Iraq is Arabic For Vietnam…

FORMER SENATOR MAX CLELAND RECENTLY WENT ON RECORD: “WELCOME TO VIETNAM, MR. PRESIDENT. SORRY YOU DIDN’T GO WHEN YOU HAD THE CHANCE. “

It Never Happened and Besides They Deserved It Anyway

The massacre of the rural population of Vietnam was not an accidental by-product of the war, but an intentional outcome of proposed and executed military strategy. This “deliberate destruction of a part of a national group” conforms to the definition of genocide as explained by the Geneva Convention.

In March 1968, under the command of Lieutenant William Calley, the agitated GIs of Charlie Company, 11th Brigade, Americal Division, embarked on a search and destroy mission in the South Vietnamese village of My Lai, a heavily mined area of Quang Ngai province that was deeply infiltrated by Viet Cong. In the preceding weeks, numerous members of Charlie Company had been killed and maimed by VC forces, leaving the troops, who were known for their particularly violent tactics, particularly incensed and resentful on March 16, 1968. The search and destroy mission quickly degenerated into the slaughter of more than 500 unarmed civilians, primarily women, children, and elderly.

Eyewitness accounts, including footage filmed by an accompanying army photographer, Ron Haeberle, betray particularly egregious atrocities committed against the unarmed villagers: American forces shot praying women and children, including babies, in the back of the head, girls were raped and then killed, and Lieutenant Calley herded an unarmed group of villagers into a ditch and sprayed them with machine gun fire. Orders were also given to raze the village. The carnage only stopped when an American Huey helicopter came to the rescue of the villagers – an army pilot, Hugh Thompson, landed his helicopter between the remaining villagers and the rampaging soldiers and subsequently ordered his gunner to open fire on any U.S. soldier who continued to attack the ravaged Vietnamese.

Unfortunately, these instances of slaughter perpetrated by American G.I.s are no longer unique to Vietnam. Once again, we’re witnessing US-perpetrated bloodbaths in which as many as fifty Iraqi civilians receive fatal injuries by overzealous American soldiers. Such was the involvement of the 82nd Airborne in the al-Fallujah slaughter on April 28, 2003 and April 30, 2003. Not unlike Charlie Company, 11th Brigade, Americal Division, the paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne were still reeling from the multiple casualties they had suffered earlier in the day when they received orders to provide crowd-control and law enforcement in al-Fallujah, a Sunni stronghold that was not sympathetic to the American occupation. Sunni resentment towards the uninvited Americans culminated in a peaceful demonstration, when, according to Second Lt. Wesley Davidson, US soldiers, attempting to disperse the crowd, threw a smoke canister at the protesters. Moments later, US troops open fire on the crowds of people. Witnesses reported being unable to reach the blood-soaked incapacitated civilians laying in the street. Ambulance driver Jum`a `Abid Muthin recalls shouting, “We’re an ambulance!” and [the U.S. soldiers] said ’Go away!’ They shot in the air.”

While the intentions of the U.S. soldiers in denying passage to the ambulances is unclear, this should be part of the investigation. Under international humanitarian law U.S. soldiers had an obligation to allow the wounded access to medical care as soon as practicable.

In spite of repeated claims by the US military that the 82nd Airborne Division came under heavy fire that day, Human Rights Watch could find no evidence to support this claim – the recovered machine gun rounds, coupled with the absence of ballistic evidence that could support the United States’ official version of events, suggest that American troops opened fire on unarmed Iraqis when the crowd became confrontational – investigators found extensive physical evidence that suggests the Iraqis had thrown rocks at the US soldiers, which more than likely precipitated the gunfire.

Two days following the al-Fallujah bloodbath, Sunni protesters gathered to protest the American occupation – particularly the occupation of their town – when a six-vehicle US military convoy en-route to al-Ramadi was “struck with a rock, hitting a soldier in the head. Another soldier lost a tooth. The lead vehicle shot a warning shot into the air,” at which time the trail vehicle opened fire on the crowds of people, killing three and wounding at least sixteen.

An unidentified American soldier justifies his use of deadly force. “We’ve been sitting here taking fire for three days. It was enough to get your nerves wracked. When they [protesters] marched down the road and started shooting at the compound there was nothing for us to do but defend ourselves.”

In a since-declassified document, military command expresses serious concerns about the inherent nature of the dual-role that the “average soldier” must adopt:

“The soldiers have been asked to go from killing the enemy to protecting and interacting, and back to killing again. The constant shift in mental posture greatly complicates things for the average soldier. The soldiers are blurred and confused about the rules of engagement, which continues to raise questions, and issues about force protection while at checkpoints and conducting patrols.

