US Diary: our troops - should they revolt? are they OK? are they too badass? do we care?

1. ”Just Following Orders" is No Excuse
If Bush is a War Criminal, Then What About the Troops
By STEPHEN S. PEARCY/Counterpunch

In addition to holding George Bush and U.S. Congress accountable for the illegal occupation of Iraq, American troops must also be prepared to accept responsibility, because we're all presumed to know the law. If we accept that fundamental legal presumption, then those of us who claim that the war is illegal must also acknowledge that the troops are unexcused aiders and abettors.

Lt. Ehren Watada's case is a good example. Watada's position is that he has a duty to refuse orders to deploy to Iraq, because those orders effectively command him to pursue an illegal war. Watada correctly understands that obeying those orders could subject him to war crimes charges under a more just administration (which should try George Bush first).

Publicly available information about the Iraq invasion has become plentiful over the last several years. Reasonable people contemplating service in the U.S. military should know that people throughout the world regard participation in the occupation as tantamount to aiding and abetting in mass murder, fraud, human rights violations, and international war crimes. By now, all of the troops should recognize this, and ignorance is no excuse.

The frequency of U.S.-sponsored war crimes in Iraq is such that it has become the norm rather than the exception. U.S. troops have intentionally and recklessly caused the deaths of so many Iraqi civilians, and continue to do so, that we can now properly regard acts in furtherance of the occupation effort generally to be acts substantially likely to facilitate crimes such as those which have already occurred.

From a legal standpoint, obeying Bush's orders is just like when Nazi soldiers obeyed Hitler's orders. And we know from the Nuremberg trials that the "just-following-orders" excuse is invalid. Watada's case suggests that we should question all troops' willingness to follow their illegal orders.

Suggesting troop-responsibility for the illegal war is unpopular, but it would also have been unpopular during WWII for a German citizen to suggest that Nazi troops be held accountable for obeying their illegal orders. At the end of the day, it's really no different.

(Stephen S. Pearcy is an attorney and peace activist in Berkeley, CA. You can email him at stephen.pearcy@sbcglobal.net)


2. Is This What We Have Become?
Top Gun vs. the Axis of Evil
By FRANKLIN SPINNEY/Counterpunch

We all know that the American Way of War is to use our technology to pour firepower on the enemy from a safe distance. Implicit in this is the central myth of precision bombardment that dates back to at least to the Norden Bombsight in World War II. The theory of precision firepower is a seemless part of the larger warfighting theories of close control and surgical strike in the chaos of combat, as well as the necessary corollary belief that unintended damage -- euphemistically called collateral damage -- is morally acceptable, because it is self-evidently an unavoidable and irreducible cost of waging a precision business.

Of course this is all hogwash, as the conduct of the Iraq War has proven once again. Real war is always uncertain and messy and bloody and wasteful and accompanied by profound psychological and moral effects. But these preposterous theories are central to the American Way of War, because they justify the maintenance of a high cost hi-tech military which is so essential to the welfare of the parasitic political economy of the military - industrial - congressional complex that is now seamlessly embedded in our political culture.

Yet, as is now becoming clear, this doctrinal nonsense also has profound psychological effects on American soldiers and policy makers, as well as average citizens. It has created a self-referencing myth of antiseptic war that can be likened to a bloodless video game, and its dehumanizing effects now permeate popular American culture. Doubters need only recall the gushing newspaper coverage of "Shock and Awe" which was spoon-fed to the American people prior to bombing of Iraq, together with the ridiculous predictions of the Iraq war being cakewalk where Iraqis would welcome us with flowers after we bombed them, to feel the disorienting power of its pervasive psychological effect.

The following email adds substance to this disorienting abstraction by illustrating its ugly underbody at the most microscopic level -- the level of the individual aviator waging precision war at a distance. It is from a Marine F-18 pilot in Iraq. In it, he describes the joy of killing "mother fuckers", which is, in his words, "like a hobby." His sweeping categorization proves that he doesn't have a clue who he is killing and maiming -- he implies they are enemy combatants but they might be women, or old men or those prepubescent mother fuckers otherwise known as children.


From: MOFAKDCATH@aol.com
Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2007 9:07 PM
To: mofak@mofak.com
Subject: Bats Sitrep From Iraq--Expletives not deleted

Dogs, Marines and friends,

Here's the latest from the BATS. Looks like they are still doing some good work over there, and Cave is getting even more descriptive. I will let you know when I have a definite date for the fly-in to Miramar.

