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The Warped Mission of the American Military: "Out-Terrorize the Terrorists"
A number of American soldiers are blowing the whistle on the American
military practice of indiscriminately killing Iraq civilians - by
randomly firing bullets in a 360 degree circle - anytime that an
improvised explosive device hits a U.S. soldier.
As Truthout notes:
Both
[specialists Ethan McCord and Josh Stieber] say they saw their mission
as a plan to "out-terrorize the terrorists," in order to make the
general populace more afraid of the Americans than they were of
insurgent groups.
In the interview with [Constitutional lawyer Scott] Horton, Horton pressed Stieber:
"... a fellow veteran of yours from the same battalion has said that
you guys had a standard operating procedure, SOP, that said - and I
guess this is a reaction to some EFP attacks on y'all's Humvees and
stuff that killed some guys - that from now on if a roadside bomb goes
off, IED goes off, everyone who survives the attack get out and fire in
all directions at anybody who happens to be nearby ... that this was
actually an order from above. Is that correct? Can you, you know,
verify that?Stieber answered:
"Yeah,
it was an order that came from Kauzlarich himself, and it had the
philosophy that, you know, as Finkel does describe in the book, that we
were under pretty constant threat, and what he leaves out is the
response to that threat. But the philosophy was that if each time one
of these roadside bombs went off where you don't know who set it ...
the way we were told to respond was to open fire on anyone in the area,
with the philosophy that that would intimidate them, to be proactive
in stopping people from making these bombs ..."
Terrorism is defined as:
The use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.
So McCord and Stieber are correct: this constitutes terrorism by American forces in Iraq.
Of course, America's institutionalized policy of torture (see this and this) is also terrorism. As I pointed out last year:
An article today in Der Spiegel describes a study on the use of torture over the last couple of thousand years:
A
new book, ["Extreme Violence in the Visuals and Texts of Antiquity"]
by Martin Zimmerman, a professor of ancient history in Munich, looks at
current research into the kinds of violence that inspired "loathing,
dread, horror and disgust."In the ancient Far East, where there
were large states peopled by many different ethnicities, leaders
demonstrated their might by inventing ingenious new tortures and
agonizing methods of execution -- as a way to keep the population obedient...The issue of state-sanctioned torture to achieve political goals is still a current one.
The study reinforces what I wrote last year:
Listen to the testimony to Congress by a representative of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services:
Indeed, this is a well-known tactic for brutal regimes. Take Zimbabwe, for example:
"Victims
and eyewitnesses told Human Rights Watch that [Zimbabwe’s brutal
regime] has set up detention centers . . . to round up and instill fear
in suspected political opponents."Torture is a form of terrorism, plain and simple.
As the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services director told Congress:
"... torture is the deliberate mental and physical damage caused by governments to individuals to ... terrorize society."
And the U.S. policy of assassinating people all over the world (including Americans) - without trial - is a form of terrorism as well.
Unfortunately, this is nothing new. As the former director of the National Security Agency said:
By
any measure the US has long used terrorism. In ‘78-79 the Senate was
trying to pass a law against international terrorism - in every version
they produced, the lawyers said the US would be in violation.
(the audio is here).
And as Truthout points out, the 360 degree firing on innocent bystanders is most definitely a war crime:
High-level
orders to kill civilians in the context of retaliation for attacks on
forces have already been successfully prosecuted as a war crime. In
1944, German SS Obersturmbannführer Herbert Kappler ordered the
execution of civilians in the ratio of ten to one for every German
soldier killed in a March 1944 attack by Italian partisans. Kappler was
sentenced to life in prison. The executions took place in the Caves of
Ardeatine in Italy, and were made into the subject of a movie starring
Richard Burton. None of the lower-ranking soldiers who actually
carried the order out were prosecuted.
***
The
attack which spurred the World War II German commander's retaliatory
executions, intended as collective punishment for not informing on
partisans, was an IED planted in a garbage container. Kappler's rank
was the equivalent of a lieutenant colonel.
The ironic thing is that top conservative and liberal terrorism experts say that torture and other war crimes increase terrorism and reduce national security.
And terrorism is bad for the economy as well.
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The winners always write the history books and the rules. Plus they get to back date the rules when prosecuting the losers. Nearly everything is "justified" when you're fighting evil. Of course, both sides are fighting evil.
the losers are running washington.
How do you suppose the various dictatorships in the region got to power and stayed there, eh? OBL explained the arab mentality fairly well. They will always be beholden to "the strong horse".
As to Iraqi civilian losses in the neigborhood of an IED attack against a vehicle(American, Iraqi, or otherwise), the word ought to pass among Iraqis that way, to
A) not find themselves near assholes setting off IEDs and
B) report assholes setting up IEDs
so that
C) they and their stuff(if they live near an IED being set up, or near assholes doing asshole things) don't get shot up
This is going to be a very long struggle, transforming this tribal, islam infected place into something with a sense of civic involvement in the greater good, involving lots more violence directed at suppressing assholery. You ask if such methods as the above have every worked anywhere, well, the proper answer is that pussyfooting around and whining NEVER works. What will work with the worst assholes among arab populations, is imposing a different order by force, massive, impressive, continuous presence of overwhelming force. The population ends up backing the strong horse.
"Islam infected?" Is that anything like the Catholic disease? Exactly what kind of "democracy" are we helping to install? Oh yes, the one without the First Amendment. I wonder what you'd do if someone invaded your country to steal your only resource. And how exactly do we keep funding the entire Middle East management as we fall apart at home? Like our leaders, your strategy is backwards, dishonest, and destined to fail
you are right as far as it goes..but consider this:
A rational objective to any war should be the elimination of the leadership that has instituted the threat, yet we make war againts the populations, try to understand the signifcance of that.
The hoax I refer to in my other posts is this policy..as far as nation building that mission seems to not fit a military.
A cruel leader would smile knowing his enemies will kill his citizens before going for him..however if he knew he was the 1st target well things change.
The elites of the world have been insulated from their actions for far too long.
Iraq needs a "srong horse", then. Like Saddam.
Why are we in Iraq, again?
The ENTIRE point is create a tactical baseline where the US forces have a killfire advantage.. the US Army wants to fight an urban guerrila war, with bigger guns, bombs and better armour - in lieu of surrendering terriatory. This is a Tactical operations doctrine, not neccesarily the Strategic goal. I don't like it either, but the reality is that the US Army is hamstrung by its own lack of clear purpose, in terms of any conclusive resolution to an end of violence... western military doctrine has a history born out of Pig Farming, how this is supposed to be a dominant culture is probably why the birth rate is so low.