“THEY’RE BEING EXECUTED ON THE BATTLEFIELD.”

We are murderers too.

By “we,” I mean the government that supposedly represents us after we supposedly put its members in power by means of what is supposedly a democratic process.

It’s easy for us, as poorly informed citizens who live relatively comfortably, to think that life is good and all the bad guys live in other countries. We know the names of the big ones: Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao. We were taught these things in school and by the History Channel.

But “we” are the bad guys too. In fact, what other nation can claim as much multinational malfeasance around the world since WWII, the era of the American Empire?

Our leadership through the decades is a rogues gallery. As preeminent socio-political intellectual/dissident Noam Chomsky has pointed out, if we applied the Nuremberg laws (from the Nuremberg trials of the head Nazis) to our U.S. presidents, you’d have to hang every one of them going back at least as far as WWII. I want to look at that in my next blog entry.

Today I want to look at the “micro” level. The level of the individual soldier.

To see a TV commercial for the Marines, you’d swear you were watching some cross between a Biblical epic and a superhero movie. A lot of “motivational” nonsense and BS. Trying to rope in the kids of the gaming era.

And you yourself might think it all looked pretty good. This factory that makes fine citizens who are tougher, smarter and better than the rest. The BS merchants propagandize us as much as they do those they seek to enlist. If the commercials showed more blood and entrails and honesty, well, they might not work so well.

The point is, our guys do bad things on (and around) the battlefield too. Please take a look at this news excerpt from the very fine website Democracynow.org:


‘Hersh: U.S. Carrying Out “Battlefield Executions” in Afghanistan

…investigative journalist Seymour Hersh (pictured above) says U.S. forces are carrying out battlefield executions of prisoners in Afghanistan. Hersh made the comment during a discussion at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Geneva. In 2004 Hersh broke the story about the abuse and torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Seymour Hersh: "And the purpose of my [Abu Ghraib] stories was to take it out of the field into the White House, and where it -- you know, it’s not that the President or the Secretary of Defense, Mr. Rumsfeld, or Bush or Cheney -- it’s not that they knew what happened in Abu Ghraib. It’s that they had allowed this kind of activity to happen. And I’ll tell you right now, one of the great tragedies of my country is that Mr. Obama is looking the other way, because equally horrible things are happening to prisoners, I mean, to those we capture in Afghanistan. They’re being executed on the battlefield. It’s unbelievable stuff going on there that doesn’t necessarily get reported. And things don’t change.”

Seymour Hersh went on to say that he had been told about the battlefield executions by five or six different people.’

The issue here is that our Commander-and-Chief, his key people, the Congress and the top brass of the military, create a “war culture.” They unleash the dogs after feeding them raw meat and training them to kill. They have their military tactics (pretty easy stuff when you’re clearing a path with the most advanced military technology on the planet) but out in the field, as far as they in their ivory towers are concerned, whatever happens happens.

And so you have the My Lai massacre (another story Hersh broke back in 1969), Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, fragging in war, rape in war, and on down the line. None of us are made up of good alone. And under extreme pressure, our demons can be loosed.

The military personnel who commit these atrocities are not innocent. But more culpable are the decision-makers who put them in the position in which they act out. And the socio-economic system – fueled by corporate greed and political power lust – that creates and promotes those decision-makers.

Of course, saying this sort of thing out loud (or in a blog) will always be labeled as “unpatriotic” by some. Or it will be personalized at the micro level: “How dare you say that about our brave fighting men and women.” But I am not questioning the courage of the individual soldiers. I am admitting, on their behalf, the fallibility of their humanity. Whatever awful deeds they have done (and of course, the majority don’t commit war crimes – but they are willing to kill in illegal “wars” if ordered to), it is OUR duty to declare war on those who have used them like pawns.

So email your senators and congressmen and President Obama (who is the commander-in-chief and who recently ok’d another 30,000 troops be shipped to Afghanistan) and tell them that you are outraged. By atrocities in war and the wars (invasions!) themselves.

Do it for those who cannot do it themselves. Just as you would want someone to speak up on your behalf if you were losing your mind at one end of a barrel or another in a distant land.

Some people will say Hersh’s claims are all BS. But to me they’re absolutely plausible. In this violent world, why would this be so hard to believe? Under that kind of duress. Our guys crack under pressure too. And out leaks their id. I mean, even if you just look at it from the point of view of percentages, you’d have to bet that these things happen.

To me it would be ridiculous to think that you could send thousands of young people into a war zone and it wouldn't result in a few of them losing their minds at some point.

Unless you believe those commercials for the Marines and think our men and women are bulletproof. But who’d be dumb enough to buy into that?

Take care,
Adrian Zupp

IF YOU FOUND THIS BLOG POST INTERESTING you might like to take a look at THE MASS MURDERERS OF WASHINGTON D.C.