Support The Troops?

By: John Caruso

[ Since Jon's been writing about the Wikileaks video, I thought I'd repost this article from 2006. Please pardon the uneven link quality—many of the original links have gone bad since the posting was first published, so I've replaced them with the best versions I could find. ]

With the attention being focused on the massacre in Haditha (and now Ishaqi as well), and the utterly predictable efforts by conservatives to downplay these horrible crimes and to stifle dissent with their endlessly repeated bromide of "support the troops," I thought it would be good to recall some examples from the past few years of just what it is we're being asked to support.

From the New York Times :

"We had a great day," Sergeant Schrumpf said. "We killed a lot of people." ... But more than once, Sergeant Schrumpf said, he faced a different choice: one Iraqi soldier standing among two or three civilians. He recalled one such incident, in which he and other men in his unit opened fire. He recalled watching one of the women standing near the Iraqi soldier go down. "I'm sorry," the sergeant said. "But the chick was in the way."

From Reuters:

Two soldiers picked out two figures on a rooftop and quickly lined up their shot. Thankfully, First Sgt. Eric Engram saw them and also saw their target. “No man, that's a kid and a woman. It's a KID and a WOMAN,” he bellowed, and his soldiers lowered their rifles. "These guys are young and most just want to get their first confirmed kill, so they're too anxious to get off shots. I hate to say ‘bragging rights’ but they want that kill,” Engram said an hour later.

Can you imagine what kind of mindset makes a person not just happy, not just proud, but eager to brag about killing another human being? And can you imagine the (military) culture in which bragging about killing another human being is considered a badge of honor? I can't either.

From the Scotsman (or see also the London Times):

US marine, Corporal Ryan Dupre, surveying the scene by the bridge at An Nasiriyah, said: "The Iraqis are sick people and we are the chemotherapy. I am starting to hate this country. Wait till I get hold of a friggin’ Iraqi. No I won’t get hold of one - I’ll kill him."

From Reuters:

A tracked armored vehicle has crushed two men up the road. "Killed one, ripped the legs off another," Monty said briskly, a cigarette dangling from his lip.

From Newsday:

"It's like you're fighting a faceless enemy," said Cpl. Jeb Moser, 21, of Ruston, La. "They're all just ragheads to me, the same way they used to call the enemy 'gooks' in Vietnam." "Raghead, raghead, can't you see? This old war ain't -- to me," sang Lance Cpl. Christopher Akins, 21, of Louisville, Ky., sweat running down his face in rivulets as he dug a fighting trench one recent afternoon under a blazing sun. Asked whom he considered a raghead, Akins said: "Anybody who actively opposes the United States of America's way ... If a little kid actively opposes my way of life, I'd call him a raghead, too."

From Editor and Publisher:

"We splashed that bastard," a Western eyewitness quoted one Marine as saying to another after they'd shot an Iraqi dead.

From the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

The 20-year veteran of the Marine Corps said he found the soldier after dark inside a nearby home with the grenade launcher next to him. Covarrubias said he ordered the man to stop and turn around. "I went behind him and shot him in the back of the head," Covarrubias said. "Twice."

Did he feel any remorse for executing a man who'd surrendered to him? No; in fact, he'd taken the man's ID card off of his dead body to keep as a souvenir.

From the Daily Mirror:

"There was no dilemma when it came to shooting people who were not in uniform, I just pulled the trigger. "It was up close and personal the whole time, there wasn't a big distance. If they were there, they were enemy, whether in uniform or not. Some were, some weren't." Describing the scene during combat Richardson admitted shooting injured soldiers and leaving them to die. He said: "S***, I didn't help any of them. I wouldn't help the f******. There were some you let die. And there were some you double-tapped." Making a shooting sign with his hand he went on: "Once you'd reached the objective, and once you'd shot them and you're moving through, anything there, you shoot again. You didn't want any prisoners of war. You hate them so bad while you're fighting, and you're so terrified, you can't really convey the feeling, but you don't want them to live." And despite there being no link between Iraq and the September 11 attacks Richardson admitted that it gave him his motivation to fight Iraqis. "There's a picture of the World Trade Centre hanging up by my bed and I keep one in my flak jacket. Every time I feel sorry for these people I look at that. I think, 'They hit us at home and, now, it's our turn.' I don't want to say payback but, you know, it's pretty much payback."

