The last ten years, beginning with a horrible tragedy at home and punctuated by two vicious and unnecessary wars abroad have had negative effects on America. Not only have the Iraqis and Afghans suffered from George Bush, Dick Cheney and Barak Obama's preemptive wars of choice, but it is all too clear now that as a nation we have suffered deeply too. Not only have we been weakened economically by the waste of trillions of dollars in treasure over this decade of war (a foray into neocon adventurism which was one leg of the three-leg-stool which caused the Great Recession) but these unwarranted conflicts, left our nation's infrastructure worn and outdated, sacrificed the blood of our youth in far away lands, and forced Americans at home into the role of citizens of an occupier nation, a world imperium, which maintains more than 900 military bases world-wide, keeps two million in uniform, and spends more on its military than all other nations in the world combined to satisfy the monetary goals of expanding markets for an oligarchic corporatist elite. We do not wish to admit it, or perhaps are unaware that our nation, silently and without serious objection support a brutal military occupation in Palestine and we ourselves engage in or have engaged in most recently similar brutal military occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. In our role as occupier (and facilitator of occupations ) we have morphed from the innocent settlers and colonists of our American origins, a people who simply yearned to be free from British tyranny, into the very kind of imperial state which we so heroically resisted in the late 18th century War of Independence. In the process, we have turned a blind eye to the evils of occupation and imperialism, and ignore or are ignorant of what our military forces do to others at our government's behest. But at rare times, the consequences of our stated goals to maintain military and economic dominance in the world are revealed and we can see ourselves as we really are: a state which sanctions torture, kidnapping and rendition, assassination of those we consider our enemies, and most recently extermination of our own citizens abroad without judicial review or sanction, we use terror tactics to quash rebellions, aerial drone warfare to kill as many innocents as enemies, and start preemptive wars having nothing to do with "defense" of our homeland. Thus the accumulated brutality of a decade and more of war as well as our government's determination to maintain world domination has hardened and brutalized us. Too many of us can not recall the ideals of the America of our father's time or of our own once deeply held myths and dreams of America.
Americans have little perception of the horrors of war. Somehow those in control have sanitized war so to most of us it seems more like a particularly violent video game. We don't have that visceral intimate understanding of such conflicts as perhaps the Germans, British, or French, some of whom can still recall the horrors of WWII. who still have lived lthrough recent conflicts around the world. Thankfully we have largely escaped direct attack--until only very recently.
Thus we embark so easily and innocently on loose talk of war, threats, and thoughtless verbal and economic attacks on other nations, and enter into any military fray as if it were just one big chess game in the sky. In the aftermath, we like other colonial powers before us, strive to hold on to the land and resources we are sitting on, won with so much blood and treasure. But as is always true, no one loves an occupier, however heinous the last dictator or last regime. To stay and reap the benefits of war we must suppress the national aspirations of the vanquished. To accomplish this our generals and Congressional leaders espouse a policy called "counter-insurgency" which entails "winning hearts and minds" of the insurgents. That doesn't sound so bad, in fact it seems less threatening than say "coercion" or "arm-twisting". But just as the whole process of war has been sanitized so have the terms used to describe this brutal process. What does winning their hearts mean, killing them? For that's what happens to far too many. What does winning their minds mean? Keeping them so frightened that their minds are numbed with fear. That's what happens to most.
In every conflict where home-grown forces (what shall we call them, al Qaida, Taliban, French partisans, Polish Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, freedom fighters, American minute men?) attempt to oust a foreign invader, the the circumstances and conditions of unequal warfare are much the same. During the American Revolutionary War we were the insurgents and the British were the occupational forces. The objective of the British was to deny Washington's troops resources, ammunition, food, water, hay for their horses, camping sites, and safe places to sleep. To do this they had to come down very hard on colonists who either had sympathy for the men in gray, or actually provided Washington's forces with such aid. The British had no compunction or restraint in dealing with these Americans, especially later in the war, they arrested and transported colonists, to prison ships in N Y Harbor where they were confined under brutal and unsanitary conditions, many died on the ships, others were summarily hanged or shot.
