may not make the situation goes away.
But it keeps me sane.
And sanity is what we need during war. It is due to the remaining sanity that many soldiers step down, refuse to kill, etc. Don’t justify not having it and dismissing thousands of dead people as “just war.” If these were your loved ones, that wouldn’t be just war, it would be your entire life taken away for no apparent reason. Then you are the one who’s forced to be insane.
Remember that it’s not just the soldiers going insane. The terrorized ones are.
That is very true, but being insensitive is insane.
Being able to shoot a person, to rape a person, as innocent as they may be, and trying to get past it.. that’s insane, and you either accept it as normal, which many do, or you go insane, and the latter is what means that you had a heart.
The first option means that you’re half human, half ashes. There is no way a perfectly normal, average human can commit these horrid crimes and speak indifferently about it unless his crimes have been justified and labeled as “just war, normal.”
Esra’a –
You’re confused, I think. Nowadays we have rules for warfare. So, raping people is a crime; killing enemy combatants isn’t. And failing to avoid killing civilians even though you’ve tried is also not a crime.
It is oh-so-easy to lump it all into one category… hey, violence is bad, right? So all violence is bad, and therefore a crime. But this attitude is simply wrong. Sometimes violence is the only option for preventing more violence.
And yeah, some “soldiers” step down and refuse to kill. Their mates get killed because of this, and then other people have to pick up bits and pieces of their friends from the pavement. If these “soldiers” are especially unlucky – or perhaps if Fortuna is feeling especially just – it is these “soldiers” who’re picking up pieces of their loved ones from the pavement.
There are three kinds of orders in IDF – legal, illegal and blatantly illegal. The first you have to obey, the second you have to obey and then can dispute, the third you must disobey.
I take it that from your POV, any order to kill is of the third kind?
And no, being insensetive is not being insane. It’s being alive.
I’m not confused. Just disgusted, and most importantly.. inexperienced.
You served in the IDF and that means you have a completely different POV and I respect that. BUT…
It seems as though you justify killing everything that moves as the “Enemy.” That’s incredibly dangerous. Calling an entire nation an enemy, that’s what Israelis complain about, but then you guys go ahead and label others the way they label you? It doesn’t make you any better than them. You can almost never tell the difference between enemies and innocent civilians during war. Most importantly – you don’t barge into a different country, occupy the fuck out of it, and then claim that you’re killing “terror suspects’ (i.e, thousands of innocent civilians) which is the case with the U.S and Iraq.
Yes it is, unless of course human bodies are just a bunch of stats to you. No lives, no feelings, no rights. Just point and kill. Is that an ethical philosophy? There are many soldiers who delibratey kill innocent civilians. Tons and tons of such profiles were revealed from Iraq. Bombing a village is a crime against humanity, and doing so just because “they are terror suspects” is a retarded justification for a serious human rights violation which people wouldn’t dismiss or justify if they were actual humans rather than zombie death machines who were trained to dehumanize an entire nation.
Read this example -
Not only are they not honourable, but also painfully racist and disgusting. A danger to humanity as a whole. You call this natural? Average results of war? Normal behavior?
I’m saying, many soldiers are specifically trained to act like that. And just because they say it’s normal, doesn’t make it normal at all. Killing your fellow humans like they’re a bunch of lab rats isn’t something that we as humans are born to do. Not even our human nature justifies that. We got technology today that can whipe out entire populations in just one click – and countries are using such technology on defenseless citizens.
Is that really normal/average to you?
Then maybe when a soldier kills your loved one (which I hope never, ever happens), and is indifferent about it, that wouldn’t bother you at all because he was just trying to “stay alive” by killing everybody in sight.
My philosophy would be different on this if it was a country vs. country, as in, actual war.
But that is NOT the case in this thread. Iraq vs. the U.S – that’s not a war, that’s an occupation. Iraq under Saddam was a brutal occupation. Iraq under U.S invasion is a brutal occupation. Iraq’s civil war is brutal. It’s just fucked up in all angles, and sending more troops there is just asking for more trouble. Rape, sex trade, forced prostitution, and murder in cold blood happened in the name of the U.S army. Abu Ghraib is being used for torture, as is Guantanamo Bay which holds Iraqis. Is that so different than Saddam’s days? Saddam is a horrible dictator, that doesn’t mean he can’t be replaced with a horrible occupation by both local and outside forces. I don’t think that’s normal, nor should anyone dismiss it as normal if they actually considered Iraqis to be civilians with rights.
