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The War Profiteers - War Crimes, Kidnappings,
Torture and Big Money |
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December 15th, 2003 - Challenging
the Justification of Killing |
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Challenging
the Justification of Killing By Kim Petersen Dissident Voice December 15, 2003 One who exults in the
killing of men will never have his way in the empire. - Lao Tzu Information Clearing House
has a video clip from a CNN Presents segment entitled "Fit To
Kill." The video clip features the slaying of a wounded Iraqi lying
prostrate on the ground "next to his gun." It is hard to discern
any weapon near the man in the video; nevertheless, he was incapacitated and
the marines kept firing at him. Next a bullet rips into the doomed man's
body; it heaves one final time; the neck snaps back and flips forward, and
his body slumps deathly limp. Whoops of merriment are plainly audible from
the killers. It used to be that morality
decreed that one should "never hit a man when he's down." The
inescapable conclusion is either that this morality is no longer in effect or
that these killers are behaving immorally. The killer of the wounded
Iraqi is Sergeant Anthony Riddle. Interviewed by CNN correspondent Candy
Crowley afterward, Mr. Riddle comes across as giddy. Whether this is due to
nerves or not is difficult to distinguish. His words, however, ring falsely
of bravado: "Like, man, you guys are dead now, you know. But it was a
good feeling." Shooting a man when he is
sprawled face-down on the ground is cowardice and a war crime. Feeling good about
it is a sinister revelation about the inner workings of the killer. "When the battle is
over and you are still standing, the adrenalin rush is huge," chimes Ms.
Crowley preferring to focus on the biochemistry of the kill. Mr. Riddle's response is ill-concealed
glee. Says he: "I mean, afterwards you're like, hell, yeah, that was
awesome. Let's do it again." The show is opened by host
Aaron Brown who will pull a volte-face. Previously Mr. Brown, who admitted to
network censorship of the news, said that CNN wouldn’t show images of
casualties that cross the line into pornography. Jeremy Scahill of Democracy
Now! countered that "there is no such thing as a 'tasteful civilian
casualty,' that term shouldn’t even be in the realm of journalism." Mr. Brown introduces the
segment: "Machine guns fire and shell explode, so many die. Numbers for
the world to see." What once were living humans
have been reduced to "numbers." What Mr. Brown doesn't mention is
that these numbers are not tabulated by the invaders. General Tommy Franks
adamantly stated: "We don't do body counts." Then comes a surprisingly
candid admission by Mr. Brown and a change-of-heart: "But what we don't
see, what we don't talk about honestly when it comes to war, is the actual
act of killing. That is taboo - a taboo that we break now." CNN went one
step further than depicting a dead human; the actual killing is shown with a
backdrop of cheering marines. According to Mr. Brown's earlier stance then:
the creating of pornography for CNN. Mr. Brown's statement is
selectively true. The American viewers are not permitted to see American
bodies and neither are they permitted to see the coffins of the American
dead. Even the commander-in-chief, in a break with presidential tradition,
won't allow himself near the war dead. It is a pornography
exploiting only the enemy. The enemy without name, just a number. No
Americans are depicted being slain. The Burden of Killing The program seems
unperturbed by the plight of the Iraqis and their being killed. The concern
is not on the killed but rather the unfortunate killers and how they will
cope with having taken human lives. The show gives viewers a
chance to gauge for themselves the valor of the fighters by their own words.
One Vietnam veteran, using the pseudonym Bob MacGowan, likened killing to
"a hunting thrill. I won't say kind of a sexual sense to - it's a jazzy
thing, you know." Private Charles
Sheehan-Miles confessed "I shot and killed without thinking about it,
without taking a moment's reflection of whether or not I was doing the right
thing. And then - even for a fraction of a time, I felt good about it." Ms. Crowley, to her benefit,
does take a stab at the roots of the lackadaisical attitudes to killing. She
points to the infamous facility in Fort Benning, Georgia, which most people
still refer to by its former incarnation as the School of the Americas. It is
otherwise known as the 'School of Assassins' since it trained many of the
terrorists loose in Latin America and Southeast Asia today. After training, many of the
would-be fighters are, in Ms. Crowley's words, "often eager." The Kill Mentality The military attitude
implanted on the psyche of the enlisted is exemplified by the recent jog of a
phalanx of "75 soldiers singing, shouting and screaming" at six in
the morning in the New Mexico desert. Jesuit priest John Dear, a staunch
opponent of the invasion of Iraq, was awakened by their chants of "Kill!