OD&YBF,
SecDog
-----------------
Forwarded Message:
Subj:
sitrep
Date:
2/6/2007 6:12:31 AM Eastern Standard Time
From:
thomas.frederick@acemnf-wiraq.usmc.mil
To: Jbsouder@aol.com
Sent from the Internet (Details)

JB,
Finally went over 3,000 in the Hornet and 400th combat mission.

The fellas from 121 started showing up the other day. It's starting to sink in....... I'll have to go home, the opportunities to kill these fuckers is rapidly coming to an end. Like a hobby I'll never get to practice again. It's not a great war, but its the only one we've got. God, I do love killing these bastards.

Well, the government in Baghdad has been telling the Shii that the Americans are coming big, look the fuck out.... So, the bad guys have begun moving out of the city. Business is beginning to pick back up for us. I think the Iranians are going to pick things up to help give CNN some ammunition to show the buildup is a failed idea.

The other day, "Puddy" Shoop got 3 nice passes with the gun and rockets on some Muj in a little town called Karma, which is just Northwest of Fallujah. I firmly believe they are implants from the "big city." Looked as though they were in the process of trying to attack the Iraqi Police headquarters. I wonder why the insurgents would be attacking the Iraqi Police............ CNN says the IP are ineffective. Funny, the "ineffective" IP stood their ground and called in 3 strikes. Only 1 confirmed kill.

Had a great 5" rocket attack last week. 5 Muj emplacing an IED.... rockets can be like a box of chocolates sometimes.... You never know what you're gonna get. Allah was with these jack asses, as the rockets hit all around them. These fuckers get up, brush themselves off and take off hobbling across a farm field. The ground commander never expects survivors, so it takes them a while to coordinate a follow on attack. In the mean time, the idiots stay together in a pack, carrying their parts through a small palm grove. Ground commander finally gets his act together and clears a follow on gun run to finish them off. Roll in and just as pilot is about to go "hammer down," a herd of sheep and family members appear at the top of the pod video and the run is aborted. Went home thinking they had gotten away.... Some pipe bustin' Fellas from the QRF (Quick Reaction Force) rolled up on the farmers and apprehended all of them, along with their bomb making materials. they said the Muj tried to say their HE burns were from a tractor rolling over of some shit. As an aside, you will never be shown the aborted attack, which saved atleast 5 unarmed family members and their livelihood......

I hope they show a before and after picture of Baghdad. I think you will be quite surprised at the effort. An order of magnitude more than anything they have ever seen before. Should be interesting to watch. I'd really like to stick around and see how the extra ass effects the ops in some of the more obscure areas.

As we prepare to get out of here, I have to think back to what this place was like when I was leaving 2 years ago...... The convoys would be attacked by small arms fire every night... All night long. Today, we rarely ever see a convoy attacked by small arms fire. When the Marines take any fire, they turn and attack, so the Muj have determined its not a money play and stopped (besides, killing a KBR worker won't make it to CNN back in the states). I used to spend most of my on station time investigating Mortar and Rocket points on origin from counter battery radar hits. I think I've received about 6-8 of those missions in 6 months. Camps in Ramadi and Fallujah used to get indirect fire all day and night.......Now, its rare. Our base here in Al Asad used to get rocketed every 12 days......... We've been rocketed once in 6 months.

During my first 3 tours here, I never saw a single Iraqi Army unit. This tour, they have taken over significant portions of the Area of Operations. Hell, I've nearly bombed them on atleast 3 occasions because of their aggressive patrolling (they fail to tell anyone where they are going). They still have a ways to go: The retards I was providing overwatch for this morning, were trying everyone's patience. But, they were engaged in the arena and patrolling a dangerous area on foot. How can we possibly abandon these people now?

Another thing that struck me the other day is how much better the US Army has become. 7 years ago, they were a bloated lazy mess.... I believe most didn't know how to use their personal weapons very well. Poor at convoy ops and patrolled in their HMMWVs. Now, they are lighter, more expeditionary, mobile, better armored. They patrol on foot and aggressively pursue contact with the insurgency. I think they still have a ways to go to be better at coordinating fires, but they are more Marine like than ever. As long as their version of a Forward Air Controller (FAC) continues to sit in a command post and "control" air fires from a computer terminal, they will never get it right (SEAL and Marine FACs are embedded with the infantry company).

