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The Good American
By Scott Ritter
05/11/07 "Truth
Dig" -- -- I joined the American Legion a few
years back. As a veteran of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, I was
eligible to do so for some time but always hesitated, perhaps
out of a sense of trying to deny that my days as an active-duty
combatant were long past. Every year, on Memorial Day, my fellow
firefighters and I would gather in the basement of the local
American Legion hall before we paraded before the town we
protect. I would look around at the uniforms and faded patches
and ribbons worn by the veterans who joined us in the hall and
realize that they, too, were deserving of a great deal more
support than simply being wheeled out once a year to participate
in a parade. So I sent in my application and was accepted.
One of the fringe benefits of membership in the American Legion
is a subscription to its monthly journal, The American Legion,
billed as “the magazine for a strong America.” It quickly became
apparent that The American Legion magazine was a sounding board
for many holding quite militaristic and jingoistic opinions
based on their rather limited personal experiences, many dating
back to World War II. The war in Iraq, together with the
overarching “global war on terror,” seems to be viewed by many
in the American Legion as an extension of their own past
service, and much effort is made to connect World War II and the
Iraq conflict as part and parcel of the same ongoing American
“liberation” of the world’s oppressed.
It’s a shame for these Legionnaires that the Iraqis couldn’t
have turned out to be blond, blue-eyed Germans who looked like
us, and whose women could be wooed with chocolate and nylon
stockings by the noble American liberator and occupier. Or,
short of that, passive Japanese, who freely submitted their
women to the massage parlors and barracks of their American
conquering heroes while their men rebuilt a shattered society.
The simplistic approach of many of the American Legion’s most
hawkish advocates for the ongoing disaster in Iraq seems to be
drawn from a selective memory which seeks to impose a carefully
crafted past experience dating back to the last “good war”
(i.e., World War II), expunged of all warts and blemishes, onto
the current situation in Iraq in a manner which strips away all
reality.
It turns out that the Iraqis aren’t like German or Japanese
people at all, but rather a fiercely independent (if overly
complex) nation deeply resentful of a so-called liberation which
has brought them nothing but pain and agony, primarily at the
hands of those who have, unbidden, “freed” them from their past.
The fact that the Iraqis resent the ongoing American occupation,
and choose to express this resentment through violent resistance
instead of submissive passivity, is in turn resented by many of
the Legion’s membership. “War has been declared on the United
States by those who are envious of our freedom, and they won’t
stop until we are under their heel,” writes one Legionnaire in a
letter published in the May 2007 issue of “the magazine for a
strong America.” The juxtaposition of Iraq with those who
perpetrated the events of Sept. 11, 2001, implied in this
statement is reflective of a level of ignorance that boggles the
mind. Iraq never declared war on the United States, the
salesmanship exhibited in our promotion of “freedom” in Iraq
leaves nothing to envy, and the Iraqis will stop resisting when
we leave their country. Don’t try telling that to the blustery
former Marine who authored the letter in question, however. He,
like the majority of the Legion, is tired of hearing about
“Bush’s war.”
“Death, Not in Vain” is the title of the feature article of the
May 2007 issue. The story revolves around how the parents of one
Marine who died in Iraq seek to define their son’s sacrifice.
“People may not agree with the reason we went to war,” the
mother of the fallen Marine is quoted as saying, “but while our
troops are over there, we can’t be telling the world what they
are doing is wrong. If we say we support them, we have to
support what they are doing.” Of course, the nature of the
“disagreement” surrounding the Iraq war is never fully
articulated in the article. There is no mention made of the
discredited claims by President Bush and other war advocates
about weapons of mass destruction or connections between Saddam
Hussein’s government and al-Qaida. Instead, the reader is told
repeatedly about how fallen American service members gave their
lives for America and a “free Iraq.” Quoting their fallen sons,
the families of Marines killed in Iraq speak proudly of bold
statements such as “We need to be there, but it’s going to be
hard, and it is going to be a long time.” Yet they never explore
the actual “need” cited.
“We’ve got to support the troops and the mission,” the article
quotes one family member as saying. “The two are dependent on
each other.” I’m all for supporting the troops. But blind
support for a mission of such nebulous origin? This is a much
different matter, one requiring more introspective
investigation. I don’t think it was the magazine’s intent, but a
foundation of such an investigation was laid in the very same
issue. In his article “Minimizing the Holocaust,” Harvard Law
School professor Alan Dershowitz slams those who seek to dismiss
Nazi Germany’s effort to commit genocide against Europe’s Jews.