Kill! Kill!" and "Swing your guns from left to right; we can kill
those guys all night." The shouting reached a crescendo an hour later
when the troops-in-training reached the front of Mr. Dear's home next to the
church. Egged on by their commanders the troops continued to scream
"Kill! Kill! Kill!" The oft-arrested dissident
priest had the derring-do to stride out amongst the troops in the street and
invoke the teachings of Commander-in-Chief George Bush's favorite
philosopher. Calling upon a higher authority he bellowed "In the name of
God, I order all of you to stop this nonsense, and not to go to Iraq. I want
all of you to quit the military, disobey your orders to kill, and not to kill
anyone. I do not want you to get killed. I want you to practice the love and
nonviolence of Jesus. God does not bless war. God does not want you to kill
so Bush and Cheney can get more oil. God does not support war. Stop all this
and go home." The troops were presented
with a moral challenge. They had a choice. To unquestioningly kill is not
only intellectually bereft but depraved. Seeking Justification - Kill ‘Them’ First There are attempts at
justification, usually along the lines of do it to them before they do it to
you. The moral refrain of "treat others how you wish to be treated"
has gone out the window. One unnamed soldier reasons, "It makes you want
it. It makes you want to be able to do it. It makes you want to be able to
just kill - kill the enemy. Because they were willing to do the same thing to
you." Mr. Riddle in a more lucid
moment acknowledges the humanity of the enemy: "You know that you killed
them, and you take their life. And I know as me having a little daughter at
home and a wife at home, that guy probably had a daughter or some kid or a
wife at home, waiting for him. And he's not returning that night." It is true that the soldiers
are psychologically conditioned to kill and desensitized to it. This is a
form of psychological warfare that the service(wo)men choose to accept or are
forced to submit to. World War II veteran Phil
Piazza relates an anecdote from his training: "I remember when we
trained with the various commandos, they took and filled a sheep's bladder
with blood. And you had to bayonet that thing and let -- and the blood would
come out all over you, and you had to stay with that stench of the blood on
you. And that, believe me, will instill the killer instinct." Ms. Crowley opines "War
is no place for wimps. The failure of one comes at the expense of all." It is curious as to what
constitutes wimpiness for Ms. Crowley. Is the hesitancy to kill wimpiness? Is
it not the failure to refuse an immoral command that is wimpiness? Who were
the wimps at My Lai? The men who lost their minds and committed atrocities against
defenseless civilians or the American threesome who sought to halt the
barbarity? Heroism is when the one or few have the moral conviction to oppose
the majority when they are perceived to be in the wrong. Youth and Animalism Gulf War veteran Charles
Sheehan-Miles recalls the vagaries of youth: "Going to gunnery with a
tank, for example, was an incredibly fun experience. It was exciting.
Everybody had a good time. It was like a high impact sport, only you're
firing $25,000 rounds down range." "You're preparing for
battle. You're preparing to kill people. But, at least in my case, as a 19-,
20-year-old, the connection wasn't necessarily there." Youthful exuberance is
another reason given for the killing. Yes, there is evidence for this. Does
this excuse the behavior though? No, it merely offers an explanation. When
male youth gather together there is a tendency to bond aggressively as
happens in sports. Sports do have the adjunct function of serving as a
fertile training ground in the inculcation of the warrior mentality. Noam
Chomsky sees competitive sports as an institution to "build up
irrational attitudes of submission to authority." Acting as a group allows
individual members to diffuse responsibility for group dynamics. Humans in a
group often exhibit a 'pack mentality.' Says Ms. Crowley, "Some
experts say military training is a natural fit with the innate patterns of
human behavior. Many people acting together will do things none of them would
do alone." These "innate patterns
of human behavior" might better be depicted as animalistic behavior.
Pertinent examples are the hunting behaviors of wolves and hyenas or the
warring among the bone-wielding apes of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space
Odyssey. Ms. Crowley immediately
contradicts herself and acknowledges the predominant animalism of fighting
units. "Within the pack, a kind of natural order emerges mirroring the
primitive instincts of dominance and submission." Hiding behind his alias, Mr.
MacGowan who admits to the cowardly act of shooting a man in the back,
rambles on about the animalism of war. Of course, this animalism is an
atavistic characteristic of the enemy. From his lofty evolutionary perch Mr.
MacGowan theorizes, "You go through a progression, a stepwise
regression, and sort of like, well, that's an enemy of my country. Those
people - they're trying to kill me. They're subhuman. They're animals.
They're going to rape our women and kill our children. Save our children.
They're in the way. Kill them." Imagine that: "They're
in the way. Kill them." If this attitude prevailed in the pedestrian
ways of the world then chaos would reign. One wonders how the term wimpiness
applies to one wielding such anonymity. Obviously Mr. MacGowan is still
affected by his ordeals in war. His paranoia of "them" defiling
"our" women and children is pure fantasy. MacGowan's statement
ignores the myriad accounts of the US fighters raping, pillaging, torturing,
and killing unarmed civilians - elderly and children alike. This is not
ancient military history; there are myriad reports of this ongoing in Iraq. A requisite of basic
morality is what applies to to the other equally applies to 'us.' Trained to do Ms. Crowley offers the
specious exculpatory rationale that the fighters "had done what they
trained to do. They were fit to kill. Now all they had to do was live with
it." In other words, even if the
actions were egregious the soldiers are exonerated because of their training?