How does the soldier know exactly what the rule of engagement is? Soldiers who have just conducted combat against dark skinned personnel wearing civilian clothes have difficulty trusting dark skinned personnel wearing civilian clothes.”

US soldiers can be equally arrogant and abusive in Iraq: Iraqis and foreign troops frequently witness US soldiers’ “highly insulting” behavior towards Iraqi civilians, which ranges from putting their feet on the heads of Iraqi detainees to searching and/or groping female Iraqis, both culturally unacceptable [and highly offensive] acts.

Vietnam veterans identified with Calley’s blatant hostility towards the villagers. Former marine Tim O’Brian recalls, “After all the frustrations that we had been through, I understood the frustrations that were felt by Calley. This isn’t to excuse his behavior. I thought it was wrong and I still do…but at the same time, here was a guy who had watched friends die. We didn’t kill people in My Lai, our element did.”

After repeated cover-ups, the army ultimately scapegoated Calley, who was charged with 109 counts of murder and convicted in a court martial. Vietnam GIs expressed particular contempt for the verdict against Calley: former Marine master sergeant Stanley Gertner explained, “If this man is guilty, he is guilty for the same thing we did. We shot up villages under orders and killed countless civilians.” The responsibility for My Lai, in fact, went straight up the chain of command: Captain Ernest Medina, Lieutenant Calley’s immediate superior, issued Calley direct orders to “waste the village.”

Perhaps the most sinister ramification of the My Lai massacre was the shift in America’s public consciousness; suddenly Americans willingly entertained the possibility that the My Lai massacre was not an aberration or anomaly but rather standard operating procedure.

A U.S. Special Forces soldier recalls:

“I knew a couple of cases where it was suggested by Special Forces that Viet Cong prisoners be killed. The way the transmissions went with the base camp you knew what they wanted you to do – get rid of them. I wouldn’t do that…and a major told me, “You know, we almost told you right over the phone to do them in.” I said that I was glad he didn’t, because it would have been embarrassing to refuse to do it…The major said, ”Oh, you wouldn’t have had to do it; all you had to do was turn them over to the [North] Vietnamese.” Of course, this is supposed to absolve you of any responsibility. This is the general attitude. It’s really a left-handed morality. Very few of the Special Forces guys had any qualms about this. Damn few.”

Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience…therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.

–Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal, 1950

Killing Them Softly

EXCERPT FROM KILLING THEM SOFTLY, BY K. D’ANCONIA

Over the course of the Vietnam War, the United States dropped tens of thousands of tons of napalm, carrying out a defoliation effort over an area larger than the size of the state of Massachusetts. The bombing far exceeded that of the Korean War or of World War II. The number of Vietnamese civilians killed numbers in the millions. “I used it routinely in Vietnam,” said retired Marine Lt. Gen. Bernard Trainor, now a prominent defense analyst. “I have no moral compunction against using it. It’s just another weapon.”

Sadly, we have not seen the last days of dropping napalm on peaceful civilian populations: in March 2003, Marines confirmed that they had repeatedly dropped napalm on Iraqi troops. One instance in March 2003 was witnessed by reporters from CNN and Sydney Morning Herald:

Marine Cobra helicopter gunships firing Hellfire missiles swept in low from the south. Then the marine howitzers, with a range of 30 kilometres [sic], opened a sustained barrage over the next eight hours. They were supported by US Navy aircraft which dropped 40,000 pounds of explosives and napalm, a US officer told the Herald.

Safwan Hill went up in a huge fireball and the Iraqi observation post was obliterated. “I pity anybody who’s in there,” a marine sergeant said. “We told them to surrender.” ^[1]

The US military has in its current arsenal a modern form of napalm known as the MK-77 Mod 5, which evolved from the M-47 and M-74 napalm bombs used in Vietnam. Acting in violation of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions, the U.S. has used during the course of its occupation of Iraq white phosphorous, napalm, and cluster bombs.

