The American Way of Atrocities

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The American Way of Atrocities

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

CounterPunch - Jun 10, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/allen06102006.html


The American Way of Atrocities

The Marine Corps' Killer Virtues

By JOE ALLEN

On May 24, Gen. Michael Hagee, Commandant of the United States Marine
Corps, made a quickly arranged flight to Iraq to deal with the growing
political fallout from a series of criminal investigations into the
murder of Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines.

According to an "amended" copy of his speech that appeared on the
Marine Corps Times Web site, Hagee stressed what he called the "core
values" of Marines in combat. "We do not employ force just for the
sake of employing force," Hagee said, in his speech titled "On Marine
Virtue."

"We use lethal force only when justified, proportional and, most
importantly, lawful...This is the American way of war. We must
regulate force and violence, we only damage property that must be
damaged, and we protect the non-combatants we find on the
battlefield."

It is, of course, difficult to take Gen. Hagee's statements seriously
given the widespread destruction wreaked on Iraq since the U.S.-led
invasion and occupation more than three years ago. The "American way
of war" has produced, to name a just few highlights: the wholesale
destruction of cities like Falluja, the deaths of well over 100,000
Iraqi civilians, the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, and the
creation of Shiite deaths squads.

This is much more in line with the definition of Gen. Fred Weyand, one
of the architects of the Vietnam War. "The American way of war,"
Weyand said, "is particularly violent, deadly and dreadful. We believe
in using 'things'--artillery, bombs, massive firepower."

* * *

GIVEN THE level of misery and suffering brought to Iraq by the U.S.
military, homilies by a commanding Marine general about "respecting
human life" and "regulating force and violence" may seems like a
macabre stand-up comedy routine.

Yet there is something deeper going on. "The emerging details of the
killings [in Haditha] have raised fears," according to the New York
Times, "that the incident could be the gravest case involving
misconduct by American ground forces in Iraq."

Now, military investigations are clearly revealing the tip of the
iceberg of the extent of war crimes committed by the U.S.
forces--especially the Marine Corps--in Iraq.

The most important of these investigations so far has focused on the
massacre of two dozen unarmed Iraqi civilians in the small city of
Haditha, west of Baghdad--an atrocity reported in Time magazine in
March. The Marines involved in the massacre at Haditha could face
capital murder charges under the Uniform Conduct of Military Justice.

A second investigation has opened up into whether the Marines'
superior officers engaged in a cover-up by filing false reports
claiming that the civilians died in crossfire or were killed by a
makeshift bomb.

The circumstances of the Haditha massacre and the cover-up that
followed may remind many of the infamous My Lai massacre during the
Vietnam War. How the Army handled the case after it became public
tells us much about how the Pentagon officialdom deals with war
crimes.

In March 1968, members of Charlie Company of the Americal Division
entered the village of My Lai and murdered more than 400 elderly men,
women and children, including babies, over a period of four hours.

Among the dozens involved in the killings, only one man, Lt. William
Calley, was eventually found guilty and sentenced to life at hard
labor.

Calley was found to be personally responsible for the murder of 20
people. However, President Nixon ordered him released from the
stockade after his guilty verdict. Calley's sentence was reduced to 10
years by the Secretary of the Army, and he was released from custody
(most of the time spent in his apartment on base at Fort Benning)
after three years.

The record during the current Iraq war is worse in many ways. Take the
case of Army Capt. Rogelio Maynulet, who was found guilty of the
"mercy killing" of an Iraqi civilian. "He was sentenced with dismissal
from the United States Army...there will be no confinement time," a
military spokesperson said.

In May 2004, when U.S. troops were pursuing suspected militiamen
supporting Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr near the Iraqi city of Najaf,
Maynulet fired on a car, wounding the driver and a passenger. Maynulet
said he then shot the driver, a local garbage collector, dead. His
reason? "He was in a state I didn't think was dignified," Maynulet
said. "I had to put him out of his misery."

On January 21, 2006, Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer, a U.S.
Army interrogator, was convicted of causing the death of Iraqi Major
Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush during a questioning in November 2003.
Welshofer killed him by putting a sleeping bag over his head, sitting
on his chest and covering his mouth.

A court-martial jury decided that Welshofer was not guilty of murder
but negligent homicide. He faces a maximum penalty of three years'
imprisonment.

* * *

DESPITE HAGEE and other commanders' claim that these actions are an
aberration from the "training" that Marines and Army troops receive,
these atrocities are directly attributable to a war for conquest--and
the racism that flows from it.

It has long been a recognized military strategy that the most
effective way to get soldiers of a conquering army to kill their
opponents is to dehumanize those opponents. Racism is the most
effective tool to accomplish that.

One Vietnam War veteran said that during basic training, "The only
thing they told us about the Viet Cong was they were gooks. They were
to be killed. Nobody sits around and gives you their historical and
cultural background. They're the enemy. Kill, kill, kill. That's what
we got in practice. Kill, kill, kill."

William Calley's initial psychiatric report revealed that he did not
feel he was killing human beings at My Lai, but "rather that they were
animals with whom one could not speak or reason," an Army psychiatrist
wrote.

Racism against Arabs and Muslims pervades the U.S. military today,
despite the hot air about "cultural sensitivity" training for soldier
heading to Iraq. "Raghead," "camel jockeys" and "sand niggers" are
just a few of the racist hate spewed at the people of Iraq by American
soldiers.

The Marines, with their cult-like worship of death and destruction,
always add an extra dose of fanaticism to any situation.

A short time ago, Lt. Gen. James Mattis, who commanded Marines in
Afghanistan and Iraq, made this clear. "Actually it's quite fun to
fight them, you know," Mattis said. "It's a hell of a hoot. It's fun
to shoot some people. I'll be right up there with you. I like
brawling."

In the 1930s, retired Marine Gen. Smedley Butler described his
activities as a soldier invading one country after another throughout
Latin America as being a "high-class muscleman for Wall Street."
Despite what Gen. Hagee may claim, such musclemen are not known for
their virtues.

[Joe Allen is the son and nephew of Marines--his uncle, a veteran of
the Vietnam War, died from cancer as a result of his exposure to the
herbicide Agent Orange.

Hear Joe Allen speak at Socialism 2006, a political conference
scheduled for June 22-25 at Columbia University in New York City. For
more information, go to the Socialism 2006 Web site at
http://www.socialismconference.org ]

*
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