Yesterday, Militarytracy had a provacative diary,
We Were Soldiers Once...and Murderers.
In a comment, Dallasdoc asked, "Whatever happened to honor?" It reminded me of another person who'd asked that same question last year in a military trailer near Baghdad airport before taking his own life. That man was Army Colonel Theodore S. Westhusing. A West Point professor, he'd volunteered for war duty to improve his teaching abilities. While in Iraq in charge of training Iraqi police, the Colonel had uncovered possible corruption by US contractors; an investigation followed.
When Col. Westhusing shot himself once in the head with his service pistol on June 4, 2005, he became the highest-ranking officer to die in Iraq (at the time). In a letter found in his trailer, one question loomed large for him: "How is honor possible in a war like the one in Iraq?"
Read what he had to say about the issue of ethics on the Iraq battlefield, and learn what one LA Times reporter had to say about the saga of one disheartened soldier in Iraq.
How valuable of a soldier was Col. Westhusing? From
A Journey Ended in Anguish by T. Christian Miller, Los Angeles Times, November 27, 2005:
In January, Westhusing began work on what the Pentagon considered the most important mission in Iraq: training Iraqi forces to take over security duties from U.S. troops. Westhusing's task was to oversee a private security company, Virginia-based USIS, which had contracts worth $79 million to train a corps of Iraqi police to conduct special operations.
In March, Gen. David Petraeus, commanding officer of the Iraqi training mission, praised Westhusing's performance, saying he had exceeded "lofty expectations." "Thanks much, sir, but we can do much better and will," Westhusing wrote back, according to a copy of the Army investigation of his death that was obtained by The Times.
The upbeat attitude would soon be replaced when he began worrying about "delays in training one of the police battalions" and he "received an anonymous four-page letter that contained detailed allegations of wrongdoing by USIS."
The writer accused USIS of deliberately shorting the government on the number of trainers to increase its profit margin. More seriously, the writer detailed two incidents in which USIS contractors allegedly had witnessed or participated in the killing of Iraqis.
A USIS contractor accompanied Iraqi police trainees during the assault on Fallouja last November and later boasted about the number of insurgents he had killed, the letter says. Private security contractors are not allowed to conduct offensive operations.
In a second incident, the letter says, a USIS employee saw Iraqi police trainees kill two innocent Iraqi civilians, then covered it up. A USIS manager "did not want it reported because he thought it would put his contract at risk."
From Westhusing's page at Sourcewatch:
On June 4th, 2005, Colonel Westhusing left the Green Zone for USIS' headquarters at Camp Dublin to witness a demonstration by Iraqi police preparedness. He stayed overnight and attended a meetig the next day in which he expressed "uncharacteristic" agitation. After the meeting he was found in his tent dead with a note that read:
"I cannot support a msn [mission] that leads to corruption, human rights abuse and liars. I am sullied. I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored. Death before being dishonored any more."
In an interview on NPR's All Things Considered program [ audio | transcript ] shortly after the Los Angeles Times piece on Westhusing was published, author T. Christian Miller had this to add:
Mr. T. CHRISTIAN MILLER (Los Angeles Times): Colonel Westhusing was a very interesting figure in the military. ...[It] was clear from my reporting that ethics and issues of morality were very important to him. ...
BLOCK: When the Army investigated this death, was there any hint that it could be anything other than suicide?
Mr. MILLER: Certainly there are family members that believe that, in part because he was a deeply devout Catholic. He was an expert in military ethics. He had dealt with issues of post-traumatic stress. So how does a guy like this end up committing suicide?
BLOCK: At the same time, you describe in detail in your story a number of incidents leading up to this death where he seems troubled. He seems quite agitated.
Mr. MILLER: He does clearly become more agitated as time goes by in Iraq. The first signs you see is he writes home some letters which say things like, `I'm not sure I could have made it through last night' and suggests that he's going through a lot of stress in his work. What worries him most, clearly, is his feeling that profit has overtaken military values like duty, honor, country in Iraq. In the final note he leaves and in his e-mails home, in his conversation with his friends, he talks about `I didn't come here to be surrounded by greedy contractors. I didn't come here to be a part of a mission that has been corrupted by concerns of money and things like that. For me, in some ways, it becomes a metaphor for the way the Iraq War has been fought, which is to outsource a lot of which has been done to private companies and so rather than having idealistic soldiers or young bureaucrats or whatever doing the work in Iraq you have people doing it for motives which are not altruistic and pure but rather for the bottom line.'
Haditha and Beyond
Although Westhusing's tale isn't entirely comparable to the incidents at Haditha and elsewhere, I'm struck by the common thread of a seeming lack of ethics and morals and legality swirling around so many levels of our action in Iraq. Yet who do we always focus our blame on? Those who have to follow the orders of those above them. Now, certainly those who participated in alleged atrocities or had a role in the cover-up need to be taken down -- and hard. Logic also dictates that unethical behavior is found at every level of government and military.
Yet, the US military commander in Iraq has ordered Core Warrior Values Training for all troops in the wake of the alleged civilian murders in Haditha while one point is glaringly missing from the equation whenever these types of incidents crop up: Where's the ethical training for those lacking it at the top? Don't they ever have to be reminded of such things?
Shouldn't moral, ethical, and legal re-training be required for those who said the Geneva Conventions were quaint; for those who sent our troops into battle without proper equipment; for those who don't bat an eye at underfunding the VA during a time of war while turning around and handing out rich cost-plus contracts to friends and tax cuts most benefiting the wealthiest among us?
In closing, this is what RJ Eskow over at Huffington Post had to say last November when the LA Times reported on Westhusing's suicide. Some interesting nuggets in light of what's going on today:
Coincidentally, the Times article on Col. Westhusing's death was published during the same week that an amateur video was released showing military contractors' employees apparently killing Iraqi civilians at random. The video, which appears to have been filmed and assembled by the perpetrators, shows a variety of "gross human rights violations" being conducted while the Elvis Presley version of "Mystery Train" plays in the background.
The Administration supporters who rush to their defense when its war crimes are pointed out- as I did here - usually say "There you go again, Mr. Liberal, accusing the military of war crimes." Let me say it again: I don't accuse the military of these crimes, but their leadership. Time and time again these leaders order soldiers to do what is wrong, then turn on their own troops and accuse them of crimes when it becomes public.