“We napalmed both those [bridge] approaches,” said Colonel James Alles. “Unfortunately there were people there … you could see them in the [cockpit] video. They were Iraqi soldiers. It’s no great way to die. The generals love napalm. It has a big psychological effect.” ^[2]

”It comes across the radio as a general transmission, when it happens like that, you hear it on the radio…as they’d say, ”In five mikes, we’re going to drop some willy pete. Roger. Commence the bombing.” When you hear willy pete,’ that’s military slang [for white phosphorous].” ^[3]

“Most of the world understands that napalm and incendiaries are a horrible, horrible weapon,” said Robert Musil, director of the organization Physicians for Social Responsibility. “It takes up an awful lot of medical resources. It creates horrible wounds.” ^[4] Musil noted that the Pentagon’s initial denial of its use of napalm “fits a pattern of deception [by the US administration].”^[5]

Vietnam veteran Thomas Brinson, who fought in the 1968 Tet Offensive, dryly observes, “Iraq is just Arabic for Vietnam, like the poster says – the same horror, the same tears.”

The 1980 UN Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects (Protocol III) banned the use of napalm.

[1] Murdoch, Lindsay. “Dead Bodies Are Everywhere.” Sydney Morning Herald, March 22, 2003. < http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/21/1047749944836.html >.

[2] Buncombe, Andrew. “Incendiary Weapons: The Big White Lie.” The Independent/UK, November 17, 2005. < http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article99716.ece >.

[3] Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre.

[4] Buncombe, Andrew. “Incendiary Weapons: The Big White Lie.” The Independent/UK, November 17, 2005. < http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article99716.ece >.

[5] “The Pentagon subsequently issued a statement to the Herald: ‘Your story (‘Dead bodies everywhere’, by Lindsay Murdoch, March 22, 2003) claiming US forces are using napalm in Iraq, is patently false. The US took napalm out of service in the early 1970s. We completed destruction of our last batch of napalm on April 4, 2001, and no longer maintain any stocks of napalm. – Jeff A. Davis, Lieutenant Commander, US Navy, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense.’ ” (Murdoch, Lindsay. “Dead Bodies Are Everywhere.” Sydney Morning Herald, March 22, 2003).

“WHEN A WELL-PACKAGED WEB OF LIES HAS BEEN SOLD GRADUALLY TO THE MASSES OVER GENERATIONS, THE TRUTH WILL SEEM UTTERLY PREPOSTEROUS, AND ITS SPEAKER A RAVING LUNATIC. ”

The Legacy of Kent State

EXCERPT FROM THE LEGACY OF KENT STATE, BY K. D’ANCONIA

Kent State: An Intentional Massacre

According to court documents, at least twenty-eight Ohio National Guardsmen fired at least sixty-one shots in thirteen seconds on May 4, 1970 at Kent State University. The legitimacy of the guardsmen’s use of lethal force has been a hotly debated issue…until now. Many historians and journalists have believed that the inexperienced Guard members panicked, but a recently uncovered audio recording of the incident clearly disputes that theory.

The thirty-seven year-old audio, recently discovered in a government archive, leaves little room for doubt: “Right here. Get set. Point. Fire.” The commanding officers have rigorously denied issuing a verbal command to fire, instead placing the blame on the inexperienced triggermen.

The legacy of the Kent State massacre, deemed the Dien Bien Phu of American involvement in Vietnam, brought the war home, marking the birth of an era David Halberstam described as “us against us.” The ideological ramifications of the newly discovered audio tape are significant, both in the context of the legacy of Kent State and the politics of memory. (cont’d)

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

The War Crimes Doctrine

President George W. Bush declared, “Iraq is overcoming decades of a vicious tyranny, where governmental authority stemmed solely from fear, terror, and brutality. We will ensure that one brutal dictator is not replaced by another.” And yet the actions of President Bush and his administration suggest that that is precisely what they intended to do. Bush & Co. have systematically implemented an inherently genocidal policy in Iraq; worse, their repeated endeavors to establish American immunity from the Geneva Conventions and any other form of international law reflect the administration’s treasonous attempts to circumvent humanitarian law in an effort to “legally” commit war crimes in Iraq.

 

In Nuremberg, U.S. Justice Robert Jackson proclaimed, “No grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy.” Yet in 2002, after declaring the war on terror “of uncertain duration,” the Bush Administration enacted the Bush Doctrine of Pre-Emptive Self Defense, which ratified President Bush’s right to launch “pre-emptive strikes” even in the absence of any immediate threat. Perhaps most alarming is the doctrine’s outright dismissal of international laws and institutions, of which it deems to be of little value.

 

Senator Robert Byrd asserts, “Under this strategy, the President lays claim to an expansive power to use our military to strike other nations first, even if we have not been threatened or provoked.” The ideological ramifications of the Bush Doctrine exemplify the United States’ adherence to policy predicated on institutionalized genocide.

