Haditha

[Plaid Adder]

Two years ago, I would have been writing about Haditha as soon as the story broke. But instead, I have more or less been avoiding reading about it, never mind writing about it.

It isn't that I don't care any more; I just don't see the point of talking about it. If Abu Ghraib, Fallujah, Shock and Awe, and the daily mounting casualties on all sides of the war are not enough to teach my fellow-Americans and my Congressional leaders that we need to pull the plug on the American occupation now, if they can't figure out yet that all we are doing over there is making things worse, if they haven't grasped yet the fact that whether we stay or go we no longer control the outcome, and if they can't tell from the news that's come out during the past three years that this war is a crime, a sin, and a shame, then I don't see why it should bother them to contemplate the possiblity that in November of 2005 a group of American soldiers executed a dozen or so unarmed civilians because they had the misfortune to be near a bomb that had been planted by someone else. Bill O'Reilly has already explained to all of his viewers that, hey, shit happens in war, although Wes Clark tried to explain to him that he was full of shit. This is just going to become one more foul monstrosity that Bush and the media and the 29% swallow and smile about.

I've been listening to an audio course that my dad bought and passed on to me about the history of US policy in the middle east from 1914 to 2001. It's depressing. Basically the main problem is that US policy is always based on promoting America's interests, at the expense of human rights and democracy and everything else--and that their concept of "America's interests" is tragically short-sighted and limited. All that bullshit that went on with the US and the USSR jockeying for position during the Cold War as if everyone was playing a gigantic game of Risk, and then it just gets worse and worse. I'm now up to the part where Zbignew Brezinski, under Carter's administration, gets the bright idea of funneling covert aid to the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan because he's really excited about the opportunity to "sow shit in <the USSR's> backyard." Yeah. That was real farsighted of you, Zbignew. You indulge your puerile desire to piss on your enemy's doormat, and 20-odd years down the road, the Islamic dictatorship you helped give birth to winds up sheltering the guy who's going to take down the Twin Towers. I can't wait to hear all about how Reagan took your mistake and ran with it. Because that's the really depressing thing about all of this: fundamentally, the objectives of American middle eastern policy don't change with a change in party. The methods vary, but they're all about equally ill-conceived.

Except for Bush's invasion of Iraq. That brainstorm goes beyond "ill-conceived" to "just downright insane."

All these idiot men and they are so convinced they're the smartest guys in the world and they know exactly what to do with the globe and how to win the game and they are just wrong. (I should say that I do not expect that when the course gets closer to 2001 and some of the idiot men become women, it will help much.) And so eventually they create the conditions that make it possible for American soldiers to deliberately execute innocent civilians. Rumsfeld is just the last in a line of cocksure assholes who thinks the only reason the world isn't perfect is that he's never been in charge of it, and who fucks up and fucks us all over and then fucks off without a mark on him.

I guess I'm still a tad pissed off.

Well, anyway. So now the Vietnamization of the Iraq war is complete, and has this debacle has finally produced a My Lai. You'd like to think it would wake some people up. But I don't have much hope. The 29% has had a lot of damn wakeup calls. I think they're down for the count.

The Plaid Adder

[RagingInMiami]

1. The only thing missing is the visual that will cement itself in the minds

of Americans.

[oldtime dfl_er]

2. this one did it for me

[raccoon]

17. Me too! His image will always haunt me.

How could those people NOT hate Americans?

[Nickster]

14. I just don't think visuals like this one will ever have the same impact on

the masses. I really think most people are desensitized to violent images.

[spindrifter]

3. What troubles me is not the 29%.

What troubles me is the people who were elected as Democrats to represent us in Washington, D.C. who are not pulling the plug on this saddest of affairs. Each one should be standing up and telling the rest of Congress and the world that this cannot continue.

[marylanddem]

4. I so agree with you. Where are the Democrats????

[Plaid Adder]

5. Cowering, I guess.

I've been wondering that too, for a long damn time.

Ah well,

The Plaid Adder

[bdamomma]

7. slittering along like snakes

and apparently on vacation until June 5th.

[Terran1212]

6. So right

[oasis]

8. k&r

[stellanoir]

9. Well Haditha coupled with all the other underreported

countless number of wholesale slaughterings of innocent Iraqis, plundering of their heritage and resources, contaminating their environment for eons to come, we're all more than a tad pissed off.

Someone made the point earlier today in regards to the murder of a pregnant woman in labor enroute to a maternity hospital in Baghdad for not stopping at a check point ( I think) being defended by the same folks who are anti-abortion. It makes no sense whatsoever.

Just wanted to make sure that you didn't miss this. . .

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=1300118

It is so succinct and profound.

