Because we haven't talked about Iraq enough...

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

This 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.

Comments

[paft.livejournal.com]

e:When you see what you think are enemy soldiers, fire on them, and then see what appear to be enemy logistical support attempting to evacuate those enemy soldiers, it is not considered to be good military protocol to let just let them go off, get healed, and come back for more fighting.

Uh, no, firing on the wounded and those trying to move them out of harms way has never been considered "good military protocol."

e: To use gaming parlance, the military does not approve of respawns.

This is not a game. These people are not merely little images on a screen.

[paft.livejournal.com]

PFT:Uh, no, firing on the wounded and those trying to move them out of harms way has never been considered "good military protocol."
e: It's remarkably practical, though.

So is genocide.

PFT: This is not a game. These people are not merely little images on a screen.
e: No, they aren't. These people are instead real-life people that are probably trying to kill you.

My god. It must be awful to live in such constant bowel-emptying terror of everyone, including two children sitting in a van and a badly wounded, overweight and unarmed man trying to crawl to safety.

Godwin violation.

[squidb0i.livejournal.com]

"So is genocide."


Paft loses.

Re: Godwin violation.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Not in this context.

Your invocation of "Godwin's Law" here is why the man who originally formulated it complained that it was being abused.

Re: Godwin violation.

[squidb0i.livejournal.com]

Actually, your frivolous use of OMG GENOCIDE is exactly why he invented it in the first place.

Re: Godwin violation.

[paft.livejournal.com]

It's not frivolous to invoke Godwin's Law in a discussion with someone who thinks "Kill' em all and let God sort 'em out" is an admirable slogan.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Actually, unless one is fighting the equivalent of Shaka Zulu with helicopter gunships and M-1 Abrams, genocide is sharply *im*practical. It tends to cost the country doing it any attempt at good PR, it tends to sour relationships with the locals and lead to guerrilla insurgencies....the Nazi embrace of genocide proved impractical enough to the point that Hitler's belief in his own ideology did more harm to the Nazi cause than the USSR itself did.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Good point.

[ryder-p-moses.livejournal.com]

Yeah man like historically speaking medics wore those arm patches as a polite notification to enemy soldiers to shoot them first. That's exactly it, you understand the basic principles of being a civilized human being in a society so exactly.

[ryder-p-moses.livejournal.com]

Do you have any idea of when the "principles of the civilized world" were agreed upon or why

Hint: when was the Geneva Convention, was it before WWI? You can look that one up on Google if you have to

[ryder-p-moses.livejournal.com]

"Practical reality" being that it's better and easier to fight wars where medics are targeted, both sides use poison gas, genocide is the norm on any battlefield, and anyone unfortunate to be captured will be tortured and killed? The whole point of stuff like the Convention was that fighting lawless warfare using modern tools very nearly depopulated Europe, as in nobody left alive to win and nothing left to be won on any side, and outside of minor violations quickly called to light they've been very religiously held to since.

Are you like fourteen or something?

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

My, you certainly showed some restraint.

[merig00.livejournal.com]

Geneva convention is like rules at duels. I can guarantee you if, God forbid, we have a war for survival the convention will be the first thing out of the window.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

You know, the reality is that the WWII powers that *did* ratify the Geneva Convention adhered to it strictly. Germany, Japan, the USSR, and the USA never ratified it before the war, and that very fact that the USSR had never ratified was the excuse Germany used to wage its genocide against the Slavs.

And it hardly depopulated Europe, the USSR took the worst casualties of any European power and unless I'm mistaken the USSR was Europe's largest country by population even after the Russian Civil War, the Stalinist terror, and the Axis-Soviet War.....

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Geneva Convention? Oh that treaty we signed that we currently ignore.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The USA never ratified it until after WWII.......

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

That explains why corpsman regularly DID NOT advertise.

[ryder-p-moses.livejournal.com]

Army medics regularly did, the Red Cross does. It's not obligatory, Americans don't always fight people who accept the rules of war as stated in the Geneva Conventions, and the system doesn't always work without fail any more than anything else involving tens of thousands of scared people with guns, but the importance of sparing combat medics has mostly been taken seriously enough that the bulk of organizations opt to wear the patches and be identified.

While the van was apparently not marked and thus not subject to any of these legal protections, killing medical personnel on the battlefield when they're clearly recognizable as such, as a general practice, still isn't cool, and it isn't smart.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

That's not correct. Otherwise, we would have kept firing on escaping Iraqi soldiers on the "highway of death" at the end of the first Gulf War. Thankfully, there are military leaders who do not go by 'gaming parlance'.

[mrsilence.livejournal.com]

Actually, if we are talking about military protocol, incapacitating an enemy with wounds is generally considered highly preferable to killing them outright by most technical war-strategy theorists.

The reasoning there is primarily that a typical wounded man takes on average about 8-12 additional individuals to provide treatment for him in order to return him to good health, not to mention a considerable volume of resources that could otherwise be used to fight. This is on top of the PR advantages, including the morale impact of wounded on the enemy force. Bluntly speaking, it is easier to ignore your silent dead (who in this case may have gloriously gone to heaven) on the battlefield and while encamped, then it is to ignore comrades screaming lie bleeding from burns, bulletholes and missing limbs.

Wounding is especially preferable where the enemy has limited rehabilitation capabilities, such as with guerilla militias because the difficulty in treating is greater and the time to rehabilitate significantly longer. The cost to the enemy by wounding their soldiers instead of killing them outweighs the strategic advantage of their being able to eventually return a healed soldier (which is a variable percentage of all wounded) to combat by a massive factor.

It's because of the advanteage of causing major wounding anytime the enemy is hit that the Hague Conventions were created to bans firearm ammunition designed to cause mass wounding to the enemy, such as expanding or explosive bullets, which don't necessarily improve the immediate military effect of being shot. Afterall, whether killed or wounded, once you are shot, you are generally out of the immediate fight eithe way. Adding maiming to mere injury, simply for the strategic advantage is considered inhumane; and virtually all modern military forces abide by these conventions.