 

To initiate a war of aggression without facing immediate threat from combatants and civilians is, according to the Nuremberg Tribunal, to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

 

The Nuremberg Charter defines crimes against humanity as “murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against civilian populations, before or during a war; or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.”

 

Granted the perpetration of genocide in Iraq differs in several respects from conventional ideological workings of the term, of which genocide is generally defined in terms of blatant acts of racial extermination, as in the Holocaust, Rwanda, Cambodia, and other cases of the like.  The U.S. has not stated an explicit intent to commit mass genocide against the Iraqi people; however, International Humanitarian Law, especially the Law of Geneva, comprised of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the 1977 Additional Protocols, defines genocide by its intent.  Article 2 of the 1948 Geneva Convention, “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” defines genocide as the following:  ”Genocide means any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” 

 

Furthermore, the War Crimes Act of 1996 makes violations of the Geneva Conventions serious crimes under American law. The Bush Administration’s explicit approval of and, in many cases, direct mandates and authorizations ordering violations of international law – including, but certainly not limited to, torture and depraved exploitation and mishandling of Iraqi detainees, many of whom are innocent civilians guilty of nothing more than the crime of being an Iraqi national, contracting death squads to engage in unsanctioned killings, and reckless killing of Iraqi civilians – are “not just matters of policy or of competence. Rather, they are crimes that violate both international and national law. They are crimes that have come to be known as war crimes.” 

 

The War Crimes Act defines a war crime as any conduct (1) defined as a grave breach in any of the international conventions signed at Geneva 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party; (2) prohibited by Article 23, 25, 27, or 28 of the Annex to the Hague Convention IV, Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, signed 18 October 1907; (3) which constitutes a violation of common Article 3 of the international conventions signed at Geneva, 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party and which deals with non- international armed conflict; or (4) of a person who, in relation to an armed conflict and contrary to the provisions of the Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices as amended at Geneva on 3 May 1996 (Protocol II as amended on 3 May 1996), when the United States is a party to such Protocol, willfully kills or causes serious injury to civilians.  

 

Acting executive director of the Middle East division at Human Rights Watch, Joe Stork has had occasion to witness Americans’ sense of impunity.  ”Soldiers must know that they will be held accountable for the improper use of force…Right now, soldiers feel they can pull the trigger without coming under review.”  

 

In 2003, International Committee of the Red Cross spokesman Roland Huguenin recalled an “incredible” number of civilian casualties south of Baghdad, including “a truck [that] was delivering dozens of totally dismembered dead bodies of women and children. It was an awful sight.  It was really very difficult to believe this was happening.” 

 

After serving in Iraq from April 2003 through March 2004, 22-year-old Michael Blake expressed considerable distress and anguish over his experience in Iraq; he admits he witnessed U.S. troops’ routine practice of killing innocent Iraqi civilians indiscriminately.  ”When IEDs…would go off by the side of the road, the instructions were – or the practice was – to basically shoot up the landscape, anything that moved. And that kind of thing would happen [frequently]…[many] innocent people were killed.”  Now an activist with Iraq Veterans Against the War, Blake recalls that the turning point for him came when he was asked to detain a group of Iraqi women and children, whose fathers and husbands were facing interrogation by U.S. troops.   “The men were taken away and the women were screaming and crying, and I just remember thinking this was exactly what Saddam used to do – and now we’re doing it.”

 

Joshua Keys, a US soldier who is currently seeking asylum in Canada, recalled the overarching mentality among US troops during the initial march into Baghdad: he claims military command told him and his fellow soldiers that the international law governing armed combat was merely “a guideline.” Keys described the atmosphere in Iraq as one of “shoot first, ask questions later. Everything’s justified.” 

 

The 2003 Human Rights Watch Report states that while “the US military…is not deliberately targeting civilians, neither is it doing enough to minimize harm to civilians as required by international law.” And while Iraq is unarguably a hostile environment for US troops, that “does not absolve the [U.S.] military from its obligations to use force in a restrained, proportionate, and discriminate matter, and only when strictly necessary.”

 

Iraq as a cultural and historic entity faces thorough destruction by the pounding fists of the largest military machine in the world; already this tiny country has suffered 550,000 civilian casualties. Baghdad residents continue to complain of “aggressive and reckless behavior, physical abuse, and theft by US troops.” The U.S. has demonstrated an egregious disregard for human life in the countries it has deemed necessary to obliterate for national self-interest. Unmitigated genocide emerges as the fundamental basis of counter-insurgency warfare. The only means for the United States to achieve victory in Iraq lies in the extermination of the Iraqi population in its entirety, so as to ensure the eradication of all enemy guerillas or so-called “insurgents.” 

