Glenn Greenwald interviews Josh Stieber, who was a soldier in Bravo Company 2-16 Infantry on July 2007 when a Reuters photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, and his assistant Saeed Chmagh were killed along with a number of unarmed Iraqi civilians. The journalists were fired on by an Apache attack helicopter armed with a 30 mm chain gun, one of a pair of Apaches supporting Bravo Company. A classified video of the attack was released recently by Wikileaks.
Steiber’s account helps put the incident into context. The lack of concern for civilian casualties was nothing unusual at the time. Although he does not approve of his unit’s actions, Steiber does a good job of helping us understand the mindset of the soldiers involved (emphasis added):
[A]s far as official guidelines or rules, like, our rules of engagement were constantly changing and no one really took those seriously just because of how arbitrary they were and could change from one day to the next.
And it pretty much became a quest for survival, you know, people pretty quickly lost the idealism that brought us there, and we were fighting to make it home alive. And so, yeah, I mean, there was a lot of controversy within the ranks of you know, how much is too much, but it was definitely a prevalent position to say, that even going above and beyond just responding to somebody with a weapon, but of responding to people who were potential threats even without weapons — some people would claim that was justifiable for, again, this goal of making it home alive.
And I think we should be slow to judge somebody in that situation…
The whole interview is worth listening to or reading the transcript.
I think it’s fair to say that so far no one is blaming the unnamed soldiers who pulled the trigger almost three years ago, killing nine men and wounding two children. Certainly, the Pentagon view is that all proper procedures were followed.
In the words of psychologist Robert Jay Lifton, American forces were deployed into atrocity-producing situations. That’s the problem.
UPDATE: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates anticipates no “lasting consequences” from the release of the war crime video.
Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Gates was asked about the video that recently surfaced on WikiLeaks, showing two Reuters journalists (in a gathering with Iraqis) being shot at and killed by U.S. forces in a hovering helicopter
“Does the release of that video, and the fact that that happened damage the image of the U.S. in the world?” host Jake Tapper asked.
“I don’t think so,” said Gates. “They’re in a combat situation. The video doesn’t show the broader picture of the firing that was going on at American troops. It’s obviously a hard thing to see. It’s painful to see, especially when you learn after the fact what was going on. But you talked about the fog of war. These people were operating in split-second situations.”
“And, you know, we’ve investigated it very thoroughly. And it’s unfortunate,” he added. “It’s clearly not helpful. But by the same token, I think it should not have any lasting consequences.”
#1 by Rock Waterman on April 10, 2010 - 9:24 pm
“so far no one is blaming the unnamed soldiers who pulled the trigger…”
Well, I’m blaming them. I can’t forget the glee with which those bastards did all that killing.
#2 by Larry Bergan on April 10, 2010 - 10:29 pm
Rock:
I disagree. If you were a soldier of that age, put in that situation and trained the way they were, you would jump to the conclusion that a camera was a weapon too from a distance in a helicopter.
#3 by cav on April 11, 2010 - 7:19 am
Why does it seem like such a big jump from defending liberty, republicanism and justice at home, to picking the pockets of gun-ship victims in far away lands?
Musta been something some lying, scum-sucking,, elected official led us to believe.
The choices certainly lay at the top, the pinacle, and not with the individual. That’s for sure – no choices down here – ever.
#4 by Uncle Rico on April 11, 2010 - 7:47 am
I dunno Larry, I think Rock has a point. Its one thing to be mistaken about a camera being a gun (query whether that mistake was the result of a desire to see what one wanted to see?). But there was no mistaking that the guy in van with the 2 kids was completely unarmed. That was just murder, plain and simple. And the soldiers did sound as if they were enjoying their work.
The flip side is war is ugly and this shit happens in war. If we’re unwilling to stomach that, we should stay home (which is exactly what we should have done here).