It is a very difficult article to digest, not because of the
legitimate premise that those who seek to deny or minimize the
Holocaust are deserving of condemnation, but rather for the ease
with which the moralistic Dershowitz explains the bombing of
Dresden in 1945 as a “legitimate act of belligerent reprisal for
the relentless bombings of civilians in London and elsewhere,”
or the dismissive waving-off of the systematic starvation of 1
million German prisoners of war by the United States after the
surrender of Germany as an inconvenient result of a “food crisis
across Europe, a result of the continent’s decimation,” and
being a “far cry from the 6 million innocents who perished at
the hands of the Nazis with absolutely no military
justification.”
I would be curious to know how Dershowitz would judge how the
families of German soldiers deployed in combat operations should
have viewed the Second World War. What if a mother of a young
panzer grenadier fighting on the Russian front was to say, “The
troops are the mission, and we cannot separate our support for
either”? Should blind support for the fighting men likewise have
blinded the families of German soldiers to the illegitimacy of
their cause? Certainly Dershowitz would favor the “good German,”
one who would have sought to deny facilitation of the Holocaust
by refusing to support the war which empowered it. Would he so
favor the “good American,” one driven by a sense of moral
responsibility to speak out against acts perpetrated in Iraq and
elsewhere by American fighting forces ostensibly in support of
freedom, but in reality an extension of illegitimate policies
reeking of global hegemony and American empire? Or would he
choose to explain away Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, the
CIA’s secret gulag of torture as “legitimate acts of bellicose
reprisals” for the events of Sept. 11, 2001? In Dershowitz’s
tortured legal brain the events at Haditha and elsewhere,
including the Marine massacre of civilians in Afghanistan,
likewise assume legitimacy in this newfound legal defense of
“legitimate bellicose reprisal.”
In the end, Dershowitz’s opinions are irrelevant. The disturbing
reality, however, is that his mind-set is not limited to the
soap box he enjoys as a teacher of jurisprudence at one of
America’s finest institutions of higher learning but rather is
increasingly embraced by American service members deployed in
harm’s way. A recent U.S. Army survey shows that some 40 percent
of American soldiers and Marines support the use of torture as a
means of gathering intelligence. Some 66 percent would refuse to
turn in a fellow soldier or Marine for abusive actions against
civilians, and less than 50 percent believe that noncombatants
should be treated with dignity and respect. Ten percent of those
surveyed actually admitted to abusing civilians and their
property for no reason whatsoever. While acknowledging that this
mind-set is at complete odds with official policy concerning the
conduct of military personnel in a combat zone, the Pentagon did
its best to portray the survey results as clear evidence that
there was, in fact, “good leadership” in place, since the
desires of the troops had not manifested themselves in
large-scale acts of abuse or torture. True, but the survey is
also clear evidence that when such abuse or torture does occur,
it is not the result of a few “bad apples,” so to speak, but
instead indicative of a trend that could easily spiral out of
control on any given day.
The survey results should not come as a surprise to anyone. The
innumerable home movies shot in Iraq and Afghanistan, some
immortalized on YouTube, some in documentary film, some simply
shared with friends and family, all show the same disturbing
trend. Whether it is a Marine singing the lyrics to the
self-written “Hadji Girl,” or soldiers speaking disparagingly
about “ragheads” or “sand niggers,” or any other dehumanizing
remark imaginable, the reality is our troops aren’t in Iraq to
liberate the Iraqi people. We’re there to kill them and we do an
extraordinarily good job. The British government recently
certified as “sound” the methodologies used by the study
published in the medical journal The Lancet which estimates the
number of deaths (as of 2006) that can be directly attributed to
the 2003 invasion of Iraq and its aftermath at 655,000. If
anything, this number has grown by leaps and bounds since the
study was conducted.
One can point to sectarian violence as a major contributor to
this total, but as an American I tend to reflect on the
American-on-Iraqi violence, such as the barely mentioned deaths
of Iraqi children in a recent air-delivered bomb attack against
suspected Iraqi insurgents. I’m sure Dershowitz and those
American service members desensitized to their own acts of
depravity can explain the deaths of these innocents as
“legitimate acts of bellicose reprisal.” I call it murder, even
if these deaths occurred in time of war.
