[NYTr] The Deadly Occupation

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Nation - Jul 30, 2007 issue
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070730/editors

The Deadly Occupation

One day in January 2005, an elderly couple was driving down a road in
Mosul, Iraq, when without realizing it they passed through a makeshift
US military checkpoint. The checkpoint, recalled a sergeant who came
upon the scene, was "very poorly marked." Yet, he said, the soldiers
"got spooked" and opened fire. The bodies of the couple sat in the car
for three days, the sergeant said, "while we drove by them day after
day."

That incident was no Haditha or Abu Ghraib. It was a fairly typical day
for Iraqis under US occupation. As Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian make
clear in their exhaustive investigation in this issue, the degradation
and killing of civilians by US troops have become commonplace in Iraq.
At tense checkpoints, in futile house-to-house searches, as convoys and
patrols hurtle down the roads, the official rules of engagement and
unofficial day-to-day practices of the occupation often add up to shoot
first and ask questions never. The results make for tough reading: a
family's dog gunned down for barking, a 2-year-old shot in a spray of
gunfire, the terrified scream of a father awakened in a midnight raid.
Few such incidents were reported, according to most of those
interviewed; even fewer resulted in discipline.

This Nation investigation, based on interviews with fifty soldiers,
sailors and marines, marks the first time so many veterans have spoken
on the record about civilian casualties at the hands of US troops in
Iraq. They have shown notable courage in speaking out about the horrors
they witnessed. Most insisted that only a minority in their ranks have
killed civilians indiscriminately. Yet such abuses are common enough
that many veterans have returned home with deep emotional scars.

It is time to reckon with the weight of evidence that American forces
regularly kill Iraqi noncombatants. Occupying armies with little
knowledge of the local culture, fighting guerrillas who mingle among
the population, have usually meant disaster for civilians. In Iraq, the
impossible mission, poor training and inconsistent and irresponsible
rules of engagement have compounded the problem, leading many American
soldiers to conclude that endangering civilians is simply the cost of
staying safe; to consider all Iraqis the enemy; or, under extreme
stress, to lash out in revenge after insurgent attacks.

As described by these veterans, the occupation of Iraq has become a
classic example of what psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton calls an
"atrocity-producing situation." Their testimony of eroding moral
constraint, a direct consequence of the untenable position in which
they've found themselves, was confirmed recently by the Pentagon. A May
survey by the US Army Medical Command that should disturb every American
found that just 47 percent of soldiers and 38 percent of marines agreed
that civilians should be treated with dignity and respect.

Veterans of conscience deserve encouragement for speaking up. Instead
they face a Congress that has been willfully blind to civilian
casualties and has tolerated virtually no reporting on this matter from
the Pentagon. It is time for a Congressional inquiry into these daily
attacks on Iraqi civilians, one that traces responsibility up the chain
of command. Most important, we need to wake up to the true costs of
this war. If the President and his aides lie about the war with no
consequence, if troops are deployed again and again to prop up a
deteriorating occupation, if the rules of engagement guarantee frequent
brutalization of noncombatants, then it is no wonder some soldiers
conclude that their conduct has few limits. And it should come as no
surprise that an occupation of this sort continues to inflame
anti-American sentiment throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds. The
problem is not a few "bad apples" (Bush's phrase after Abu Ghraib) but
the occupation itself. It needs to end.