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talkpoliticsThis came up on my friend's page this morning.
followed by this .
When Rupert Hamer, the British journalist who served as the Sunday Mirror's war correspondent, was embedded with US forces in Afghanistan and was killed when an IED took out the MRAP he was traveling in, nobody seemed to give much of a shit. No general outcry, no "Those murderers!", no wailing and gnashing of teeth from blogs as different as Balko and BoingBoing.
But when a Reuters journalist is embedded with insurgents in Iraq who are approaching US armored vehicles while armed with weapons specifically designed to destroy such vehicles, and is engaged and killed in their company by a gunship crew who follows rules of engagement and directly asks for permission first, a whole bunch of people just about wet themselves in their eagerness to decry those who killed him.
Why is this?
-"Phanatic"
I have my own take behind the cut but I'm curious about what others have to say.
There is no discernible difference in my eyes, both were killed in action.
The responses to this incident reminds me of the Joker's monologue from "Dark Knight".
Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, it's all "part of the plan"...
...But if one of our Soldiers "The Good Guys", blows up a journalist everyone loses their freaking minds.
An american helicopter crew spotted a group of men gathering near an american convoy.
Weapons are clearly visible, 2 RPGs and a Light Machine-Gun. The standard AQ fire-team everywhere from Afghanistan to Chechnya for the last 15-20 years. Since the insurgents don't wear uniforms this armament and organization is the single best identifier.
They reported the situation and waited for permission to engage.
The enemy was defeated. Additional Insurgents attempted to extract the wounded before they could be captured but in doing so exposed themselves to American forces and were defeated as well.
This is war.
Support it, or oppose it, I won't judge.
All I ask is that you be intellectually honest about it.
Disclamer:
I am an Iraq War vet, and a helicopter crewman to boot, so this story hits a little close-to-home for me.
Edit:
In the interests of "citing sources" here is CENTCOM's official report on the incident.
followed by this .
When Rupert Hamer, the British journalist who served as the Sunday Mirror's war correspondent, was embedded with US forces in Afghanistan and was killed when an IED took out the MRAP he was traveling in, nobody seemed to give much of a shit. No general outcry, no "Those murderers!", no wailing and gnashing of teeth from blogs as different as Balko and BoingBoing.
But when a Reuters journalist is embedded with insurgents in Iraq who are approaching US armored vehicles while armed with weapons specifically designed to destroy such vehicles, and is engaged and killed in their company by a gunship crew who follows rules of engagement and directly asks for permission first, a whole bunch of people just about wet themselves in their eagerness to decry those who killed him.
Why is this?
-"Phanatic"
I have my own take behind the cut but I'm curious about what others have to say.
There is no discernible difference in my eyes, both were killed in action.
The responses to this incident reminds me of the Joker's monologue from "Dark Knight".
Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, it's all "part of the plan"...
...But if one of our Soldiers "The Good Guys", blows up a journalist everyone loses their freaking minds.
An american helicopter crew spotted a group of men gathering near an american convoy.
Weapons are clearly visible, 2 RPGs and a Light Machine-Gun. The standard AQ fire-team everywhere from Afghanistan to Chechnya for the last 15-20 years. Since the insurgents don't wear uniforms this armament and organization is the single best identifier.
They reported the situation and waited for permission to engage.
The enemy was defeated. Additional Insurgents attempted to extract the wounded before they could be captured but in doing so exposed themselves to American forces and were defeated as well.
This is war.
Support it, or oppose it, I won't judge.
All I ask is that you be intellectually honest about it.
Disclamer:
I am an Iraq War vet, and a helicopter crewman to boot, so this story hits a little close-to-home for me.
Edit:
In the interests of "citing sources" here is CENTCOM's official report on the incident.
(no subject)
Date: 12/4/10 02:35 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/4/10 02:38 (UTC)I suppose not.
Date: 12/4/10 03:04 (UTC)So. Show me where someone said that in this discussion.
Re: "propaganda-dot-com" (c)
Date: 12/4/10 03:10 (UTC)Propaganda.
And there are other functions to fulfil than direct attack.
They could have been spotting for mortars or other units.
They could have been gathering intelligence.
Those could have been the reporters' armed guards, not interviewees.
We don't know for sure.
What I do know is that most people's hysterical claims of OMG BLOODTHIRSTY BABYKILLERS are non-objective emotional kneejerk. Which is clearly what the editors of this video intended.
Speaking of which, did you watch the footage cut out of even the 40 minute video wikileaks released? Really adds context.
(no subject)
Date: 12/4/10 04:34 (UTC)Sorry, still not going to try to convince you that not all american soldiers are teh evuls.
(no subject)
Date: 12/4/10 07:23 (UTC)Yeah, his unwillingness to micromanage was to his credit, something Hitler fortunately lacked. His big accomplishments that really shifted the war were in revving up Soviet industrialization and military production. They won Bagraton in large part because they had like five times the military forces the Germans did and were better supplied, which was an accomplishment in itself.
I guess you could say he was a great military commander in that he was smart enough to not worry about the actual fighting stuff so much as figuring out how to make a billion billion Mosins and T-34s using an economy one generation away from preindustrial agrarianism while his country was being actively genocided by the Wehrmacht. I've never seen or heard anything where WWII Russian military strategy was described as anything but crude, but they didn't really need finesse.
Dunno how that really ties in with the scorched-earth retreat during Barbarossa, that whole early part of the war was mostly them panicking and fucking up everything.
(no subject)
Date: 12/4/10 07:43 (UTC)I don't think anyone honestly expected zero civilian casualties, no war reporters blown up, no terrible atrocities during the war. Maybe Bush did, I dunno. People can simultaneously accept an imperfect reality and want to make it better. Part of that is, when you think someone fucked up and you bear any kind of responsibility for them, you try and encourage them to stop fucking up.
