EDIT: see bottom
In a disturbing CNN.com article entitled Marine testimony: All Iraqi men viewed as insurgents, Cpl. Saul H. Lopezromo testifies about a common procedure our military employs known as "dead-checking."
Lopezromo said a procedure called "dead-checking" was routine. If Marines entered a house where a man was wounded, instead of checking to see whether he needed medical aid, they shot him to make sure he was dead, he testified.
"If somebody is worth shooting once, they're worth shooting twice," he said.
Lopezromo is a witness in the court-martial trial of Cpl. Trent D. Thomas, one of five men charged with the murder of a 52-year-old Iraqi civilian. Four of the men pleaded guilty and received lesser sentences, however, Thomas withdrew his plea and is now being court-martialed.
CNN.com reports:
...seven Marines and a Navy corpsman went out late one night to find and kill a suspected insurgent in the village of Hamdaniya near the Abu Ghraib prison. The Marines and corpsman were from 2nd Platoon, Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment.
Lopezromo said the suspected insurgent was known to his neighbors as the "prince of jihad," and had been arrested several times and later released by the Iraqi legal system.
Unable to find him, the Marines and corpsman dragged another man from his house, fatally shot him, and then planted an AK-47 assault rifle near the body to make it appear he had been killed in a shootout, according to court testimony....
Lopezromo, who was not part of the squad on its late-night mission, said he saw nothing wrong with what Thomas did.
"I don't see it as an execution, sir," he told the judge. "I see it as killing the enemy."
Last night, I saw the amazing Werner Herzog film Rescue Dawn, starring Christian Bale in the true story of Dieter Dengler, a US pilot in the Vietnam War who is shot down in Laos, imprisoned, and tortured by the Viet Cong as a POW. One of the other Americans with Dengler in the prison camp, Eugene from Eugene, Oregon, maintains that the soldiers should not attempt to escape from the prison camp because they will be rescued when the Vietnam War is ended as a result of the Geneva Accords.
I don't want to spoil any of this amazing film for you; I want you to see it and maybe even before you see Sicko.
Having seen the film last night and read this disturbing CNN.com article this morning reaffirms my committment to the uselessness of the war we are currently waging in Iraq. Just as we underestimated the Viet Cong in the 1960s and 70s, we continue to underestimate the insurgents in Iraq in 2007. In both wars, we go into a land that they know better than we do, and no amount of map studying and survival skills can give us the edge.
Part of the "enemy's" tactics are intertwined with our inablility to recognize friend from foe. We didn't know a Vietnamese woman from a Laotian or Cambodian woman, and if they had a weapon (or sometimes not), we just killed them. Like Lopezromo said in the above-mentioned court martial testimony, executing an Iraqi is the same as killing the enemy. Since we kill indiscriminantly, it makes sense that our "enemy" would equip their women and children with weapons the same as they do enlisted soldiers.
This applies to our civilians as well; Viet Cong or Iraqi insurgents aiming to kill do not know civilian truck driver from Army medic from chaplain from marine soldier. As we kill indiscriminately, so do they. And as poor Eugene from Eugune in "Rescue Dawn" fails to realize, Geneva Accords and all the peace conferences in the world have no bearing on whether or not a soldier will fire his rifle when he feels his life is being threatened.
The pyschology of war is something I've studied almost as an obsession since my junior year in college. Our soldiers are killing, raping, and torturing Iraqis, just as they killed, raped, and tortured Vietnamese peasants. Yes, they are killing and torturing our soldiers to, just as the Viet Cong did. But is the scale of justice tilted in their favor because we invaded their homeland to wage a war? Who is the bad guy and who is the hero? In my opinion, those terms do not apply to modern warfare.
"We were told to crank up the violence level," said Lopezromo, testifying for the defense.
When a juror asked for further explanation, Lopezromo said: "We beat people, sir."
We beat "people," sir. Not the enemy. People.
It's a shame President Bush can't read. But then, if he could, I doubt this article would mean much to him anyway.
I feel more people would participate in this discussion if I posed a question. In this war, or Vietnam, or any military conflict you can think of, are there "good guys" and "bad guys"? Or is it all open to interpretations? What are YOUR thoughts?