Advon for the Bats left this morning. We should be wandering into the overhead around the 1st. I'll be able to give you a better "charlie time" in a couple weeks.

Morale is high, the Marines can smell the barn. It's hard to keep them focused. I still have 20 days of kill these motherfuckers, so I don't wanna take even one day off.

Big Mama is charged up for the homecoming.

The cruise plaque (etched mirror behind the bar in the Miramar O' Club) unveiling is still scheduled for april 27th. The pukin dog logo will be proudly adorned. Hope you can get some of the fellas to join us. I've seen the fucking Dogs come out of the woodwork at the prospects of free booze (& there will be free booze). Change of command is still scheduled for May 4th. Hope you can stop by for that, as well.

OD&YBF
CAVE


HERE IS a "warrior" who brags about killing for killing's sake, but the people he kills that are just spots on the ground that disappear in clouds of explosions. He describes the joy of war at a distance and sees nothing its horrors -- you won't find any descriptions of blood, broken limbs, trauma, or destruction in this email. You won't even find reference to his own feelings of menace or fear, not to mention their noble counterweights courage and esprit, just braggadocio on the subject of killing. Of course, his targets are all insurgents ... no sense of any human capacity for doubt on that point.

Bear in mind, this is but one email that reveals a lot about the confused moral state of one aviator. Here is a person who probably thinks of himself "noble warrior" and a patriot, yet by his own words, he describes himself as a soulless machine with no appreciation of nobility or honor or even what it takes to face a dangerous adversary up close and personal. By his own words, he makes himself into a caricature more like Pac Man than John Rambo, let alone a honorable soldier like Alvin York, a courageous Marine like Chesty Puller, or a sensitive soldier-writer who understood horror and banality of war like Eric Marie Remarque.

Hopefully, the man who who wrote this ghastly thing is an aberration and not at all representative of the men and women in our military. But note in the introductory email that at least one other person thinks he is doing "good work." ...

Which begs the question: Since the Bushian Surge (BS) strategy of winning the trust of Iraqis by providing them with more security will be reinforced by a more generous dose of airpower, together with its whacky theories of precision and surgical destruction, how widespread is an outlook that reduces doctrinal BS to JKMF (just killing mother fuckers)?

(Franklin C. Spinney is a former Pentagon analyst and whistleblower. His writing on defense issues can be found on the invaluable Defense in the National Interest website.)


3. Disgusting treatment for those to whom we owe so much -- by Joseph L. Galloway/McClatchy Newspapers

There's a great deal more to supporting our troops than sticking a $2 yellow ribbon magnet made in China on your SUV. There's a great deal more to it than making "Support Our Troops" a phrase that every politician feels obliged to utter in every speech, no matter how banal the topic or craven the purpose.

This week, we were treated to a new expose of just how fraudulent and shallow and meaningless "Support Our Troops" is on the lips of those in charge of spending the half a trillion dollars of taxpayers' money that the Pentagon eats every year.

The Washington Post published an expose, complete with photographs, revealing that for every inpatient who's getting the best medical treatment that money can buy at the main hospital at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, there are 17 outpatients warehoused in quarters unfit for human habitation.

Some of the military outpatients are stuck on the Walter Reed campus, a couple of miles from the White House and the Capitol, for as long as 12 months. They've been living in rat and roach-infested rooms, some of which are coated in black mold.

There was outrage and disgust and raw anger at this callous, cruel treatment of those who have the greatest claim not only on our sympathies but also on the public purse. Who among the smiling politicians who regularly troop over to the main hospital at Walter Reed for photo-op visits with those who've come home grievously wounded from the wars the politicians started have bothered to go the extra quarter-mile to see the unseen majority with their rats and roaches?

Not one, it would seem, since none among them have admitted to knowing that there was a problem, much less doing something about it before the reporters blew the whistle.

Within 24 hours, construction crews were working overtime, slapping paint over the moldy drywall, patching the sagging ceilings and putting out traps and poison for the critters that infest the place.

Within 48 hours, the Department of Defense announced that it was appointing an independent commission to investigate. Doubtless the commission will provide a detailed report finding that no one was guilty - certainly none of the politicians of the ruling party whose hands were on the levers of power for five long years of war. They will find that it all came about because the Army medical establishment was overwhelmed by the caseload flowing out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, brave soldiers who were wheelchair-bound with missing legs or paralysis, have been left to make their own way a quarter-mile to appointments with the shrinks and a half-mile to pick up the drugs that dim their minds and eyes and pain, and make the rats and roaches recede into a fuzzy distance.

