Collateral Damage/Murdering People
Iraq is looking more and more like Vietnam every day. I’ve been putting off posting about this for ages, cos it’s pretty obvious to everyone what a fucking mess Iraq is; thanks to the West. But in light of recent reports emerging of the alleged massacre of Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha last November, I felt I needed to say something.
To think of this fills me with many emotions, but the overwhelming one is despair. Things like this should not happen. Ever. It’s as simple as that. But unfortunately, this is what happens when we try and solve problems through war. And will continue to happen. It’s happened before, and no doubt it will happen again. I studied the My Lai massacre as part of a module on the Vietnam War in my A-Level History course. This isn’t just a conspiracy or anything; it actually happened. Perhaps as many as 500 people, including women and children, murdered. In cold blood. For no reason.
Why have the US not learned from Vietnam? Apparently, the US troops are going to be given “ethics training”. Well, why the fuck have they not been trained in this before? The simple answer; such training would make it harder for them to kill people. Bush has described the training "a reminder for troops in Iraq, or throughout our military, that there are high standards expected of them and that there are strong rules of engagement". “Rules of engagement”; like, not killing innocent civilians. In order to actually clean up our mess, we going to need to win the hearts and minds of the Iraq civilians, just like the US had to do (and failed to do) in Vietnam. And killing them isn’t a very good way of doing this.
The comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam, certainly for the US troops, have been uttered increasingly as the war drags on. The British and American troops are now, as the Americans were in Vietnam, trapped. I say ‘trapped’; this is arguably what the US wanted all along. They have been building several permanent installations there; fueling Iraqi (and those of us with any sense in the West) that this War is all about oil, control of the middle-east, and perhaps maintaining a puppet government in Iraq.
(I could rant further about the reasons behind this War, but I won’t. Instead, everyone should watch the fantastic Robert Newman, who is both hilarious, and a speaker of Truths. Thanks to The Girl for pointing me in his direction.)
Regardless of why we are there, the real horror is not that alleged massacre(s) (there are now reports of one in Ishaqi) are happening. It’s the fact that they don’t cause that much of a stir, either in the Western media or even in Iraq. Why is this? Surely the murder of innocent people should cause massive reactions. But, the sickening thing is that innocent people are dying every day; be it by “accident”, “massacre” or just sheer military incompetence. Civilians dying is merely part of what happens when the West go on our missions to enforce our ideas of democracy onto people that are viewed, even if it is not said out loud, as inferior. They need us to bring culture and peace to their lives. And in doing so we in the West make the killing of civilians into an unfortunate but unavoidable side-effect of bringing democracy to them, and not the tragedy that it should be.
So, in the end; so what if a few Iraqi’s die? They should be grateful, surely? After all, we saved them from the evil clutches of Saddam Hussain and we are in the process of bringing democracy to their lives. In essence, they owe us. “Collateral damage” is just an inevitable part of war. But how much collateral damage is worth “democracy” in the Middle-East? 40,000 lives? By the time we get out of there, whatever the outcome, it’s going to be a lot more.
To think of this fills me with many emotions, but the overwhelming one is despair. Things like this should not happen. Ever. It’s as simple as that. But unfortunately, this is what happens when we try and solve problems through war. And will continue to happen. It’s happened before, and no doubt it will happen again. I studied the My Lai massacre as part of a module on the Vietnam War in my A-Level History course. This isn’t just a conspiracy or anything; it actually happened. Perhaps as many as 500 people, including women and children, murdered. In cold blood. For no reason.
Why have the US not learned from Vietnam? Apparently, the US troops are going to be given “ethics training”. Well, why the fuck have they not been trained in this before? The simple answer; such training would make it harder for them to kill people. Bush has described the training "a reminder for troops in Iraq, or throughout our military, that there are high standards expected of them and that there are strong rules of engagement". “Rules of engagement”; like, not killing innocent civilians. In order to actually clean up our mess, we going to need to win the hearts and minds of the Iraq civilians, just like the US had to do (and failed to do) in Vietnam. And killing them isn’t a very good way of doing this.
The comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam, certainly for the US troops, have been uttered increasingly as the war drags on. The British and American troops are now, as the Americans were in Vietnam, trapped. I say ‘trapped’; this is arguably what the US wanted all along. They have been building several permanent installations there; fueling Iraqi (and those of us with any sense in the West) that this War is all about oil, control of the middle-east, and perhaps maintaining a puppet government in Iraq.
(I could rant further about the reasons behind this War, but I won’t. Instead, everyone should watch the fantastic Robert Newman, who is both hilarious, and a speaker of Truths. Thanks to The Girl for pointing me in his direction.)
Regardless of why we are there, the real horror is not that alleged massacre(s) (there are now reports of one in Ishaqi) are happening. It’s the fact that they don’t cause that much of a stir, either in the Western media or even in Iraq. Why is this? Surely the murder of innocent people should cause massive reactions. But, the sickening thing is that innocent people are dying every day; be it by “accident”, “massacre” or just sheer military incompetence. Civilians dying is merely part of what happens when the West go on our missions to enforce our ideas of democracy onto people that are viewed, even if it is not said out loud, as inferior. They need us to bring culture and peace to their lives. And in doing so we in the West make the killing of civilians into an unfortunate but unavoidable side-effect of bringing democracy to them, and not the tragedy that it should be.
So, in the end; so what if a few Iraqi’s die? They should be grateful, surely? After all, we saved them from the evil clutches of Saddam Hussain and we are in the process of bringing democracy to their lives. In essence, they owe us. “Collateral damage” is just an inevitable part of war. But how much collateral damage is worth “democracy” in the Middle-East? 40,000 lives? By the time we get out of there, whatever the outcome, it’s going to be a lot more.
posted by Christopher at 11:07 pm
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