Little has changed during the ensuing centuries. During WWII German atrocities against French partisans are well documented. The French treatment of the Algerian insurgents was also particularly vicious. The Israeli attacks on the Palestinian insurgency was and remains a text-book example of how to debase, and dehumanize a population so as to maintain control over it and the land on which they live. The American occupation of the Philippines, Japan, Germany, South Vietnam, Iraq, and of Afghanistan were and continue to remain no different than past occupations. The names change and the weapons of the occupiers and insurgents alter but the process remains the same. The slightly vared, so called "insurgency strategies" of the several American generals who were in charge at various times in Iraq and Afghanistan were only variations on the same theme used by the British, the Nazis, the Japanese in the Philippines, and all the other occupation armies. It's written in the military textbooks which state: Be brutal, the native indigent population must be more frightened of you (the occupier) than of the insurgent forces, (Viet Cong, al Qaida, Taliban, etc. etc.). If the natives (American colonists, Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans or French Resistance fighters) are suspected of harboring or aiding the insurgency, they must be treated harshy and made an example of, just as Nazis war criminals did to the small French town outside of Limoges (Oradur-Sur-Glan) where the SS slaughtered 642 men, women and children-the whole population of the town--then razed the entire village in reprisal for Resistance activity in the area. Thus the night raids, drone attacks, bombings, and other means of slaughter of innocents in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere is not simply "accidental collateral damage" but part of an actual plan of terror. The natives must be more frightened of the occupiers than of the insurgents.
We do not wish to admit it, but the US without public qualm, supports the brutal occupation in Palestine. The USA was until very recently the military occupier of Iraq and remains in Afghanistan. In this role as occupier and facilitator of occupation we are engaged in the suppression of others. We are not "setting these occupied nations "free "as some would have it. We are in rose places for keeps to exploit resources. We freedom loving Americans have evolved from the innocent settlers and colonists of our colonial origins----a nation of a people who simply yearned to be released from British tyranny. We have morphed into the very kind of imperial state which we so heroically resisted in the late 18th century War of Independence. In the process, we have turned a blind eye and become hardened to what our military forces do to others at our government's behest. As a consequence of its goal to dominate the world, our modern imperial state sanctions torture, kidnapping and rendition, extermination of our own citizens and others abroad without judicial review or sanction, terror tactics to subdue rebellion, aerial drone warfare, which kills as many innocents as enemies, as well as preemptive wars having nothing to do with "defense" of our homeland. The accumulated brutality of a decade and more of war has hardened and brutalized us. Too many of us are no longer the Americans of father's or our most cherished myths and dreams.
Today, the airways and TV are full of a horrible story that seems to underscore our new dystopian world and our self-image.
I make reference here to the My-Lai-type massacre of seventeen innocent Afghan men women and children, slaughtered by a three-tour, wounded-in-battle, US non-com officer, one Sargent Robert Bales. Bales left his barracks last Sunday night on a mission of unimaginable and horrific violence, breaking into Afghan village homes, one after another and slaughtering innocent men,women and children as they cowered in their beds, and then mutilated and burned their bodies. (I do not use the "My Lai " term lightly, for in that infamous US Army massacre an estimated 44 members of Lt. Calley's platoon, killed 500 innocent Vietnamese villagers. On a per-man basis of death-dealing, Sargent Bales' efforts at (17) exceeded the horrors of the My Lai murderers (@11). Today some unable to swallow the story of American brutality (we are always the exception) there are in play strenuous efforts to characterize this incident as an aberration, the bizarre behavior of a single man, and perhaps his inability to cope with the multiple traumas to his psyche, of his three deployment into a war zone. Others now try to implicate the effects of certain psycho-active anti-malarial drugs which Bales may or may not have taken.
It is difficult for many of us to accept that Sargent Bales' behavior is not so very far from the norm. Indeed much of this is simply the result of the disparity of what we think and what really goes on. Brutality and hatred is what we quietly request of our men in arms. It is the nature of war-that part that is hidden from us who support it. We only see the Hollywood version on TV. That version and our news is sanitized for us and is much different than what our troops actually do in our name.
But to absolve Bales of blame or to subscribe his actions to some aberrant cause we would have to ignore so many other examples of similar behavior these excuses do not stand up to scrutiny. I need not enumerate the cases here. One need only recall the news reports of Abu Ghraib; the vicious cold blooded murder of an Iraqi Reuters reporter and journalist and those who came to his aid, slaughtered (it seems to observers of the video--just for fun) by the laughing US pilot of an Apache helicopter as revealed by video footage posted on line by Wki leaks; the infamous Mahmudiyah gang rape and murder of a 14 year old girl; the now infamous Marine killings of 24 innocent Iraqi civilians (women, children, a toddler, as well as an old man in a wheelchair) at Haditha; the 76 innocent Afghan civilians killed in a US air strike in Azzizabad, Afghanistan in Herat in 2008; and the numerous and continuing atrocities and killing of innocents in night raids ans drone attacks in Afghanistan are legion. They are part of the policy of "counter insurgency". It is policy. I we are unhappy with Bales we must force ourselves to scrutinize more carefully the policies our government supports.
