Evidence continues to grow that U.S. marines murdered non-combatants in the Iraqi town of Haditha last November. It remains to be seen whether anything more than Abu Ghraib wrist slaps are dispensed and whether Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld continues to refuse to resign even as he racks another war crime.
The arc of the story is familiar. Marines initially said civilians were killed by an insurgent’s bomb; no investigation was made of that claim until TIME magazine published a different version of events in March. Since then, the Marine Corps has promised to compensate victims’ families. Stories are also spreading that marines offered the families money, but only on the condition that survivors endorse the marines’ original tale.
The military absolved itself of the deaths of 15 civilians killed in Ishaqi on March 15, although Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has called the army’s investigation a whitewash. An investigation continues into who killed a civilian in Hamdamiyah on April 26.
Independent reports quote Iraqi civilians as saying that the murder of civilians by U.S. armed forces is a frequent, if not routine, event. If history is a guide, such murders are common whenever an occupying army attempts to hold territory where it is not wanted.
The comparison to the Vietnam’s My Lai massacre are popping up, as are the statements from the Pentagon that the Haditha killings were “anomalous” and “an isolated incident,” Ishaqi and Hamdamiyah notwithstanding. My Lai, the Vietnam war’s “official” massacre, was only exposed after journalist Seymour Hersh read reports of the killings upside down on an officer’s desk. Anecdotal evidence suggests My Lai was far from anomalous.
In 1999, it was revealed that U.S. soldiers killed civilians at No Gun Ri, South Korea between July 26 and 29, 1950, as the civilians were fleeing fighting. Rumors of those killings were denied by the military for years, until veterans came forward to confirm stories by survivors. When news of the killings’ confirmation broke in the press, the Pentagon conducted a 16-month investigation of the incident which found that while civilians were killed at No Gun Ri, the incident was “anomalous.”
On May 29 of this year, the Associated Press reported that historian Sahr Conway-Lanz discovered a letter in the National Archives dated July 25, 1950. In it, John J. Murcio, U.S. ambassador to South Korea, wrote to Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk advising him that American generals in Korea issued a policy to kill refugees who approached U.S. lines, fearing North Korean infiltrators might among them.
Pentagon spokespeople told the AP last month that investigators looked at the file where Mr. Conway-Lanz found the Murcio letter, but somehow, that particular letter was missed.
As many as 60 large-scale killings of civilians during the Korean War have been alleged. Many Americans are unaware of these killings due to the 40-year gap between the events and the reporting. We may never know how many of the reports are true, because most of the witnesses are dead; most of the evidence has been destroyed or lost. We now know killings of non-combatants were sanctioned from above. Issuing deliberate orders to kill non-combatants is a war crime, although the war criminals are dead and justice is denied.
Monday the Los Angeles Times reported that Bush appointees at the Pentagon have removed references to the Geneva Conventions on the Treatment of Prisoners of War from the latest edition of the army’s field manual. According to then-White House counsel and now-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the United States is above “quaint” notions such as the Geneva Conventions.
Unlike Korea, the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a war of choice. After we found the weapons of mass destruction to be unsubstantiated gossip, George Bush told us we invaded Iraq to “bring democracy” because Saddam Hussein capriciously imprisoned, tortured and killed the Iraqis. Now Mr. Bush – and Dick Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld – have achieved all of the above and they’ve started a fratricidal holy war among Iraqis to boot.
The question remains whether Americans will assign responsibility where it belongs, or whether we will wait a half century before we begin to tell ourselves the truth.
Murder in the Echo Chamber
Evidence continues to grow that U.S. marines murdered non-combatants in the Iraqi town of Haditha last November. It remains to be seen whether anything more than Abu Ghraib wrist slaps are dispensed and whether Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld continues to refuse to resign even as he racks another war crime.
The arc of the story is familiar. Marines initially said civilians were killed by an insurgent’s bomb; no investigation was made of that claim until TIME magazine published a different version of events in March. Since then, the Marine Corps has promised to compensate victims’ families. Stories are also spreading that marines offered the families money, but only on the condition that survivors endorse the marines’ original tale.
The military absolved itself of the deaths of 15 civilians killed in Ishaqi on March 15, although Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has called the army’s investigation a whitewash. An investigation continues into who killed a civilian in Hamdamiyah on April 26.
Independent reports quote Iraqi civilians as saying that the murder of civilians by U.S. armed forces is a frequent, if not routine, event. If history is a guide, such murders are common whenever an occupying army attempts to hold territory where it is not wanted.
The comparison to the Vietnam’s My Lai massacre are popping up, as are the statements from the Pentagon that the Haditha killings were “anomalous” and “an isolated incident,” Ishaqi and Hamdamiyah notwithstanding. My Lai, the Vietnam war’s “official” massacre, was only exposed after journalist Seymour Hersh read reports of the killings upside down on an officer’s desk. Anecdotal evidence suggests My Lai was far from anomalous.
In 1999, it was revealed that U.S. soldiers killed civilians at No Gun Ri, South Korea between July 26 and 29, 1950, as the civilians were fleeing fighting. Rumors of those killings were denied by the military for years, until veterans came forward to confirm stories by survivors. When news of the killings’ confirmation broke in the press, the Pentagon conducted a 16-month investigation of the incident which found that while civilians were killed at No Gun Ri, the incident was “anomalous.”
On May 29 of this year, the Associated Press reported that historian Sahr Conway-Lanz discovered a letter in the National Archives dated July 25, 1950. In it, John J. Murcio, U.S. ambassador to South Korea, wrote to Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk advising him that American generals in Korea issued a policy to kill refugees who approached U.S. lines, fearing North Korean infiltrators might among them.
Pentagon spokespeople told the AP last month that investigators looked at the file where Mr. Conway-Lanz found the Murcio letter, but somehow, that particular letter was missed.
As many as 60 large-scale killings of civilians during the Korean War have been alleged. Many Americans are unaware of these killings due to the 40-year gap between the events and the reporting. We may never know how many of the reports are true, because most of the witnesses are dead; most of the evidence has been destroyed or lost. We now know killings of non-combatants were sanctioned from above. Issuing deliberate orders to kill non-combatants is a war crime, although the war criminals are dead and justice is denied.
Monday the Los Angeles Times reported that Bush appointees at the Pentagon have removed references to the Geneva Conventions on the Treatment of Prisoners of War from the latest edition of the army’s field manual. According to then-White House counsel and now-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the United States is above “quaint” notions such as the Geneva Conventions.
Unlike Korea, the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a war of choice. After we found the weapons of mass destruction to be unsubstantiated gossip, George Bush told us we invaded Iraq to “bring democracy” because Saddam Hussein capriciously imprisoned, tortured and killed the Iraqis. Now Mr. Bush – and Dick Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld – have achieved all of the above and they’ve started a fratricidal holy war among Iraqis to boot.
The question remains whether Americans will assign responsibility where it belongs, or whether we will wait a half century before we begin to tell ourselves the truth.
® Mark Floegel, 2006