Did US marines massacre Iraqi civilians? Options

[*mipadi*]

From MSNBC.com:

Witnesses to the slaying of 24 Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines in the western town of Haditha say the Americans shot men, women and children at close range in retaliation for the death of a Marine lance corporal in a roadside bombing.

Aws Fahmi, a Haditha resident who said he watched and listened from his home as Marines went from house to house killing members of three families, recalled hearing his neighbor across the street, Younis Salim Khafif, plead in English for his life and the lives of his family members. "I heard Younis speaking to the Americans, saying: 'I am a friend. I am good,' " Fahmi said. "But they killed him, and his wife and daughters."

The 24 Iraqi civilians killed on Nov. 19 included children and the women who were trying to shield them, witnesses told a Washington Post special correspondent in Haditha this week and U.S. investigators said in Washington. The girls killed inside Khafif's house were ages 14, 10, 5, 3 and 1, according to death certificates.

[…]

In Haditha, families of those killed keep an ear cocked to a foreign station, Radio Monte Carlo, waiting for any news of a trial of the Marines.

"They are waiting for the sentence—although they are convinced that the sentence will be like one for someone who killed a dog in the United States," said Waleed Mohammed, a lawyer preparing a file for Iraqi courts and the United Nations, if the U.S. trial disappoints. "Because Iraqis have become like dogs in the eyes of Americans.''

Read the full story

[*I Shot JFK*]

See, it irritates me when people say 'this is just like Abu Ghraib' (that SO doesnt look like it is spelled correctly), and try to label all soldiers as villainous bastards.

at anyrate, it is not.

What went on in Abu Ghraib was a premeditated act of calculated sadism. The soldiers involved degraded and abused prisoners FOR FUN, over an extended period of time. They enjoyed it. They photographed it. And so on.

This is a seperate instance. One can only imagine the horror of seeing your friends burnt to death, and pinned under an exploded army van. The majority, or at least a hefty percentage of soldiers who enlist do it for economic reasons, and are either a) not intelligent enough to seek employment elseweher, or at best are too unedcated. And these factors combine with the fact that the soldiers KNOW that they are not wanted in Iraq, and that any person who they walked past on the street could easliy be a member of a group plotting to kill them and more of their friends, to lead to huge amounts of stress, and that stress explodes into this kind of horror when things go wrong.

One should NOT be surprised by this. horrified, but not surprised.

However, as Michael said, just because this is to be expected does NOT make it acceptable. And blame must be dealt.

The Governments of the Coalition Forces ought to be investing more in the individual soldier. To investigate the cases of post traumatic stress disorder amongst soldiers, for one.

What these soldiers did was unacceptable. but unless steps are taken, it will happen again. and again. and again.