Every mother and father of every soldier, sailor, airman and
Marine deployed in Iraq should reflect on this as well. “Little
Johnny” may write home about what he says is a “just war” that
“needs to be fought,” but before one embraces the words of
someone in harm’s way in desperate need of self-justification
for the things he has seen and done, re-examine the area of
operations your loved one is serving in or, worse, has perished
in. Are they “living among the Iraqi people,” as some would have
you believe? Or are they sequestered away in base camps or fire
bases, forced to conduct patrols out among a population that for
the most part hates them and wants them gone from Iraq? Does
“Johnny” himself call the Iraqis ragheads? Does he give a
frustrated kick at the Iraqi male he just apprehended, not
because of any crime or offense committed, but simply because he
was there? Does he point his rifle and scream expletives at the
mother or wife or daughter who cries out for a loved one? Does
he break a lamp or table to emphasize his point? Or does he do
worse, allowing his emotions and frustration to break free as he
beats, shoots or rapes those he now hates more than anything
else in the world? Freedom? Get real. The mission of our
military in Iraq is survival, and that is no military mission at
all.
The war in Iraq is as immoral a conflict as the United States
has ever been involved in. Past wars were fought in a day and
age where information was not readily available on the totality
of issues surrounding a given conflict. One could excuse
citizens if they were not equipped with the knowledge and
information necessary to empower them to speak out against bad
policy. Not so today. For someone today to proclaim ignorance as
an excuse for inactivity is as morally and intellectually weak
an argument as can be imagined. The truth about those who claim
they simply “didn’t know” lies in their own lack of commitment
to a strong America, one founded on principles and values worth
fighting for, and one where every American is committed to the
defense of the same. Ignorance is bad citizenship. In this day
and age, bad citizenship carries ramifications beyond the
environs of our local communities. Given America’s dominant role
in the world, bad American citizenship has a way of manifesting
itself globally.
I’m not calling the parents of those who have fallen in Iraq and
who continue to voice their blind adherence to the Bush
administration’s policies in Iraq bad citizens. I understand
their need to come to grips with their loss the best way
possible, which is to try and extract some meaning from the
sacrifice their family has had to make. But I draw the line when
these families allow their suffering to translate into blanket
suffering for others. As The American Legion magazine quoted one
such individual who advocated in favor of the Bush
administration: “Are more servicemen and women returning the way
my son did, in a casket, as a result of our words and actions? I
believe the answer is yes. The perception of a weak American
military, should we lose, will make our enemy stronger than we
ever imagined. Because we don’t want to be at war any more
doesn’t mean the war is over.”
Thus, in a blind effort to find meaning in her son’s death, this
mother is willing to inflict suffering on other American
families. This may sound like a harsh indictment, but she
indicts herself. The same mother concludes the article with the
following quote: “I told President Bush last summer that the
biggest insult anyone could hand me would be to pull the troops
out before the job is complete. If we’re going to quit, at that
point I’ll have to ask, ‘Why did my son die?’ ” The question she
should have been asking long before his death was, of course,
“Why might my son die?” That she failed to do so, and now seeks
to send others off to their death in a cause not worthy of a
single American life, is where she and those of her ilk stop
receiving my sympathy and understanding.
The American Legion magazine, in its May 2007 issue, belittles
those who speak out against the war. “While our forefathers gave
us the right and privilege to challenge our leaders,” one father
of a fallen Marine writes, “the manner and method that some
people have chosen to use at this time only emboldens the
enemy.” Reading between the lines, freedom of speech is
treasonous if you question the motives and actions of those who
got us involved in the Iraq war. Alan Dershowitz can only wish
that there had been more “good Germans” speaking out about the
policies of Adolf Hitler before the Holocaust became reality.
I yearn for a time when “good Americans” will be able to stop
and reverse equally evil policies of global hegemony achieved
through pre-emptive war of aggression. I know all too well that
in this case the “enemy” will only be emboldened by our silence,
since at the end of the day the “enemy” is ourselves. I can see
the Harvard professor shaking an accusatory finger at me for the
above statement, chiding me for creating any moral equivalency
between the war in Iraq and the Holocaust. You’re right, Mr.
Dershowitz. There is no moral equivalency. In America today, we
should have known better, since we ostensibly stand for so much
more. That we have collectively failed to halt and repudiate the
war in Iraq makes us even worse than the Germans.
Scott Ritter was a Marine Corps intelligence officer from
1984 to 1991 and a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from
1991 to 1998. He is the author of numerous books, and his latest
is “Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement”
(Nation Books, April 2007).
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