Please consider checking it out.

Thanks. Keep it up.

[raccoon]

18. Just skimmed the top and you're right, it is profound.

I've bookmarked it to read later.

[AlamoDemoc]

10. K&R...n/t

[MrMickeysMom]

11. I heard the wake up call, but 29percents can't admit they do

I also see it more each day... dumb asses in the last stage of denial. It cannot be explained by adequate sampling of the population. So, this is history could repeat itself because there are too many who've gone and gotten themselves so utterly lost... the so called, 29% who don't seem to waiver from the horror stories now eeking up to the surface. They can't waiver. I believe some people never waiver from the structure they've built to hold their paper-thin reality.

Tonight I heard Cher's call to CSPAN (didn't ID herself, but they knew). She's lived through 11 presidents and has never seen anything like this...

I am trying. I'm trying locally. I'm trying with my husband to pay off the house. Hey, we've got a house, but we're dug in to "not loose the job". We're supposed to be entering near retrirement within 10 or so years, at least for one of us. I've got about (this) much left over to start the revolution.

The 29% is probably 9% who are incapable of using opposable thumbs.

[Canuckistanian]

12. Well, I hope there's a "Saigon" to this war

Where the helicopters are taking the last American off the roof of the embassy.

And soon, too.

[QueenOfCalifornia]

13. Funny you would say all this since I wrote the following just this A.M.

My diary entry for the day:

June 1,2006
Dear Diary,

Once again, I find myself crying out of frustration. The bastards who are involved in the "democratization" of the Middle East do not give a rats ass about the people, the Islamic human beings, as well as, our own children, who have become the hapless pawns in a really bad chapter of our history. Our children are the canon fodder for the corrupt, self aggrandizement of a vicious theocratic fascist regime. The butchering of the fertile crescent is just one more step towards insuring that our once great nation will go down in history as a gang of blithering idiots and hormone driven thugs. The truth of the matter is, PNAC is not just some silly pipe dream but it is the central agenda of the assholes who have somehow grabbed the elusive brass ring of power. Now more power hungry than ever, the true Modern Prometheus, is our very own, haphazardly slung together administration. The baby has truly been tossed out with the bath-water this time. I wonder; Where are our Democrats? Where are the people who have been voted into power and are supposed to represent us? Have they abandoned us? One thing's for sure, they have proven they have feet of clay and are dis-evolving into spineless examples of the sludge of a primordial prehistoric Earth. I have come to loath them and have lost faith that they will stand up and do something, anything, to put an end to the madness.

What will become of my children? What sort of future will they have? How will they fit into the landscape of what we have bequeathed to them? I am at a loss of how to explain us, to them and to the rest of the world. By the way, the rest of the world is not too happy with what we are allowing this administration to do. I feel so pathetically inadequate - like the bridegroom who can't get it up... Just so impotent.

[Cults4Bush]

15. I hardly post on DU anymore but PA I soooooo agree with you that I just

had to say something... I am as close to your position as I can possibly be I think.

I just dont know what will wake up the yes people (they always think they aren't but they are, oh yes indeed). I see them on both sides of the aisle I see them toeing whatever their party (or rather their factions within the party) says to toe. I see them unwilling to question or criticize even though that would be something that sets them apart from the polar opposites. I see them chase out Greens, Libs and Indies just to smugly satisfy some weird ego bashing game point when not only the Dems but alas Iraq and Iran and many many other countries need these non dems to vote Dem. Eerily enough I find this disquietingly similar to tactics on the right. It is why I am leaveing the party after 06, that and the fact that so far the most aggresive withdrawal policy came from one of the biggest hawks in the party. Yet here our leaders go with endless benchmarks that need to be met in order for a drawdown, its almost like they care more about saving face than saving lives. The long term prognosis of our standing in the world looks bleak as all hell but they want to keep our kids trapped inside a civil war in a hostile region in every sense of the word. I dont care what kind of training they get, there will be more Hadithas (though you could say that Haditha is just more Abu Ghraib, Bagrahm, Gitmo shit and honestly if certain circumstances werent in place for Haditha the cover up would have worked). The cover up would have worked so well that I dare say i think a few here wish it would have.

If you would have specualted on Haditha at all back in Nov, Dec, 05. A loud portion of DU would have attacked you for being a conspiracist, defeatist and not standing up for our troops. The same gobstopping saliva droppers would have insisted on the same for not supporting the war at its onset... and it goes on and on.

Speaking of going on and on... my apologies for doing so in this post. I would have made this a PM but I hate doing that unsolicited. To sum up, I know through my interactions here on DU, in real life with various local dem heads and from observing our national leaders that I am not wanted in this party.

