The Haditha Massacre

[luke]

Wow, Ken, did you read my deleted post about the teachers beating the students? You thief.

It's not that it implies that that the principal knew what was going on, just that the principal was too weak of a leader to prevent something like this from happening.

Also, part of the job of being in the military is to make sure you don't shoot civilians. You can't really say that about many other employers that aren't police departments.

[Kensterberg]

chrisfan said:

kenholzman said:

BTW, I think the Columbine comparison just doesn't fit here. This is more like if you had teachers who were beating up students -- if the principal knew about it, then you'd hold him liable, and if he wasn't doing anything to prevent it when he could have, you'd hold him (and the school) responsible.

Imagine if a teacher was sleeping with a student and the principal knew about it and allowed it to go on -- should the principal be punished, or just the teacher?

This comparison does not work because you're talking about an ongoing action, rather than a one-time occurance. You're also talking about the higher up being aware of what was happening, which we don't know to be the case here.

I said if a teacher was sleeping with a student and the principal knew about it. If the principal didn't know, that's a different question (though one that raises the question of should s/he have reasonably known about it, in which case there is still responsibility through negligence). Right now, we don't know enough details to fully assign responsibility, but I certainly think that under the military's chain of command system the responsibility for this action is likely to go higher than simply a couple of Marines who fired the shots.

But this is why we need to have public, thorough, and open investigations of this sort of thing.

[chrisfan]

kenholzman said:

The point about Brown is that the President's first response to him (and to everyone else in this administration who has screwed up) has not been to hold him accountable, it's been to reward him.

Damn him! What a horrible boss! He actually waits to know the facts before taking action on a person.

[kmc]

chrisfan said:

kenholzman said:

BTW, I think the Columbine comparison just doesn't fit here. This is more like if you had teachers who were beating up students -- if the principal knew about it, then you'd hold him liable, and if he wasn't doing anything to prevent it when he could have, you'd hold him (and the school) responsible.

Imagine if a teacher was sleeping with a student and the principal knew about it and allowed it to go on -- should the principal be punished, or just the teacher?

This comparison does not work because you're talking about an ongoing action, rather than a one-time occurance. You're also talking about the higher up being aware of what was happening, which we don't know to be the case here.

But as Rocky stated, Chrisfan, lack of prior knowledge of incident is not IMO an acceptable excuse. Part of a military officer's duty is to train for "impossible to micro-manage" situations such as this. Do I know that the person in charge had prior knowledge of this incident. I don't, and I am leaning on the "he can't possibly" side of the fence. Still, his job is to be accountable for the actions of his unit regardless of whether or not he had prior knowledge of wrongdoing.

[skvorisdeadsorta]

On a side note here, I have read some interesting conspiracy theories on Columbine and several have wondered due to the ease of those kids getting their weapons and the fact that the cops had several chances and oppurtunities to put those 2 monsters out of society's misery, if it wasn't an inside job because of those factors.

[skvorisdeadsorta]

The report that I heard on NPR yesterday on this fiasco is that the Marines were surrounded by people protesting (which is their right!) but also several citizens were throwing rocks and surrounding the Marines in a menacing manner. I have to wonder, with insurgents loving group mob tactics to take out targets if maybe they were only doing what we might have done and freaked out. I know that if I was in a hotbed of potential combat danger and people started massing around me throwing rocks and getting really animated, I might shoot them. Again, though this is a what if scenario and I don't have any military training so I honestly don't know what I would do. I honestly just don't know how to feel about this, though.

I'm not quite so certain that I would put this on a high crimes list like My Lai though. That was blatantly thought out and sinister. I think this was an off the cuff reaction that is going to have some serious repercussions, but I would hardly classify this of the premeditated war crime.

[strat-0]

From a blog:

"A caution of all under the age of 60. Do not invoke comparisons to Mi Lai. The initial reports indicate a couple of weapons (meaning a couple of individuals) with a low level cover-up at the squad or platoon level. Company level command has already been relieved, probably for failure to verify conflicting reports.

This appears to be what we called in Nam “Blood Rage”. Based upon initial reports, we’re looking at voluntary manslaughter under the UCMJ with some low level collusion to cover it up.

This is not Mi Lai. Don’t let the absolutists and the handwringers turn it into another Mi Lai. The Corps. will handle this and handle it justly."

I have a pretty good idea of what happened here. I also stumbled across this article from The Guardian, no less. This is must read material to help understand Haditha.

www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1553969,00.html

[rockysigman]

skvorisdeadsorta said:

The report that I heard on NPR yesterday on this fiasco is that the Marines were surrounded by people protesting (which is their right!) but also several citizens were throwing rocks and surrounding the Marines in a menacing manner. I have to wonder, with insurgents loving group mob tactics to take out targets if maybe they were only doing what we might have done and freaked out. I know that if I was in a hotbed of potential combat danger and people started massing around me throwing rocks and getting really animated, I might shoot them. Again, though this is a what if scenario and I don't have any military training so I honestly don't know what I would do. I honestly just don't know how to feel about this, though.

I'm not quite so certain that I would put this on a high crimes list like My Lai though. That was blatantly thought out and sinister. I think this was an off the cuff reaction that is going to have some serious repercussions, but I would hardly classify this of the premeditated war crime.