There are ethics that a lot of soldiers need to be taught. You go into Iraq – that’s a fucking choice. When you’re IN Iraq, a citizen of Iraq with no choice but to be caught in the violence, that’s another thing. Thousands of dead children and women were terror suspects in their own damned country?
There is no justification whatsoever. They have sophisticated technology to target actual terrorists – they should use that instead of the tedious “terror suspect” excuse.
By the way, if I was ever in any army, even if it wasn’t willingly, my response would be 100% different.
I said the above as someone still innocent who didn’t take part in war. I’ve yet to see anyone get bombed to pieces in front of me. I think that would make me lose enough sanity to shoot at anything I saw, too. There is no room for logic at a time like that. No room for thinking about ethics, etc, everything shrinks to the size of a pea and it’s just you trying to make it through this world.
If someone shot at me, I’d shoot back, and my entire philosophy would change on war.
But right now I stick to the above. And I wish I was strong enough to stick to it during war, but I’m not. Very few people are. And many of them, as a result, end up traumatized or dead.
It takes a VERY strong and intelligent person to stick to such morals during war.
It takes a VERY weak and gullible person to submit themselves to the ideology that their leaders/military trainers make them give into.
And let’s admit, most of us are weak and gullible.
“Then maybe when a soldier kills your loved one (which I hope never, ever happens)”
Too late. It has happened. I have lost beloved friends to enemies – enemies who were anything but indifferent about these deaths. They were extatically happy. I am Israeli – almost everyone I know lost friends and/or family to enemies… and these enemies are ALWAYS exuberant in these deaths. Whether those they’ve killed were civilians or soldiers.
“It seems as though you justify killing everything that moves as the “Enemy.—
This is a strange conclusion. Enemies are those who seek to harm me, and those who support those who seek to harm me. It’s simple, really – the first kind of people need to die. The second kind of people need to be neutralized, and if this means killing them… well, it’s unfortunate but sometimes inevitable.
But I, of course, do not think that “everything that moves” answers the above definition of “enemy”.
Next. Your perception of the USA occupation of Iraq seems more than a little twisted. It does not fit actual facts on the ground, it does not fit USA philosophy, it does not fit USA Military’s ethos, it makes no political, tactical, strategic or any other kind of sense.
Moreover, your… absolutism is problematic. I can undestand it, certainly… but it is naive in the extreme. The same Iraqis in Abu Gharib are crying for their evil, heartless American torturers to come back. The comparisons between Saddam’s genocidal regime and America’s kid gloves pseudo-occupation are, frankly, ridiculous.
You have no idea about the difficulties of fighting an enemy that hides among a civilian population, pretends to be part of the civilian population and uses weapons like boobytraps and suicide bombers.
“They have sophisticated technology to target actual terrorists – they should use that instead of the tedious “terror suspect†excuse”
“They” are using this techology. But this is not target practice. “Terror suspect” can be someone running around with a gun, it can be someone you have intel on, it can be someone who happens in a building in which you know a major meeting of terrorists is going on. It’s not… an excuse. The very notion that USA Military purposefully kills civilians and then uses excuses to cover it up is, frankly, insane. Why would they do it?
Now, about massive bombing of cities in total war. It is sometimes necessary. If your choice is between killing a million enemy civilians or having a million of YOUR civilians killed, guess what you must choose. There is no place for sentiments when you’re fighting for your life. And if Japan – as in the Japanese people – attacks you, you kill Japanese people. Racist? Cruel? Maybe. But it’s the only way to win.
The notion that the armies of liberal democracies train their soldiers to kill everyone and everything is also ludicrous. They simply don’t – exactly the opposite, actually. It seems to me that your pacifism and hatred of the military arises from lack of knowledge. I strongly suggest you take a look at the RoE of USA troops in Iraq, for instance. Read a bit about the army’s ethos. The information is freely availiable.
One of the most basic moral dilemmas presented to combat recruits in IDF is this – there’s an armed terrorist, a clear-cut enemy that needs killing. The only way to kill him, though, is by killing both him and an innocent civilian. What to do?
And there is no clear-cut answer. Sometimes you let the fucker go. Sometimes, the cost of letting him go outweights the cost of killing the civilian.
And about assorted atrocities done by USA troops – and I have no doubt that atrocities have happened: these are not things sanctioned by USA or the USA military. These are incidents performed by individuals against their orders, against their training, and against their ethos.
Some people are scum. The military screening process weeds much of these out, the training restrains most of those who are not weeded out. Some remain in the military and remain scum. Scum happens.
Let me tell you a story. A friend of mine came home after a month serving in Gaza. A good friend of his was killed there during this month. Other friends were wounded. He said – “Fuck them. We should kill them all and rape their women”. I believe that if he could, he would. And I understand why he felt this way.