It is not only the front-line troops who are infected with violence. Recently those at the highest levels in government are involved When our President himself orders or sanctions brutal violence, how can his troops in the field practice restraint. In 20o9 President Obama ordered an attack on what he thought was an al Qaida training camp in Majala in Yemen. The attack was carried out and publicized as a great success "by the Yemeni air a force" which the White House gloated killed dozens of "suspected al Qaida members". None of this was true. The target is now considered to have been a refugee camp where no al Qaida, only innocent citizen families fleeing from violence elsewhere in Yemen were killed by US cruise missiles. When the US bragged of the deaths of so many enemy al Qaida and attributed the attack to Yemeni forces, an inquiring and brave Yemeni journalist, Abdulelah Shaye, 35, visited the site and posted a story indicating that the attack was a US operation. Leaked cables between the Yemeni government and General Petraeus, now fully support that contention. Shaye also unearthed evidence indicating that the attack took the lives of thirty five innocents (fourteen women and twenty-one children). Shaye took pictures of fragmented US munitions (reputed to be US Tomahawk cruise missile components and "made in USA" markings on cluster bombs) and posted them on the Internet. (See: Jeremy Scahill, the Nation, March 13, 2012). Following the publication of his report in 2009, Shaye was jailed by the Yemeni government, reputedly as a result of a US request. Recently, having served three years of a five year term, he was slated for a pardon and released from prison. But our US President intervened against him. Based on secret cables posted on line by Wiki-leaks, President Obama requested that his release be rescinded--- presumably to keep the story quiet during the upcoming elections.
The atrocities, assassinations, drone and cruise missile attacks, night raids and other forms of unspeakable violence, often perpetrated on innocent women and children, seem so at odds with the traditional fabric of America, so at variance with our good will and better natures and alien at what we think of ourselves that one might be led to believe that the incidents must have taken place at the behest of some foreign nation...not by or in the "land of the brave and free", the land of our births. But this is the violent face of America today--the one we must face when we all look at our images in the morning mirror.
One recent and interesting psychological study, published in the Israeli paper, Haaretz, and authored by psychologists Nofer Ishai-Karen and Joel Karpel (See www.haaretz.co.il/haste/spaces/905287.htm) entitled in Hebrew,"Hamedovevet" which appeared in Haaretz September 21, 2009. This study documents the effects of violence on the Israeli soldiers who served in the Palestinian town of Rafah, in the Occupied Territories during the 2009 Palestinian uprising or intifada.
Nofer Ishai-Karen had served with a similar platoon twenty years earlier and had a rapport with the soldiers who spoke freely with her. The authors conclude that the troops, all recruits and members of a citizen soldiery, often coming from liberal or progressive homes, became brutalized by their posting in the occupied territories. They report that it the soldiers in the study enjoyed the "intoxication of power" and actually enjoyed the violence that they often instigated themselves while they were posted in the occupied territories (OT). The study quotes one soldiers as stating : " I love this mess....It's like being on drugs!" Another interviewee stated: "What is great is that ...you are the law. You decide. Once you go into the Occupied Territories you are God!". The respondents gave examples of how they behaved towards the Palestinians, indiscriminate shooting and killing, unspeakable violence against women and children for which they felt no remorse. The data reveals that officers and non-com officers often "encouraged" brutality and violence and often their violent behavior became the modles of response or examples to the troops. As an example of this phenomenon Karen and Karpel report that, on the arrival in Rafah, a new NCO took his men on an early morning tour. The streets were deserted as a result of the curfew. But a small boy, a four year old, was observed by the new non commissioned officer playing in the sand in front of his home. The NCO stopped the vehicle and chased down the little boy, and catching him, without hesitation he snapped his arm at the elbow. On subsequent tours the men reported that they started to imitate the harsh behavior of their leader. When excessive violence of this new NCO Rached beyond the point that what some few of the new recruits could bear, these men reported him to the senior group commander. The new NCO was reprimanded and punished. But the platoon leader, immediate superior to the new NCO, reprimanded the "conscientious solders for defaming the platoon". Karen and Karpel state that loyalty toward fellow combatants or "fighter solidarity" was valued above all else. The platoon protected the over zealous and brutally violent members, while the conscientious solders were regarded as traitors and ostracized. Soldiers also testified that the longer they served in the OT the more violent and brutal they became.
Was Robert Bales' act, that of some madman whose behavior was far beyond the norm? The reports in our press and from the war-front seem to suggest otherwise. No, the average GI does not behave as Sargent Bales did. But such actions-- kill squads, purposeful terror, indiscriminate killing are the strategies used to oppose an insurgency. These are part of formal policy. It does exist. Bales' actions were only different in scope and in the fact that it was not officially sanctioned. But Bales was doing only what the military trained him to do. The brutality is what we "bought into" when we agree to go to war not for defense of our homeland, but for economic gain in preemtive wars and conflicts of choice where we end up as occupiers. Our disgust and disdain should be directed less at Sargent Bales but more at the policy makers in Washinsgton and at the Pentagon who set policy which puts our fine troops s into the role of an occupier force.
Get the picture?
rjk
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