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Incidentally, Regarding Haditha
By Jeff Fecke | June 1, 2006
It looks more and more like Haditha was, indeed, an atrocity:
A U.S. military investigation into actions taken following a deadly incident in western Iraq will conclude that some officers gave false testimony to their superiors, The Washington Post reported, while a commander in Iraq announced new core values training on moral and ethical standards on the battlefield for U.S. troops.
The order from Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the commander of Multinational Corps Iraq, came as the U.S. military investigated whether U.S. Marines might have intentionally killed unarmed civilians in the Iraqi town of Haditha on Nov. 19.
The killings, in which victims included women and children, followed a bomb attack on a military convoy that killed a Marine.
It’s easy for the right to pooh-pooh Haditha, and they will. After all, to them this is all a game, a quest to gain support from the MSM and the country. Haditha, like Abu Ghraib, makes that more difficult. Besides, the right doesn’t really care about atrocities–they’re quite fine with rendition, torture, and abridged civil liberties. Why should this be different?
But to those of us who actually care about our country’s soul, Haditha is a reminder of the horror of war, and further evidence of our collective guilt in supporting a war without just cause. It is, perhaps, surprising not that events like Haditha occur, but that there are so few of them; war is an evil, twisted thing, and it destroys good people and bad alike. That’s why war is something to be avoided if at all possible. Pacifism may be naive, but it’s right about one thing: war is horrible, and peace is almost always preferable.
As for the warbloggers, the drumbeat that this is all a liberal plot to use Haditha to discredit the war has begun. That’s wrong, of course: the war has already been discredited. Indeed, I don’t know why they’re concerned. Just a month ago, they were clamoring for more assaults on civilians to “prove our toughness” and secure victory in Iraq. Haditha will be an interesting test of the applicability of that theory in a real-world setting. Somehow, I don’t think it will turn out like Jeff Goldstein expected.
UPDATE: Welcome those from Hot Air, where AllahPundit has decided I hate Jeff Goldstein because he’s on Klonopin. Now, I do hate Jeff Goldstein. But I’ve been very clear that attacking his usage of a mood stabilizer is reprehensible. After all, as a user of fluoxetine, I have sympathy for those who need assistance with their sanity.
No, I hate Goldstein because he’s a moron, and he called for us to kill more civilians in Iraq. Which, I will submit, is reprehensible in and of itself.
Topics: Haditha, Iraq | No Comments »