Freedom Rider: Baby Killers at Haditha

Occupations are always deadly. The occupied are at constant risk of death, incarceration and humiliation. It is important to keep this in mind when thinking of the killings of Iraqi civilians at Haditha, Iraq. It is a story that needs to be told, but it was not an unusual event. It is just the first to escape the media bubble.

Last November the death of a Marine in the town of Haditha sent his unit into a frenzy of revenge. Twenty-four civilians, men, women and children were killed in cold blood. A killing spree by the occupiers should be roundly condemned but not treated as some sort of anomaly.

The Vietnam War was a watershed event in American public discourse. It was the first time that masses of citizens publicly declared opposition to a government decision to fight overseas. The significance of an organized anti-war movement was not lost on the pro-war crowd.

They made certain that tales of soldiers being spat upon and called “baby killer” made their way into the popular imagination. The result is a public propagandized into mindlessly supporting the troops. Even the anti-war movement is culpable, never passing up an opportunity to shout that they are against the war but not the troops.

The words of Gen. Sherman are still true. War is all hell. It is hell, and it is soldiers who bring it on.

The hell has become too much for even the Iraqi puppet government to bear. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki stopped pulling his punches after Haditha. After three years of non-existent or muted criticism, he and his colleagues now feel comfortable speaking truth to the powerful.

Maliki told Americans what they haven’t been told by their government or news media. Violence against civilians is “a daily phenomenon” carried out by troops who “don’t respect the Iraqi people.” He added, “They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion.” Maliki is clearly fed up with Uncle Sam. He went so far as to declare that that the response to violence committed against civilians would determine how long American troops might stay in Iraq.

In the United States government there is silence about the endless killings of Iraqis. Democratic Congressman Jack Murtha is one of the few members of Congress who has called for a timetable for withdrawal. He has been shunned by the wimpy Democratic leadership and denounced by Republicans.

Murtha played an important role in making the Haditha killings public, yet he too will only go so far in his condemnation.

Murtha then contradicted himself. “I don’t make excuses for them, I’m just understanding what their problem is.”

Murtha’s problem is that he is essentially a hawk. He voted in favor of the war and now opposes it because of the harm it is doing to the operations of the military. He should be commended for speaking out, but opposition to the occupation should not rest on the Murtha world view of a war that turned out not to be so easy.