I’ve never been a soldier, never been in a wartime environment. I couldn’t begin to imagine what it does to you psychologically, what is required of you in order to survive (on any side of it). Nor am I in a position to know all the details and backstory here.
But the things we see these men do, and their apparent attitude about doing it… I just can’t comprehend it, and can’t imagine ever being convinced that what we see here is sane, or justifiable, or anything but monstrous. Just on a basic human level this video is monstrous, and incomprehensible to me.
And yet I feel like I/we need to understand it, so I’m reading/seeking out as many perspectives as I can on this whole thing.
How much of that monstrosity we see here is about these individual soldiers? How much is about the U.S. military as an institution? How much is just about the inherent monstrosity of war, and what it drives human beings to become?
I’d love any perspective you have on the whole thing, and links, especially from people who have been there. Here’s some of what I’ve been reading so far, I’ll be adding links as I find them.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
The US military says the killings happened because the soldiers thought the reporters’ cameras were guns, so here’s the interesting question to me: had the men actually had guns, would their killing then be justified? The so-called “insurgents” are just defending their country against the US occupation, which is still illegal and immoral. Let’s not lose sight of the bigger issue here. The US has no right to occupy Iraq, and this would be true even if they could do it without killing reporters. Of course, when we are fighting a war against the Iraqi people and not against an opposing army, a heavy civilian casualties will be inevitable. But the bottom line here is that the US must withdraw from Iraq, and those of us who consider ourselves progressive/left must pressure Obama on this. After all, escalating the war in Afghanistan is about the only campaign promise he’s kept so far. It’s time for this country to have an anti-war movement again.
horrifying shit. ive seen a lot of fucked up shit courtesy of the internet but i couldnt watch past the initial firing from the helicopter. that said, i assume most of war is exactly like that. violent, gruesome, questionable.
imo, it did look like a RPG (or atleast what i assume an RPG looks like from watching rambo). and there was definitely a guy carrying a gun. so i understand why they opened fire. the language they use is disturbing but having read that soldiers comment, i can see why you would need to dehumanise the people you were killing. i mean, what would you be saying? “sorry man… sorry. shit. sorry!”?
its fucked up. but the real villains are the politicians who sent us to war based on lies.
Aside from the military, most people in the United States do not understand war in that sense. In the United States, there is much discussed about PTSD that soldiers suffer (maybe not enough is being done to address the problem in the military, but it’s covered in the media). The PTSD that the people of a country suffer after being constantly under attack like you see in this video is absolutely mind-numbing and heart breaking. It’s the inability to trust foreign aid/power/help and nightmares and day-mares at the sound of a plane/helicopter/tank/car etc. A constant fear. I can’t even imagine.
As horrifying as this video is, there needs to be more exchange of honest and real information from Iraq to the United States. I think the people of the United States deserve to know what the civilians of Iraq and Afghanistan are going through. People need to know what is at risk and who is at risk. People have the right to be informed by the media, by the government and military beyond just casualties in numbers. War is not numbers. War is life gone.
When I first saw the video I was horrified. I could see and understand how the camera could have been mistaken for a gun but I could not understand why they shot at the van. In regards to the pilot’s/soldier’s comments, at first I couldn’t believe it they would say something like that. However, I realized that this is “normal” for them. My brother is currently in the Army and is serving in Afghanistan. The first time he came home and was talking to me, I could not believe his “attitude” and the things that he was saying. He even talked about shooting in from of my very young cousins. I then realized how much the war and the stress has affected my brother. And this was his way of dealing with it.
War is horrible and has affected many. The video should not be used as a tool to say that those soldiers are evil but to say that war is evil and is what drives human to do the things they do.
I’m with you guys i was horrified as well after seeing this video.
I rarely comment on anything before sleeping on it. But those copter jockeys should be indicted. Anyone who lives in L.A. as I do or in NYC knows when there’s a helicopter over you. The men in the vid had 2 Apaches circling them the whole time — if they were combatants do you think they’d be standing around on the street? Also, no rules of engagement could justify the subsequent killing of the unarmed people who arrived to help. Sorry, this just stinks. To the barricades, brothers & sisters.