All this came on the heels of my McClatchy Newspapers colleague Chris Adams' Feb. 9 report that even by its own measures, the Veterans Administration isn't prepared to give returning veterans the care they need to help them overcome destructive, and sometimes fatal, mental health ailments.

Nearly 100 VA clinics provided virtually no mental health care in 2005, Adams found, and the average veteran with psychiatric troubles gets about a third fewer visits with specialists today than he would have received a decade ago.

The same politicians, from a macho president to the bureaucrats to the people who chair the congressional committees that are supposed to oversee such matters, have utterly failed to protect our wounded warriors. They've talked the talk but few, if any, have ever walked the walk.

No. This happened while all of them were busy as bees, taking billions out of the VA budget and planning to shut down Walter Reed by 2011 in the name of cost-efficiency.

Among those politicians are the people who sent too few troops to Afghanistan or Iraq, who failed to provide enough body armor and weapons and armored vehicles and who, to protect their own political hides, refused to admit that the mission was not accomplished and change course.

But it's they who are charged with the highest duty of all, in the words of President Abraham Lincoln in his Second Inaugural in 1865: "to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan."

How can they look at themselves in the mirror every morning? How dare they ever utter the words: Support Our Troops? How dare they pretend to give a damn about those they order to war?

They've hidden the flag-draped coffins of the fallen from the public and the press. They've averted their eyes from the suffering that their orders have visited upon an Army that they've ground down by misuse and over-use and just plain incompetence.

This shabby, sorry episode of political and institutional cruelty to those who deserve the best their nation can provide is the last straw. How can they spin this one to blame the generals or the media or the Democrats? How can you do that, Karl?

If the American people are not sickened and disgusted by this then, by God, we don't deserve to be defended from the wolves of this world.


4. Civilization & War Rant –- by Stan Goff/Huffington Post

Bush is not responsible for the war in Iraq. Al Gore said during his campaign against Bush II that Bush I should have finished the job; and we never tire of pretending these days that the Clinton-Gore government was not attacking Iraq.... they were, regularly and lethally. War is inherent to civilization; and that is why we'll have more and more of it, and why it will eventually percolate from the peripheries populated by Dark Others into our suburbs.

Everything we have that we list in our catalogue of civilization is forged out of fraud, theft, and murder. The cities of the world are built up on fraud, theft, and murder. Show me the exception, and I'll take it back.

The fine woods and metals and animal guts that make the orchestras, the stones and steel and trees for our libraries, the fabric and workmanship of our clothing, and the food displayed strategically along our supermarket shelves... they all require war. They are taken from cultures who first refuse to cooperate, then who are forced to cooperate or be depopulated.

The expansive and expanding heaps of technomass -- of asphalt and glass and plastic and paint and shiny right-angles -- are scraped out of hillsides and coastlines, with the corpses of biomes and simpler cultures left behind as the mizzens of this wretched thing called civilization . The more this disease has spread, the more it has manifested and magnified its most acute symptom: war.

Technology is driven by scarcity, and scarcity by pillage, and new technology to correct for the iatrogenesis of the last technology. This is not a mark of superiority, but the cascading catastrophe of power seeking the enslavement of first women , then slaves and colonies and nature...

Conquest is a necessity to continue civilization. How long would this country last as it is without the oil from abroad? What if those abroad said, No? Be real, be realistic before you answer this question with pious abstractions. How long would things stay "stable" hereabouts if the supermarket shelves were suddenly bare? If the shutters went up on WalMart's windows? How much of what we take for granted each and every day comes from someplace else, where the cop with the truncheon stands near the worker, and the sea lane is kept open by a Naval battle group?

Every "advanced" society exists as a parasite on those less "advanced," and that can be proven empirically and decisively. Civilization cannot exist in the absence of war, because civilization is itself inherently exploitative. Los Angeles cannot exist without the water from Colorado. New York cannot exist without the "inputs" from abroad. We know damn well this is true, so we conceal it under pretty abstractions like "free market," and pretend that the wars required to maintain the power of the powerful are moral failures, anomalies within civilization instead of something as intrinsic as long ears on a rabbit.

Bring us to the point where we will at least admit of this truth; and there is a remote chance that we can figure out some tentative first steps how to stop the runaway train ... that is, in the end, to change everything.