 

President Bush’s war crimes and acts of genocide have failed thus far to spark widespread outrage: the Administration continues to make great efforts to pacify not only the Iraqi people but the American people, as well. The White House has failed miserably at the former and yet has succeeded with relative ease at the latter. Particularly in years following World War II, Americans have seen the United States as the champion of freedom, the defender of democracy on the world stage; the truth of U.S. involvement in Iraq will unarguably be a difficult pill to swallow for most Americans. Horror at the United States’ moral rectitude in its dealings with Iraq is glaringly absent. As a nation, we have not yet reached the point of “What have we done?” 

 

The issue of U.S. war crimes in Iraq brings a Holocaust-era poem to mind:

 

First they came for the Socialists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Socialist.  Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Trade Unionist.  Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew.  Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up for me.  

 

“Let it not be said that the people in the United States did nothing when their government declared a war without limit and instituted stark new measures of repression.”

Revisiting Doublethink: Destroying Our Liberties to Save Our Freedom

EXCERPT FROM REVISITING DOUBLETHINK, BY K. D’ANCONIA

An Orwellian America

American civil liberties suffered a debilitating blow in the wake of a recent federal district court ruling that recognized the authority of the U.S. government to deny American citizens fundamental Constitutional rights, making civil liberties the most recent collateral damage in President Bush’s “war on terror.”

Presiding over the Jose Padilla case, Hon. Marcia Cooke ruled that the Sixth Amendment, which affords Americans the right to due process and habeas corpus, does not prevent the government from indefinitely incarcerating U.S. citizens without formally filing criminal charges. In an unprecedented case of civil liberties violations, the Pentagon declared Jose Padilla an “enemy combatant” in the “war on terror,” thereby exploiting legal loopholes that allow the U.S. government’s indefinite incarceration of both American citizens and foreigners alike.

This watershed case is an ominous harbinger of the nation’s grave Constitutional crisis: Hon. Cooke’s ruling bears a harsh reminder of the extent to which the foundations of American Constitutional rights have already decayed and will continue to decay unless America consciously decides to cease participating in its own destruction. (cont’d)

“The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves.”

Bringing the War Home

EXCERPT FROM BRINGING THE WAR HOME, BY K. D’ANCONIA

Fighting American Apathy with the Draft

In the telltale hearts of the 1960’s antiwar movement beat a sincere desire to end the Vietnam War and halt the atrocities committed by US troops in Southeast Asia, and yet that sincerity is little more than nuanced truism: sincere intention arose only as a response to the reinstatement of the military draft. Prior to President Johnson’s enactment of the draft in 1964, few Americans were even aware of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia: antiwar sentiment arose only when the war came knocking on doors across America, instantly bringing the war home to millions of American draft-age youths and their families.

Although the antiwar movement emerged from the prior decade’s tradition of civil disobedience, the draft provided the catalyst for the transformation of the antiwar movement from a negligible citizen peace movement — largely a product of the Old Left/New Left tradition of radical domestic pacifism in the 1950’s — to an epidemic phenomenon of crystallizing dissent against an illegal war and the atrocities it perpetuated.

Is this what it will take to generate a similar movement in protest against the unspeakable atrocities committed by US troops, to liquidate American apathy regarding crimes against humanity that arguably dwarf those committed in Vietnam?

Incoming Democratic chairman Charles Rangel’s recent suggestion of renewing the draft raises the issue of American apathy, and the drastic measures that will have to be taken to thwart the rapidly growing trend of blind support and moral relativism.  (cont’d)

Iraq is Arabic For Vietnam…

 “…THE HEALTH OF OUR SYSTEM WOULD HAVE BEEN DEMONSTRATED BY A CHANGE OF POLICY CAUSED BY A RECOGNITION THAT WHAT WE [DID] IN VIETNAM [WAS] WRONG, A CRIMINAL ACT, THAT AN AMERICAN ‘VICTORY’ WOULD HAVE BEEN A TRAGEDY. NOTHING COULD BE MORE REMOTE FROM THE AMERICAN POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS. SO LONG AS THIS REMAINS TRUE, WE ARE FATED TO RELIVE THIS HORROR.”