Haditha. Few know anything about it or what really happened there, but many are quick to condemn the soldiers who were there. We've heard from the know-nothings, but only now, and in limited circulation are we beginning to hear from those who were there.
two and a half months after the story broke in the March 19 issue of Time magazine-- are the voices of soldiers who question the charges beginning to be heard. Marine Captain James Kimber commanded Lima Company of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment. The troops involved in the incident were from Kilo Company. He tells interviewers that he first learned about the shootings in February when he heard that a Time magazine reporter was asking questions about civilian deaths. Notably, Kimber says he heard nothing about a civilian massacre during weekly meetings with the Haditha City Council and talks with local leaders. "It would have been huge, there would have been no question it would have filtered down to us," he said. "We reported no significant atmospheric change as a result of that day." Kimber who has been relieved of his command and is back in Camp Pendleton, CA says, “I believe I was a political casualty as a result of the Haditha incident.” Some media accounts indicate that some of the dead were relatives of a Haditha City Council member. The May 12, 2006 edition of Iraq Reconstruction Update carries a photo and short article about Marine officers holding weekly meetings with the Haditha City Council with no mention of the alleged shooting controversy.
Interestingly, Captain Kimber has been awarded the Bronze Star for Valor in Haditha. And besides the men of Lima Company, there were embedded reporters who know something about these guys; CNN reporter, Arwa Damon, for instance:
“I know the Marines that were operating in western al Anbar, from Husayba all the way to Haditha. I went on countless operations in 2005 up and down the Euphrates River Valley. I was pinned on rooftops with them in Ubeydi for hours taking incoming fire, and I've seen them not fire a shot back because they did not have positive identification on a target. I saw their horror when they thought that they finally had identified their target, fired a tank round that went through a wall and into a house filled with civilians. They then rushed to help the wounded -- remarkably no one was killed.
“I was with them in Husayba as they went house to house in an area where insurgents would booby-trap doors, or lie in wait behind closed doors with an AK-47, basically on suicide missions, just waiting for the Marines to come through and open fire. There were civilians in the city as well, and the Marines were always keenly aware of that fact. How they didn't fire at shadows, not knowing what was waiting in each house, I don't know. But they didn't….”
Now there is no disputing that I am as ignorant as anyone else on this matter. But I am two things a) skeptical of media speculation and b) willing to wait for the final investigation report and subsequent trials (if there are any) before I judge these guys.
But one thing is very clear to me, if there has been wrong-doing, the perpetrators will pay. This reamins in stark contrast to the enemy who kills innocent civilians on a daily basis yet get lauded as heros.
And then there is the Geneva Convention thing: we adhere to it while the enemy doesn't. And that's a big deal. The reason why the Geneva Conventions require the wearing of uniforms is specifically to protect civilians during a war. But not only does the enemy target civilians, they attempt to get us to target civilians because they know that in the media a US service member killing a civilian is a much bigger deal than an Islamist killing civilians for Allah.
And that's a fact.
We must, and should play by the rules. But in doing so make no mistake that we are fighting literally with one hand tied behind our back. Which makes victory all that much sweeter.
An editorial in The London Times gets it just right
Terrorism, not America, is a real and present threat to our freedoms...
Al-Haditha, a town on the Euphrates northwest of Baghdad, is still a place where fighters blend into the populace and literally use civilians as cover. Coalition forces may shoot only when threatened, ground rules that call for exemplary discipline and courage in conditions where their observance increases the risk of injury or death.
That should be acknowledged in the context of what appears to have been an appalling collapse of US military discipline in al-Haditha, where 24 Iraqi civilians were allegedly murdered by a company of US Marines after a member of their patrol was killed and two were injured by a roadside bomb. America’s determination to demonstrate zero tolerance of such crimes should also be acknowledged; they in no way reflect US policy, or typify the conduct of American forces....
American stumbling on the rough road since 2001 has played some part. Yet had there, inconceivably, been no wrong steps, had America been positively obsequious in courting international support (and it has done more on that score than its critics admit), anti-Americanism would still be on the rise. The US is never less popular than when it is aroused and determined in defence of democratic freedoms, never less trusted than when the world is most reliant on its unmatched ability to project power.
Democracies are psychologically ill-adapted to open-ended confrontations where there can be no decisive victory, the essence of the effort to subdue global terrorism. Eternal vigilance is a wearisome business. The more vulnerable that Europeans feel, the more liable they are to shift blame across the Atlantic.
The strength of disdain is a measure of Europe’s weakness. Smugness is one of Europe’s great contemporary exports. We may all think that we know America, its music, its culture, its self-confident exceptionalism. We tend to forget that Americans fight only with extreme reluctance. We overlook their penchant for agonised self-criticism; everything bad we know about the US, we know because Americans inexhaustibly rehearse their society’s shortcomings. There has never been greater transparency, whether than on the battlefield or the boondocks, and there has never been more open debate about the country’s virtues and vices...
The enemy continues to recuit in our own backyard using the techniques laid our in Mao's little red book. One of the tenets of successful revolution, according to Mao, is indoctrination. This is why when US soldiers were captured in Vietnam, they were subjected to re-education classes which extolled the virtues of communism and the evils of Capitalism. This technique was used for counter-revolution efforts by Stalin as well. Today, the analog is Madrassas and Mosques. In the recently uncovered terror plot in Canada,
Their attendance at the mosque, Al-Rahman Islamic Centre for Islamic Education, is one of the few public pieces of information that clearly link any of the suspects — 12 adults and 5 youths — in one of the biggest antiterrorism arrests in North America since the Sept. 11 attacks.
And despite the fact that this group had intended on blowing up buildings and cutting off the head of the Prime Minister in Parliament, one of the conspirators lawyers had the gall to say
“It appears to me that whether you’re in Ottawa or Toronto or Crawford, Tex., or Washington, D.C., what is wanting to be instilled in the public is fear,” he said.
“That’s precisely why everyone is here today, and that’s unfortunate.”
No its not. What the enemy wants precisly for us to let our guard down; to convince us that they are just regular people; to convince us they are civilians when in fact they are soldiers.
But regardless of what we discover about Haditha, we will not suffer atrocities as policy and we will not let our guard down.
Make no mistake.
(Hat tip to Blackfive for the piece from the Hawaii Reporter)