Perhaps if someone in Richardson's family is ever killed, he can go pick someone at random off the street and torture them to death; that would really give the killers their "payback," wouldn't it?

Note also the phrasing: "I don't want to say payback." Just like "I hate to say 'bragging rights'." The reticence is telling. These are the dirty little truths that lie behind all the elevated rhetoric and noble words. These are the things you're not supposed to admit are lurking in the shadows, so that you won't disrupt the elevated fantasies of the cheerleaders for war.

From the Los Angeles Times:

"I enjoy killing Iraqis," says Staff Sgt. William Deaton, 30, who killed a hostile fighter the night before. Deaton has lost a good friend in Iraq. "I just feel rage, hate when I'm out there. I feel like I carry it all the time. We talk about it. We all feel the same way."

"I enjoy killing Iraqis." Does that sound horrific to you? Think it would to any normal human being? Unfortunately, you're wrong; some people liked it so much they made a sticker out of it. Then again, maybe you're right, since anyone who would celebrate such viciousness isn't a normal human being--or at least that's how I like to think of the world.

From the Seattle Times:

"I want to know if I killed that guy yesterday," Hall says. "I saw blood spurt from his leg, but I want to be sure I killed him."

No, it wasn't enough for Hall to watch the blood spurt from his victim's leg; he wants to know the man was dead, and that he was the cause of it. After all, he wants those bragging rights.

This article does at least contain some notes of humanity. One man struggles to reconcile what he's become with what he used to be, and what he hopes to be again:

The vehicle goes silent as the driver, Spc. Joshua Dubois, swerves around asphalt previously uprooted by a blast. "I'm confused about how I should feel about killing," says Dubois, who has a toddler back home. "The first time I shot someone, it was the most exhilarating thing I'd ever felt." Dubois turns back to the road. "We talk about killing all the time," he says. "I never used to talk this way. I'm not proud of it, but it's like I can't stop. I'm worried what I will be like when I get home."

That's what the culture does: it turns normal, sane people into people who are obsessed with killing other people ("we talk about killing all the time...it's like I can't stop"). Roll that fact around in your mind for a few moments. All of us should be worried what it will like when they get home, and bring with them these lessons they learned in Iraq.

But I've saved the worst for last. This is from the East Bay Express, in an article about a web site on which American soldiers can get free access to online pornography by posting their trophy photos of dead and mutilated Iraqis:

Six men in beige fatigues, identified as US Marines, laugh and smile for the camera while pointing at a burned, charcoal-black corpse lying at their feet. The captions that accompany these images, which were apparently written by soldiers who posted them, laugh and gloat over the bodies. The person who posted a picture of a corpse lying in a pool of his own brains and entrails wrote, “What every Iraqi should look like.” The photograph of a corpse whose jaw has apparently rotted away, leaving a gaping set of upper teeth, bears the caption “bad day for this dude.” One person posted three photographs of corpses lying in the street and titled his collection “DIE HAJI DIE.”

There's no shred of humanity here at all. Did the military turn these people into psychopaths, or did it just give them an outlet for what was already inside them? In the end it doesn't matter; this is an inevitable result of putting people into a system in which killing another human being is treated as a badge of honor, rather than as the debasing, dehumanizing, horrific act that it is.

If you ever find yourself about to say that you "support the troops," I hope you'll remember these quotes--and the lessons they teach--and realize exactly what it is you're supporting.

— John Caruso

Posted at April 7, 2010 03:39 AM