Perhaps they were not of right mind due to conditioning imposed through their
conditions of training? Were the trainees unaware of
what was taking place during training? If aware, then it can be surmised that
they chose to undergo the training. The same "trained to
do" rationale is valid for abusive individuals raised in families where
abuse was commonplace. Treatment is obviously the requirement here. Equally one could make the
same argument for actions while under the influence of mind-altering
substances. This, however, ignores cases where an individual willingly chose
to consume substances that influence mind and behavior. Surely the
responsibility lies at the moment the choice was made to allow oneself to
enter an altered state. Why does Ms. Crowley not
investigate the training further? Is the mere fact that such training exists
enough to justify it? Why shouldn't training emphasize methods based on
peaceful means? Obeying conscience Despite the conditioning of
the fighters, there is always an opportunity to grasp back one's humanity and
bestow that same dignity upon the enemy. Ms. Crowley describes how Mr. Miles
won a commendation for valor, for rescuing a wounded soldier in battle
without feelings of valor or joy. "It was so easy to pull
the trigger and kill people," said Mr. Miles. "Yes, I was afraid of
what would happen. I was afraid of what it would do to me. What kind of
person I would become." He left the military as a
conscientious objector with an honorable discharge. Obeying one's moral
conscience is honorable. This is not to state that there are not those on the
battlefield fighting out of a sense of honor and courage. At least they can
attempt to justify their actions. It also serves to indicate
that the military is not a monolith. Individual members can speak to their
conscience. One of the replies to Mr. Riddle's videotaped slaying was from
First Sergeant Perry D. Jefferies who found the matter to be:
"Disgusting." The Search for Romantic War The program wraps up with an
analysis of the advice German WWII Panzer commander Erwin Rommel gave to his
troops, which Mr. Brown sums up as: "In the absence of orders go find
something, and kill it." Mr. Brown considers this as "Not exactly
the romantic notion of duty and honor and country." What is rather remarkable is
that someone would search for romanticism in war. Nevertheless, taboo-breaker
Mr. Brown agrees with the unromantic advice of Mr. Rommel: "But in war
that kind of bluntness can keep people alive. It's what brings them home. And
now thousands of troops in Iraq are doing just that. And thousands more are
scheduled to come back over the next nine months. Many, most will be proud of
what they've accomplished." The returning troops can
take pride in having found something and killed it? This is an absurd notion
that deserves rebuttal. Indeed the notion of pride itself is a concept that
bears scrutinization. It is hoped that the quality of modesty would triumph over
pride. Can a human being
justifiably take pride in killing other human beings? What is the morality of
this? Do the ends justify the means? Now that the despotic Saddam
Hussein has been ignominiously captured the casus belli given for aggressing
Iraq is still wanting. Can a nation retain its sense of morality when it
keeps switching war pretexts after the original pretexts are demonstrated to
be false or outright lies? There can be no justifiable pride in the capture
of the despot no matter how despicable he is, when his apprehension was at
the cost of hundreds-of-thousands of Iraqi lives, the humiliation of those
still alive, the imposition of penury, the wiping out of the Iraqi economic
base, the looting of their history and natural resources, the selling of
their industry, undermining international law, and the list goes on. One alternative
war aim was achieved - namely, regime change. The dictatorship of Mr. Hussein
has been replaced with the dictatorship of Mr. Bush's representative Paul
Bremer. The other pledges of Iraqi freedoms and democracy are but broken
promises unchallenged in the US corporate media. Socialist scholars foresaw
that capitalism's apex would be expressed as imperialism. US hyper-imperialism
has now perched the nation on a precipice where no nation has gone before in
history. US constitutional framer James Madison forewarned of the dangers war
poses to a nation. The caution sounded by him rings ever so cogently today: Of all the enemies to public
liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and
develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these
proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known
instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war,
too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended. Its influence in
dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means
of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the
people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the
inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a
state of war ... and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by
both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. Mr. Bush and his
neoconservative cabal have not heeded the venerated wisdom of the so-called
Founding Fathers. The US sits on a record deficit, with a burgeoning gap in
the distribution of wealth, rampant corporate chicanery, a citizenry whose
charter rights are in abeyance, and its vaunted war machine is troubled by
indigent guerrillas in its zones of occupation. The path of perpetual war is
proving a harrowing one. As long as the root causes of terrorism are undealt
with, US terrorism will only sow the seeds of future terrorism. Mr. Bush's
philosophy is not of Jesus. A different path must be ventured to save the
world from the scourge of violence. A 90-year-old man in Dubai
offered this wisdom: "War is the violent rejection of words in favor of
weapons. It eliminates debate and negotiation by offering only death and
submission. War is the tool of weak men to make themselves appear
strong." The US awaits a true strong
leader, one who can oppose war. Kim Petersen lives in Nova
Scotia and is a regular contributor to Dissident Voice newsletter. External link:
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles9/Petersen_Killing.htm |