I hope that Dems here and in higher office realize what they are doing when they push the buttons and attempt out those who have stood opposed to this war since a few days after 9/11 when they started talking about it.

Peace to you.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

16. The tragedy is that this one incident is finally waking up some people.

Haditha has been going on in Iraq before the first GI stepped across the border. But, the other Hadithas have usually been carried out at a nice safe, impersonal, distance by pilots and artillary. Or, successfully covered up and/or dismissed as "unfortunate incidents".

Of course, the people who engineered Haditha and it's many clones are now busily covering their pathetic asses, by claiming it's an "isolated incident" carried out by poor, stressed out, boys incapable of discerning small children from "insurgents".

[cantstandbush]

19. American foreign policy = "white man's folly." n/t

[LibDemAlways]

20. Olbermann yesterday interviewed a

soldier in the National Guard who participated in making a documentary while serving in Iraq. A filmmaker gave several GIs cameras and told them to just start filming. She wanted to make an "unbiased" documentary. I'm not sure if that's possible considering the cameramen were US soldiers uninvited on foreign soil. Anyhow, the guy being interviewed came off as bright, articulate, and utterly clueless. He's convinced that we are "bringing Democracy" to the Iraqi people. He also said the situation over there is especially difficult because you can't tell "the enemy" from the "civilians."

We have damn little Democracy here any more under King George, but that's beside the point. Democracy can't be imposed from without at gunpoint or delivered by "shock and awe." It has to come from within. By its very nature it's government of the people - and ideally for and by the people, too. As for the "enemy." The "enemy" of the US in Iraq is the Iraqi people. Period. You don't invade and occupy a country, killing its citizens, stealing its resources - and expect to be welcomed by the populice. You don't humiliate and torture human beings in a hellhole like Abu Ghraib and expect roses thrown in your path. You don't break down doors and slaughter families and expect gratitude in return.

Maybe Haditha will wake our sleeping citizens up to the horror that is Iraq. Probably not. Murtha is "a critic of the administration," the whores tell us. Anderson Cooper "interviewed" him with a venom generally reserved for serial killers and a skepticism that couldn't have been more apparent if OJ had been sitting there explaining his search for the "real" killer.

Three years into this mess, you'd think some truthtelling would be in order. You'd think Murtha would be getting some respect. You'd think wrong. The media is continuing to treat the 29% like the majority, propping up the Bush Crime Family at all costs. Frankly, Democracy in Iraq is neocon fiction. I'm more worried about restoring Democracy here at home.

[GOPFighter]

21. "America's Interests"

This phrase just pisses me off. Our foreign policy never favors America's interests, but American CAPITALIST interests, and that's been the problem for over a century. Our wealthy corporations pressure our politicians and diplomats to formulate a policy that encourages dictators or puppet governments that allow us to steal their natural resources at the expense of democracy and a decent standard of living for the regular people. They know what's happening. They know we're screwing them. NO WONDER THEY HATE US! Then when they finally fight back against the country that has screwed them for decades, the American people all of a sudden take notice and ask "Why do they hate us? We must invade their country and kill their people to protect ourselves from their hatred!"

But woe be the teacher that ever decided to teach their students the truth about American foreign policy. The parents would be up in arms and demand the teacher be fired for teaching their kids that maybe, just maybe, there is a rational explanation and even justification for some of the anger and hatred people in other countries, especially those we have exploited, feel toward America.

I grew up just after WWII. A lot of good, everyday Americans gave their lives to help save the good people of Europe. Americans felt a quiet pride in the sacrifices we made for the cause. That war brought out the good in us, and the world had nothing but praise and admiration for us. What a shame that the wealthy and powerful corporatists have managed to squander that goodwill and turned America into a greedy, pushy, arrogant nation interested only in the riches we can extract for other countries, not what we can do to make a better life for the people who live there.

This is what we must change or we'll spend our future fighting the people we've screwed over.

Excellent post, Plaid Adder.

[many a good man]

22. US foreign policy has ALWAYS been ONLY about helping MNCs

Regular Americans were always fiercely isolationist. Most came here to avoid the constant internecine battles between European royals. The only ones advocating any kind of foreign adventurism were known as "international businessmen." Today they are known as multinational corporations.

It was only after Pearl Harbor that the average American citizen became seduced with empire. The "Good War" made it easy to convince ourselves that we were the good guys. We could do no wrong. Except sometimes.

Big Bush started Gulf War I for the sole purpose of jarring Americans out of the "Vietnam Syndrome." Little Bush capitalized on his father's accomplishments and was gifted with a second Pearl Harbor. Three years later we're already at My Lai. My how history is speeding up!