That's exactly what I meant when I said that it was understandable. The average person, untrained, would likely completely flip out in a warzone environment. But the important thing to remember is that these are not average, untrained people. They are supposed to be prepared to conscientiously deal with situations like that. If they were not prepared to do so, then that is a failure of those who were supposed to prepare them (i.e. senior ranking officials).

My reference to My Lai earlier was meant more to note that this event may end up being the big deal that really opens peoples eyes to the realities of the war. Granted, the My Lai massacre was much larger in scope. As for your assertion that that My Lai was more sinister, well, we simply don't know enough about Haditha yet to know that for sure. And of course there is already strong anti-war sentiment here, but I think a lot of people right now are content to complain about the mishandling of the war without getting very active in protesting it. This may change that a little bit depending on what other information comes out.

[skvorisdeadsorta]

My Lai was premeditated though. They did that shit on purpose. No one asked Colin Powell, that's for sure, seeing as how he was one of the commanding officers that tried to cover that shit up.

I don't think this was intended to go down the way it did. The other thing is, training can only do so much. I'm sure if you were trained to wrestle and kill a bear, there is still the chance that you might freak out and realize, "holy shit, I'm fighting a bear". Defenses down and you are squashed like a grape from the Bear.

Fuck you, Bear. I punched him the face though and then I wrestled a shark.

[strat-0]

As for me, I think I got your Mi Lai comparison, Rocky. It's going to be a big deal, it's a crime, and it's going to be a big black eye for the US. I thought the statement from an obvious vet was an enlightening perspective, however.

[Kensterberg]

I'm not sure which is worse ... a premeditated attack shows malice in planning, etc., but it also shows that you've got a competent military who think about their objectives and accomplish them. If what you've got is a few soldiers "freaking out" and killing civilians, then you've got a break-down in discipline, which means that their supervisors (and the entire military training apparatus) failed in regard to making these men into competent soldiers.

Either way, the military has some 'splainin' to do ...

[chrisfan]

There's a third scenario Ken. Also just recently, US military personell shot and killed a pregnant woman speeding to the hospital in labor.

The car she was in sped through a checkpoint, and did not respond to the signals and calls for them to stop. Some are crying foul - saying the woman was murdered. The soldiers, and the military, are saying they did the job they were supposed to be doing - stopping people at a checkpoint.

What provoked these soliders to shoot and kill civilains? No one knows right now -- no one around here that is. It's easy after the fact to look at the circumstance with the pregnant woman and say "She was innocent, she should not have been shot". But knowing the circumstances of the event, it's logical that the soldiers did shoot at the car -- they had no way of knowing the circumstances in that car, or who was in it. There are way too many critical pieces of information that are still lacking in the Haditha story. And with reports such as the one that Strat-o posted, I'm not really sure why it's logical to assume the story coming from civilians in Haditha should be trusted completely. The anecdotal character witness type information that a CNN producer just wrote about the soldiers is further reason to want to know more facts surrounding this incident. Here's [/color] the article.

[Kensterberg]

chrisfan said:

There's a third scenario Ken. Also just recently, US military personell shot and killed a pregnant woman speeding to the hospital in labor.

The car she was in sped through a checkpoint, and did not respond to the signals and calls for them to stop. Some are crying foul - saying the woman was murdered. The soldiers, and the military, are saying they did the job they were supposed to be doing - stopping people at a checkpoint.

What provoked these soliders to shoot and kill civilains? No one knows right now -- no one around here that is. It's easy after the fact to look at the circumstance with the pregnant woman and say "She was innocent, she should not have been shot". But knowing the circumstances of the event, it's logical that the soldiers did shoot at the car -- they had no way of knowing the circumstances in that car, or who was in it. There are way too many critical pieces of information that are still lacking in the Haditha story. And with reports such as the one that Strat-o posted, I'm not really sure why it's logical to assume the story coming from civilians in Haditha should be trusted completely. The anecdotal character witness type information that a CNN producer just wrote about the soldiers is further reason to want to know more facts surrounding this incident. I'll see if I can locate the article.

This is indeed a third possibility, and it is the one that accounts for the vast majority of such incidents. In these cases, the blame rests both on the civilians for not listening to people with guns (when in doubt, nothing beats a loaded gun), and also partially on the military as an institution for not coming up with a more effective and less lethal way to communicate with such civilians. One of these incidents is a misunderstanding, but if you've had a bunch of them, it's a failure to communicate and we have to shoulder some of the responsibility for that breakdown.

But I haven't seen anything that indicates that Haditha is such an example. Like the blogger that Strat mentioned above, it sounds like we've got an incident involving (at least) manslaughter of some type and a low level cover up. It will be interesting to see what the investigation reveals (and just how much of it the public is allowed to see).

[rockysigman]

Fair enough, Chrisfan. But could you maybe give a hypothetical that would make this acceptable? I mean, if they were shooting at the soldiers or something then I could picture it, but at this point there is no indication whatsoever that that is the case, so I'm curious as to what you have in mind here...

[chrisfan]

Ken, in the military's defense, I don't think there is any doubt that communication / dealing with civilians is made MUCH more difficult when the enemy you are fighting is charading as civilians as well.

Rocky, I don't really know what that scenario would be. But as I said, I think it's fair to question just how reliable the sources of the accusations are.