#5 by Larry Bergan on April 11, 2010 - 9:24 am
Shit flows downhill, but it seems we never go for the ounce of prevention. I can’t see the cure as prosecuting the, (in Henry Kissinger’s words), the “dumb, stupid animals to be used“, whose lives will become hell if they deviate from the program or whose lives might become better with more kills.
Hell, these war pigs are controlling congress itself using the method of rewards and punishment and congress lives in pampered luxury.
#6 by Richard Warnick on April 11, 2010 - 9:28 am
Aside from basic human decency, shooting at someone who is trying to aid a wounded man is a breach of the First Geneva Convention. Yet the Apache pilot sought and received permission to open fire on the wounded Reuters driver and the good Samaritan who stopped to help him.
The official investigation concluded that nothing was wrong with this, and there was no need to do anything to prevent a recurrence. Clearly, the scope of the problem goes beyond the trigger-pullers.
#7 by Larry Bergan on April 11, 2010 - 9:32 am
For some reason my comment about Kissinger went directly into the spam filter before I fished it out.
#8 by Rock Waterman on April 12, 2010 - 4:46 am
By blaming the shooters I’m certainly not absolving the politicians who sent those shooters in. I indict the entire system, and want to see everybody held to account for what appears to be just one of many ordinary days at the office.
#9 by Larry Bergan on April 12, 2010 - 5:42 am
Rock:
You were blaming the soldiers.
Why did you do that?
#10 by Dwight Sheldon Adams on April 13, 2010 - 12:02 pm
Rock was blaming the shooters. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t blaming the politicians. That’s not how this works.
As for the soldiers’ behavior, it’s hard to say. Were they “enjoying their work” because they really are sick people? Or were they made sick by war? Or were their words merely a coping mechanism to ease the stress of watching a stranger die at your hands?
One of the challenges all of us must face is not merely to ask, “Would I have done as they did in that situation?” but to recognize that we have no idea what “that situation” is. The situation includes far more than merely the uniform and the physical circumstances. These soldiers have been through a great deal of training, tremendous stress, and have developed an antisocial relationship with the other people in their environment. That’s the situation we have to take into account. Am I capable of doing as these soldiers did? Are you? If not, what in their character made them so willing, while you wouldn’t be?
It’s a hard judgment call to make. Their commanding officers should probably be held responsible, for sure. They’ve accepted that as part of their job. But in my opinion these individuals probably need counseling more than imprisonment.
Dwight Sheldon Adams
#11 by Richard Warnick on April 13, 2010 - 1:05 pm
Dwight–
I served in the Army four years without having to kill anybody, for which I’ll be eternally grateful. But I acquired the skills, and the belief that battle is a kill-or-be-killed situation. I think the prevalence of tragic incidents like the one shown on the Wikileaks video helps explain the high rate of suicides among returning veterans.
Josh Steiber was there, I think his thoughts on the matter merit consideration (hence this post).
#12 by cav on April 13, 2010 - 2:51 pm
Fairly early in my military experience (’66 > ‘69), I was lucky enough to have met some Vietnamese soldiers who were in the U.S. for training. Incredibly nice guys, who told me straight-up what we were doing over there was not helping, wrong – that we must stop the war.
Now, it wasn’t like I’d never been exposed to the teachings of Christ, and my trainers did provide that as free men and citizens of this ‘free’ country, we were obliged to do what was right – according to our beliefs, despite what ever motivated Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, or General Westmorland.
So, while these grunts fancy themselves as ‘public servants’, they are only servants in particular roles – not in every action they find themselves having to perform.
Up-thread, I was being facitious when I suggested they had no choice. They gladly pulled the trigger – as soon as the permission came down.
That we came up from course, cave-manly, grave-robbing stock, all the way to this near perfect ‘civilization’ we are so blessed to be a part of, in no way assures any of us that we won’t be descending right back to our most viscious, ancient potentials as soon as there’s the OK from ‘above’. And that goes all the way up tho the FSM. Just ask the deluded George W. Bush.