(no subject)
Date: 13/4/10 00:04 (UTC)Those soldiers did exactly what they were trained to do. The question of morality lies in the larger system that chooses to train soldiers to act in this way. As far as assuming the worst, no one is assuming, its being shown on video. As far as being accountable for ones actions, are soldiers accountable for their actions?
(no subject)
Date: 13/4/10 00:10 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 13/4/10 01:35 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 13/4/10 01:41 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 13/4/10 06:37 (UTC)Talk about your reasonless kneejerk reaction, dudes spending all this time analyzing individual pixels for anything, any scrap of a hint of something that might justify the shooting and make it all okay, miss some really important details that way, man! Yeah sure they're jihadis, preparing to assault an armored position by the brilliant tactic of milling around in a group in the middle of the street, that's exactly how people act when they're planning on being shot at in the near future. When they'e three-week-old babies, maybe four for the slow kids. That's how they took Fallujah the first time, y'know, hordes of retarded babies, just wandering around in the open waving RPGs in front of news crews, setting each other on fire with the backblast. That's where the 'babykiller' meme came from y'know, Our Boys felt so bad about putting up any resistance to the adorable army the whole city caved almost overnight.
Back in reality, dudes could've been interviewees or shitass escorts in a bad neigborhood, could've actually been out chilling with their RPG for some stupid reason or posing for photographs, doesn't really make a difference. They were not sinister terrorist masterminds seconds from enacting their devious plot, they were not "combatants" in any meaningful sense, and there's really scarce evidence they were ever going to be. You know what's sometimes the reason people say footage indicates one story? Because it indicates that story. No grand media conspiracy aimed at bringing down America needed.
(no subject)
Date: 13/4/10 14:44 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 13/4/10 19:08 (UTC)But that's beside the point. You cited this as though whether or not it was dark made a difference to you. In fact, it did not. So why offer it as an argument?
da: As for the "split second" and "reflex" issues...
Again, you cited this as if that made a difference to you. It didn't.
So why offer it as an argument?
da: The senior officer's 'no fire' comment: "even if there is an artillery piece on the roof" was asinine.
Except, well, there WASN'T "an artillery piece on the roof" now, was there?
What's "stereotypical" here is the little minuet we just performed, in which you threw out a couple of arguments hoping they would shut me up. When they didn't work, just went and told me another one, that being that as someone not in the military, I have no business questioning military actions, even if it involved soldier killing innocent civilians by disobeying a direct order for a superior.
THAT'S why we non-military types tend to listen to rationalizations from the military about "collateral damage" with some skepticism. It's the same reason non-Police listen to rationalizations about police brutality with skepticism, non-physicians listen to doctor's rationalizations about malpractice with skepticism, etc. etc. Quite frequently the "explanations" we're offered are so much hooey intended to cover up the ugly fact that the explainer considers any "outsider" criticizing a groups policies unacceptable. "Some people just need to get beaten up! Civilians don't get that!" I once heard a cop explain when his earlier excuses involving an especially egregious case of brutality didn't pan out.
Soooo, the bit about it being dark didn't work. The bit about a split second decision didn't work. They were hooey anyway, offered because you know as well as I do that your base argument -- that the tank gunner should have fired on the hotel no matter what those silly superior officers were telling him about not doing it -- isn't a very good one. Or very convincing.
Re: I suppose not.
Date: 13/4/10 19:24 (UTC)http://community.livejournal.com/talk_politics/483182.html?thread=34468462#t34468462
The same poster offered this little personal tidbit:
"But then, I'm probably biased; after all, one of my relatives on coming across an impromptu Japanese field hospital in WW2 promptly annihilated it with his squad using Willie Petes. The soldiers you seem to know are obviously of a kinder, gentler sort."
Lovely isn't it? He thinks dumping white phosphorus on a field hospital is a fine idea.
(no subject)
Date: 13/4/10 19:28 (UTC)Self defense, and in defense of another person who was in imminent danger.
s: As for The Geneva Conventions, I would reccomend reading the full text before going further in this debate.
Specifically what text in the conventions do you have in mind?
(no subject)
Date: 13/4/10 20:44 (UTC)Re: I suppose not.
Date: 13/4/10 20:45 (UTC)Comparing past to present methodology is not the same as endorsing past methodology.
By your own logic here, you bringing up genocide is the same as you endorsing it. Which you clearly did not do.
The fact that we even care or hear about it nowadays is an improvement over every prior conflict in human history.
(no subject)
Date: 14/4/10 01:34 (UTC)as for the Geneva Conventions...
The Protections confered upon Medical Personel and "Good Samaretans" are contingent on them identifiying themselves as such. (Convention I, Chapter 7) They did not so the Van and it's occupants fall under the provisions of Convention IV, Chapter 1, wich prohibits the intentional targeting of Civillians who are not taking an active part in the conflict.
A case could be made for the two men in the van to be classified as "Active Participants". Likewise there was no way for the helicopter crew to know about the children in the van thus thier wounding could not be considered "Intentional".
With those two issues addressed there's no real grounds for a hearing. Yes, people do get prosecuted for Geneva Violations. I've seen plenty of guys go to Mast and a few go to Court Martial. It doesn't really make the news though because the Pentagon doesn't like to advertise its mistakes.
The original post was adressed to those fools out there who seem to think that it is possible to fight a "Clean War" where only the "Bad Guys" get killed. The truth is that these things happen. no matter how stringent the rules, extensive the training, or advanced the weaponry, people are fallible and make mistakes.
People who believe that this incident is somehow "special" are not being honest with themselves.