This is what happens in war. It is normal for war. What is truly wrong here is the war itself. Debating the rights and wrongs of the men on the ground (with weapons in their hands to fire and weapons being fired at them) is subscribing to the idea that you can conduct war in some safe or ethical way. I was revolted by the video, but what on earth do people think is happening over there? Tea parties?
I was fortunate enough to visit the Wiesbaden Air Force Base during my trip to Germany last Spring. I was startled by what I found.
Despite what the media tells you: OUR SOLDIERS JUST WANT OUT OF THERE!
Yes, there are some that enjoy the blood and gore of war. There are going to be people like that on all sides of any war. And yes, they probably all have to distance themselves in some capacity from the every day rigors of their job. But just like the men in this video, these are human beings with families and they are doing a job (a job many of them signed up for before Bush conned us into a war we had no business starting), and unlike the rest of us, they don’t have the choice of quitting, so they are just trying to get home to their loved ones in one piece.
That doesn’t make what these soldiers did right in any way. But treating our soldiers like they are the problem isn’t going to fix anything.
the economist blog covers it quite well i think:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/04/fog_war
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/04/iraq_collateral_damage
The best books I’ve read about this thus far are Chris Hedges’ War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (http://www.amazon.com/War-Force-that-Gives-Meaning/dp/1400034639) and Kristian Williams’ American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination (http://www.amazon.com/American-Methods-Torture-Logic-Domination/dp/0896087530/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270658548&sr=1-1)
Hedges was a war reporter for years, and is also the author of the quietly damning What Every Person Should Know About War (http://www.amazon.com/What-Every-Person-Should-About/dp/0743255127/ref=tmm_pap_title_0). Williams is an activist and anarchist who has also written about the history of police brutality in America; his introductory chapters cover a lot of the psychology (Zimbardo and the Stanford Prison Experiment, the Milgram experiment, etc.) around dehumanization and the justification of violence, and he’s very good at exploring the larger social power structures that enable it.
I can’t recommend these books strongly enough.
Jay,
I think that this post can help you see another perspective.
http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/bne6x/you_people_kill_me/
Though I have more doubt about whether the rules of engagement were followed, I have no experience to say what I could base that one. Here’s another cautious response from George Packer of the New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2010/04/truth-but-not-the-whole-truth.html
Wrote about the lack of critical response from Reuters here – http://wp.me/pu4oB-3Q – something about the lack of response from mainstream media shows how uncritical many journalists have been forced to become in order to maintain their access to the inner circles of politics and power. That may scare me as much as the horrific lack of normal human emotions shown by the helicopter crews in the video.
Just a quick comment on Wikileaks: I lost a lot of respect for their organization after seeing the edited video they put together. Up until this incident I assumed (maybe incorrectly) that they just released information to the public without editorial comment. I don’t see the point of editing the video in this way other than to bias the viewer towards the idea that the soldiers behaved incorrectly. In my opinion, the only way to make this decision is by having the complete context of what happened that day (the long, unedited video along with information on what had recently transpired in that area and what that helicopter was doing there in the first place). Kind of makes me wish I could go back and cancel the donation I made…
Best book I ever read on the subject is “The Lucifer Effect” by Robert Zimbardo. He was the one who conducted the Stanford prison experiment and gave expert testimony at the trial of one of the Abu Graib torturers. It’s fascinating reading.
I’ve used his theories to try and explain the level of child sexual abuse in the Irish Catholic Church.
Here’s a link to a long Buzz thread that includes at least one ex-military commenter. The post starts with an email excerpt (w. permission) from an ex-military friend of Thomas’, about this issue.
http://www.google.com/buzz/thomashawk22/Q9d5dRaKVqm/New-York-Times-article-on-the-video-that-was