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The U.$. military is still in a pickle about what to do concerning Marine murders of Iraqi civilians in Haditha, Iraq. Even worse, even CNN is having to report that such incidents of troops killing civilians are like rain drops in a storm.
"And that investigation is only one of several into allegations of civilian deaths at the hands of U.S. forces in Iraq.The U.S. military said Sunday that four U.S. soldiers in Iraq have been charged with participation in the "rape and murder of a young Iraqi woman and three members of her family." (Full story)
Four soldiers were charged with murder in the deaths of three Iraqi detainees during an operation in Salaheddin province in May. (Full story)
Seven Marines and a sailor have been charged with murder in the death of an Iraqi civilian in Hamdaniya in April. (Full story)
Last week, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called for a review of coalition forces' immunity from Iraqi prosecution, saying such an exemption emboldens those troops."(1)
People who do not read the media at all should learn about these incidents. MIM would like to talk about how we analyze the murders of civilians in Iraq.
MIM found the following definition of "terrorism" at dictionary.com:
n : the calculated use of violence (or threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimindation (sic.) or coercion or instilling fear. (boldface MIM's)So the first point is that ideologically, people opposed to terrorism cannot just "support our troops." The "Support Our Troops" movement of recent years formed in reaction to the divide between civilians and troops formed during the Vietnam War. Thanks to Abu Ghraib, Haditha and countless other incidents we should now have a reminder why the "Support Our Troops" movement was wrong to form in the first place.
This is just a reminder that those people carrying out anti-social acts in Iraq return to the united $tates, most of them never detected by any investigation. Haditha had a successful cover-up directed by politicians at first. A popular cover-up is that civilians died in air strikes--which makes it OK by imperialist reasoning. Even ultra-reactionary Fox News admitted that one excuse was that the civilian deaths came from "sectarian violence" (religion) among Iraqis, when in fact it was U.$. troops responsible.(2) Like it or not, even the proverbial potato-peeler or truck driver in Iraq has complicity. "Support Our Troops" delivers the wrong message for this sort of problem. In fact, we can thank "Support Our Troops" for abetting Hadithas in the first place.
There is good reason that civilians react to soldiers a certain way given the corrupt nature of politicians who cannot be counted on in any case. The basic message is: if you find yourself in Iraq and a certain situation for whatever reason, you have to do something to get out of it or stop it. Politicians have not managed to bring the troops home, but in the meantime u.$. civilians are right not to respect troops that do not do something about their situation also. To their credit, 72% of troops said in February that they believe they should be brought back to the united $tates within a year, according to a scientific poll.(3)
In fact, to their credit most people supporting "Support Our Troops" now also believe troops should return to the united $tates. In the meantime there is still a problem-- partly because the petty-bourgeoisie wants the troops home because of the cost, not out of internationalism or opposition to murder of civilians. Treating soldiers like monsters is inevitable the longer this unjust war goes on. Some of MIM's former critics should see the light on this question and quickly.
Ironically, these "Support Our Troops" activists received conniving support from the deluded Euro-Amerikan left-wing of parasitism that says it "won" the Vietnam War. No, the Vietnamese won their Vietnam War and we inside u.$. borders still have the same problem of imperialism running amok. The proof is that the same sorts of massacres such as My Lai in Vietnam continue to happen and, no, the white nation did not rise in moral stature through its defeat in Vietnam. There was no white proletariat "to learn a lesson."
Had the reaction inside the united $tates to Abu Ghraib been strong enough, there would have been no Haditha. Instead, we found people such as Phyllis Chesler talking about "torture" in quotation marks while completely omitting the murders in Abu Ghraib and we found others (including most calling themselves Marxist) who only wanted to criticize politicians and not the troops. From the beginning, MIM called the truck driver contractors in Iraq "exploiter-occupiers," but other parties calling themselves "socialist" and "communist" could not see fit to do the same for these people making six digits a year in Iraq. These other fake anti-imperialists want to kiss up to the labor aristocracy, the bought-off workers who are now mini-bourgeoisie themselves. They too share complicity for the crimes of the "Average Joe" in Iraq. Average Amerikan Joe in Iraq is an enemy of the international proletariat. In other words, this is something that most of the rest of the world already understands.
Notes:
1. http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/07/09/haditha/
2. Soldiers plotted a rape and four murders for a week as admitted by Fox News.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,201796,00.html
3. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-zogby/on-a-new-poll-of-us-sol_b_16497.html