(Click here to download these talking points in a Word doc.) WHAT HAPPENED IN HADITHA U.S. Marines killed 24 innocent, unarmed men, women, and children of Haditha intentionally and without cause in Haditha, a city in the Al Anbar province of Iraq. - On November 19th Marines entered three homes, where they killed 19 people at close range. They then killed another five, four students and a taxi driver, in a taxi approaching the scene.
- Among the victims were Abdul Hamid Hassan Ali, a 76-year-old amputee in a wheelchair; Abdullah Walid, age 4; Aisha Younis Salim, age 3; Zainab Younis Salim, age 5; Aeda Yasin Ahmed, woman, 41; and Sabaa Younis Salim, age 10. One survivor, Safa Younis Salim, 13, told the New York Times, "I pretended that I was dead when my brother’s body fell on me and he was bleeding like a faucet."
- Adults begged and pleaded and attempted to save their children by shielding them with their bodies, to no avail.
COVER UP Afterward, the Marines lied to cover up their actions by claiming they were under attack. Higher-ups in the military also tried to cover it up until revelations in the media forced them to conduct a serious investigation. - In the Marines’ story the eight helpless men they slaughtered became "insurgents." The other 16, necessarily "civilians" because of age or sex, they first claimed were also victims of the same IED; later, some were supposed to have been "collateral damage" of a supposed "exchange of gunfire" with said "insurgents."
- Unfortunately for them, a journalism student took photographs of the bodies in the Haditha morgue that showed victims shot in the head from close range in execution-style killings. Nothing forced the Marines to kill these Iraqis.
- According to Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), a former marine, a military investigation of the incident expected to be released next week will show that marines killed innocent civilians in Haditha and tried to cover up the deaths. When Chris Matthews of MSNBC’ "Hardball" tried to spin the incident, Murtha calmly corrected him and said, no, there was no battle, no exchange of gunfire, no explosion - the troops killed 24 people "in cold blood." When Matthews asked him if this was like My Lai, Murtha said it was.
TIP OF THE ICEBERG The Haditha massacre is not an isolated incident committed by "rogues" or a "few rotten apples," as some in the government and the media are saying. It is just the tip of the iceberg. - The BBC reports it has uncovered video that appears to show that US forces deliberately killed 11 civilians, including five children and four women, in the town of Ishaqi in March.
- On May 31, the Associated Press reported that U.S. soldiers killed two women, one of whom was about to give birth, at a checkpoint on Wednesday, May 30, 2006.
- On June 2, the New York Times reported that military prosecutors are preparing murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy charges against seven marines and a Navy Corpsman in connection with the shooting death of an Iraqi civilian in April. Marine officials and Congresspeople briefed on the case say there is evidence that the marines threw down a shovel and bomb components near the Iraqi’s body to make it appear he had been digging a hole for an IED. An AK-47 rifle was also fired near the body to make it seem that the victim had been shooting at the soldiers.
- Civilians have also been killed regularly at checkpoints by trigger-happy soldiers, indiscriminate return fire in crowded civilian areas, use of area weapons like 2000-pound bombs on "suspected insurgents," and a general "shoot first ask questions later" policy.
- The attempt to pass off the eight men as insurgents encapsulates the logic of the U.S. military in the worst areas. During the second assault on Fallujah in November 2004, for example, the operative principle was that any "military age male" in the city was presumptively a fighter and thus subject to attack. Plant a gun on a man you've killed, or, for that matter, a shovel, and instantly he's an "insurgent."
- Although the Haditha massacre is the largest documented example of the deliberate mass murder of civilians (there are smaller ones), it joins a series of actions that, while short of this degree of cold-blooded brutality, involve neglect and indifference so pervasive and deep that it amounts to depraved indifference to Iraqi life.
OCCUPATION ATROCITY-PRODUCING SITUATION Just as happened during the Vietnam war, the occupation of Iraq has created an atrocity-producing situation. During war and under occupation, crimes like the Haditha massacre are all but inevitable. The Marines who are guilty of murder should be severely punished. At the same time the policy-makers responsible for the occupation -- George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, etc. -- must be held accountable. - The problem is not lack of training, young age, or stress (as Rep. John Murtha has suggested). The fact that one of their comrades died from an improvised explosive device (IED) before they killed these civilians is not a justification. Even if these were the case, they are not an excuse for the unprovoked murder of old men, women, and children.
- In fact, U.S. military training makes such incidents inevitable. In Basic Training or Boot Camp, during bayonet training young soldiers learn to holler "Kill, kill, kill!" or "Blood, blood, blood makes the grass grow!" This is not mindless sadism, but rather a specifically developed regimen designed to overcome the natural human aversion to killing another human.
- Once on the ground to enforce an occupation on an unwilling people, soldiers inevitably learn to treat the dark-skinned people whose land they occupy as enemies who deserve little mercy. As Iraqis have reacted to U.S. troops' unwanted presence with hostility, it was only a matter of time before occupying soldiers took out their aggression on innocent civilians.
- >Racism and the peculiar brew of racialized militant nationalism and religion in the wake of 9/11 have played a major role in fostering this kind of behavior. British officers have remarked numerous times on how U.S. interaction with Iraqis is characterized by racism. Remarking on the propensity of U.S. troops to use massive return fire in civilian areas, something it's hard to imagine them doing in, say, Europe, one British officer said, "They don't see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen."
- The parallel to the My Lai massacre in the Vietnam War, where U.S. soldiers slaughtered up to 500 Vietnamese civilians, lining men, women, and children up to be machine-gunned, is inescapable. The scale is smaller and most likely no women were raped this time, but the bestiality of the Haditha massacre is equivalent. Israeli soldiers have committed similar acts of brutality to enforce their government's occupation of Palestinian territories.
END THE OCCUPATION NOW! The Haditha massacre shows that the story that U.S. soldiers are doing battle with evil terrorists in Iraq is a fiction. - With U.S. soldiers being accused of vicious crimes, it's clear that we are not in Iraq for noble goals.
As long as the occupation continues, crimes like the Haditha massacre will as well. To prevent more unnecessary deaths of U.S. soldiers and innocent Iraqis both, we need to end the war and bring all the troops home now. - It’s not enough to condemn the killing of Haditha civilians while staying neutral on or backing the war.
- The Haditha incident may well be what brings home to the people of this country the savage immorality of the war. Bringing the all the troops home now is the most realistic strategy to end the bloodshed and to begin to bring U.S. foreign policy in line with the best of American traditions and values.
Sources: * Richard A. Oppel and Mona Mahmoud, "Iraqis' Accounts Link Marines to the Mass Killing of Civilians," New York Times May 29, 2006. * Richard A. Oppel, "Iraqi Accuses U.S. of 'Daily' Attacks Against Civilians," New York Times June 2, 2006. * David S. Cloud, "Military to Charge 8 in Iraqi Civilian’s Death,” New York Times June 2, 2006. * "New Iraq ‘Massacre Tape’ Emerges," BBC News * Rahul Mahajan, "Haditha is Arabic for My Lai," Empire Notes, May 29, 2006. http://empirenotes.org/ * Stan Goff, "Rogue Apple," The Huffington Post, May 27, 2006. |
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