by StarmanSkye » Mon May 22, 2006 7:36 pm
Thought this commentary below by a Vietnam Veteran appropo, piercing the question of how brutality and violence for its own sake is encouraged and perpetuated thru the macho military culture, and sentiments that build on psychological dispositions and cultural mores, especially an exaggerated sense of might-makes-right privelege, moral entitlement and common self-defense fears. <br><br>How else to explain the 'doctrine' of Free Fire Zones where EVERYTHING was a legitimate target, or the routine killing of enemy wounded and prisoners, the blending of civilian and armed enemy, the destruction of crops and livestock and villages, and the routine use of truly horrific weapons with indiscriminate effect -- like cluster bombs and Agent Orange and mines. <br><br>Since these and other atrocities that characterized the US Military's 'anything goes' doctrine were never really challenged by Congress or the American citizens, it's inevitable the same issues would continue to dog the military's actions in successive conflicts -- as happened in Bosnia, Herzegovina and greater Yugoslavia with the US's horrific, entirely politically-motivated bombing and subsidizing Islamic terrorists, air-strikes reproduced on a smaller scale in Panama, the semi-official torture, kidnapping and mass-arrests approved by the Pentagon and CIA and White House, and now the documented war-crimes of the US military in Afghanistan and Iraq (AND covert-ops terrorism in Iran and numerous false-flag bombings and assassinations and death-squads in dozens of nations).<br><br>And too, this brutal culture glorifying violence and force is evident in our prisons and in the actions of Police in confronting political-activists, and anti-war and anti-globalist protesters.<br><br>This latest confession by a Ranger describing late-night home invasions and summary killings of civilians in pursuit of 'information' isn't a one-off damning report, but is part of a well-documented pattern of atrocities and war-crime abuses that is part of almost every violent conflict, but especially where enormous miscalculations, mistakes, abysmal planning, errors and poor leadership have become endemic -- as is the case in Iraq. The US's early failure to take the initiative and provide adequate security and support for local Iraqi police have greatly contributed to creating the current situation of rampant crime and sectarian murders, in which the US military is now at such a disadvantage I doubt it can EVER reclaim the initiative. <br><br>Such horrific mismanagement as we've seen in Iraq is SO atrocious it can scarcely be argued this was entirely accidental and NOT the purpose of the Bush Regime and Pentagon all along -- thus creating an out-of-control crisis that encourages indicriminate violence and atrocities. In a just world, the top US political and military officials would be prosecuted for grevious human and civil rights crimes, with serious hard-time and seizure of their assets as partial reparations and punitive economic judgements.<br>Starman<br>******<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.vvaw.org/veteran/article/?id=125">www.vvaw.org/veteran/article/?id=125</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>Delivering Death Like Mail: Confessions of a REMF<br>By Horace Coleman<br>[Printer-Friendly Version]<br><br>Recently I saw an interesting e-mail on the VVAW list. Someone was doing a dissertation and wondered if anyone would comment on the correlation between the "brutalization" of basic training and atrocities in 'Nam. I told her why I thought atrocities happen:<br><br>Defense / expansion of "the American way of life" <br>Desire to accomplish the mission <br>Desire to create and maintain a positive image with peers, and to meet norms and the expectations of superiors <br>Education / interpretation of history & recent events <br>Emotional coarsening and the deadening of feelings <br>Fear <br>Frustration <br>Ideology <br>Ignorance <br>Individual and group psychopathology <br>Patriotism (chauvinism) / indoctrination <br>Professionalism (military type) <br>Rabid anti-communism (even if you didn't really know what that was or that it might actually and temporarily be better then what someone currently had) <br>Racism <br>Religion <br>Revenge <br>Self-preservation; exaggerated definition of threats to personal and national security <br>Xenophobia <br><br>Of course the basic reason is lack of control, and insufficient leadership and character. After all, you're supposed to "kill clean"; that's the moral, mentally efficient and professional thing to do. . . .<br><br>The very existence of war is an atrocity. "Brutalization" begins with childhood acculturation into society.<br><br>Whatever reasons and justifications a society has for using physical force are expanded and amplified in wartime. Violence is only lastly physical, though. Mental preparation comes first.<br><br>Ignorance fuels abstraction. Fear, xenophobia, racism, ethnocentrism, the desire to avenge fallen buddies, not letting "the other guys" down and "keeping the faith" cause terrible things. Young men in groups, with or without weapons and official authorization, are capable of terrible things anyway. Think skinheads, soccer hooligans, and the NYC groups that harassed young women at a street fair.<br><br>Aircraft temporarily under my "control" as an intercept director / air traffic controller routinely used napalm, .50 caliber machine guns, the notorious cluster bomb units (CBUs) and high explosive bombs. Irony: many American servicemen are alive because of the authorized and unauthorized air strikes (ad hoc missions not ordered by the chain of command) I coordinated. Many VC died - along with countless Vietnamese civilians who weren't engaged in acts of war but were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.<br><br>There's a photograph I took way down in the Delta. In it you can see an intense young Vietnamese man, an infant (his son), and a US army doctor. The child had been given penicillin for an infection. No one knows it but he is allergic to the drug. He will die shortly. You can't see that his father is missing an arm above the elbow.<br><br>He lost it in combat. He used to be a soldier in the ARVN (the Army of the Republic of Vietnam). You can't see that the amputee is a widower. The family rice paddy was in a "free fire zone." Anyone found there could be killed on sight. His wife was working there when killed by fire from an American helicopter. Xin loi.<br><br>I don't know exactly who I helped kill. The citation accompanying the low-ranking Bronze Star medal I received (Meritorious Service) says I'm credited with 99 aircraft saves and rescues. That's not right.<br><br>There were more. Hanna Arendt was right, though - evil is banal. And very human. Israeli troops and settlers gunning down Arab rock-throwers or Arab suicide bombers, Africans hacking off the lips or arms of people from "enemy tribes," Boston Irish mobsters "taking out" someone for $$$, Latino gang-bangers killing for the right to sell dope on certain corners, Crips and Bloods "putting in work" or cops "fearing for" their lives all have something in common. Some drunken yahoo decides to drag someone to death behind a pick-up truck. Any excuse will do. Maybe that's why the phrase "wasting" someone came about.<br><br>We've evolved into using "better" tools, but we haven't evolved much morally. Leaving work the other day, some smartass saw me closing my backpack.<br><br>"You don't have a gun in there do you?" he said in a smarmy tone.<br><br>"Not today," I said.<br><br>The fool kept at it. "Oh, too scared to use one?"<br><br>"Nope: too smart to."<br><br>I didn't tell him what I really thought, which was: Some people aren't worth the trouble to kill them.<br>*****<br>Horace Coleman is a veteran, poet and writer living in California.<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