But he didn’t do anything of the sort. Why? Because of his training. Because of his orders. Because he’s a part of a system that sees such behavior as criminal. And this is what keeps our soldiers sane, what enables them to calmly kill their enemies and to avoid killing civilians even when they really want to.
Consider this.
Then don’t forget that thousands and thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians went through exactly the same thing.
I already recognized that ignorance and no one said it’s easy. I’m saying it’s disgusting to justify it all the time and to be indifferent about it, no, to even CELEBRATE it which many do. That, to me, is disgusting.
The act of it happening, yes it happens, this thread is not about that.
It’s about the outcome, the person you become after you commit this… mistake, let’s call it.
I’m not talking about the IDF specifically, I’m talking about the many soldiers and marines who DO that and still come out indifferent. But I appreciate your response and I understand your conclusions, it’s the reason why I admit that if I were in your place I’d write similar things.
Still though, there are and have been Israelis who don’t agree with IDF ethics, and have thus refused to serve. I call them strong, even if others call them traitors.
“Still though, there are and have been Israelis who don’t agree with IDF ethics, and have thus refused to serve”
That’s a first. Some disagree with general or specific policies. Usually, I call them morons; some of them, I call hypocrites; some I call naive, and others yet opportunistic scum. But to disagree with IDF ethics and thus refuse to serve? They would have to be very strange and unpleasant people indeed, to object to purity of arms, brotherhood, leading by personal example and so forth.
“I’m saying it’s disgusting to justify it all the time and to be indifferent about it, no, to even CELEBRATE it which many do. That, to me, is disgusting.”
I don’t quite understand what “it” stands for, in this case. I presume you mean dead civilians. Again – consider the example of the ethical dilemma of the enemy+civilian. Sometimes you have no choice but to kill a civilian. Sometimes it happens due to a mistake. A soldier MUST be ready and able to ignore this and move on. Otherwise he’s a danger to his mates, his family, his country – and foreign civilians. I am yet to know anyone (sans enemies) who celebrates when civilians die.
“Then don’t forget that thousands and thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians went through exactly the same thing.”
No, not really. They didn’t see Israelis handing out candy in the street just because their loved ones were killed. And they didn’t see Israelis running around in a frenzied mob, waving the internal organs of their loved ones in the air.
And that’s the difference, you see -
What would happen were Israelis to become totally pacifist right now, to the point of not defending themselves in any way?
What would happen were Palestinians to become totally pacifist right now, to the point of not defending themselves in any way?
Israel could kill every hunam in both PA and Lebanon within a day. Two days with coffee breaks and a limited budget.
We have seen what happens when Israel’s dear neighbors think they can kill every Jew in Israel, didn’t we?
I speak of IDF because that’s what I know. To the best of my knowledge, the ethos and standing orders of every army of a liberal democracy are pretty much the same.
BTW, I am using Israel and PA as examples here because I believe they are a mini-version of global events. The basis of the Israeli mentality is the same basis as that of, say, the American or Danish. And the basis of the Arab mentality is, well, Arab.
“Brotherhood”
Uniting to kill others is brotherhood?
Lots of extremists call Al Qaida, etc, brotherhood. They always got their “Enemies” and “oh we must defend Muslims” and they justify killing innocent civilians because they are targeting the “bigger enemy” which are the non-Muslim governments. Uniting for violence, whatever your cause is, that’s not brotherhood. It’s just that – violence.
I got my biases against the IDF for obvious reasons. I don’t like nationalism and I don’t like crimes portrayed as “self-defense” nor do I like the similar attitude from the Arab side either.
If you got people like yourself justifying murder in the name of self-defense and you got people like Hezbollah doing the same, we’d be fucked for life. Both sides will kill in the name of self-defense and no one comes out the winner, least of all the innocent civilians.
And I don’t think this is the same as IDF and Palestine. We are talking about Iraq and the U.S. Different forces, gone to war for different reasons, justifying it with different explanations, completely different circumstances. It doesn’t have history, Iraq didn’t even pose a threat, and there are no forces in the U.S like there are suicide bombers in Israel. It’s so different.
You continue with an absolutist attitude and moral equivalence.
What can I say?
May you remain ignorant forever. May you never learn what others must do to keep you safe.
OMG, what a powerful statement by a super IDF ninja!
Watch out, the Arab rangers are coming. Stab hack slash kill! Kill ‘em all, for the sake of safety!
Justify murder all you want. It’s still disgusting and inhumane.