Thoughts on Mahmoudiya
By streiff Posted in War — Comments (25) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
The US Army has preferred capital murder charges against a non-commissioned officer and three soldiers in conjunction with the rape and murder of an Iraqi woman (or girl, no definitive age for has been established at this date) and the murder of three of her family members. Another non-commissioned officer has been charged with dereliction of duty in conjunction with the incident. In addition, a recently discharged soldier has been charged in federal court with the rape and murder.
Though these young men are presumed innocent, unlike the Haditha story (here) this story has a sad aura of authenticity about it.
Some have tried to manfully to weave this into a Vietnam metaphor. Others have grasped the incident to use as a rod with which to belabor the US military effort in Iraq. Just this weekend Andrew Bacevich improbably claimed that this incident (and Haditha) “will deservedly take their place alongside Sand Creek, Samar and My Lai in the unhappy catalogue of atrocities committed by American troops.”
Read on.
Violence committed by soldiers upon noncombatants is as old as warfare. It happens. When it does happen, in my view, it must be dealt with in a draconian fashion because those in uniform have a unique responsibility to protect those in our charge. Pour l'encouragement des autres.
When crime is carried out, as alleged, in an organized and premeditated fashion by a group, rather than as a crime of opportunity, it is very troubling because it also hints that the cancer of indiscipline is present in a unit. Left un-excised it will metastasize and inexorably lead to a lot of very bad things happening.
During World War II, styled The Good War by Studs Terkel, crime by American troops against civilians in Britain, France, Italy, and Germany by US forces was endemic. The first American soldier executed in Continental Europe was Private Clarence Whitfield on August 4, 1944 for the rape of a farm girl at Omaha Beach on June 14, a mere 8 days after D-Day. David Irving reports in his War Between the Generals that Eisenhower authorized the public execution of US soldiers because the Resistance and Maquis threatened to carry out reprisals against US forces. Though Irving has since been demonstrated to hold beliefs outside the mainstream of historical scholarship, this incident is pretty well documented. Quoting from the official history of the Army’s Normandy Base Section:
The victims of the crime could not be brought back to life, the report said, but the assailant could be punished. To prove to the civil population we were doing everything possible to bring about justice, executions were held at or near the scene of the crimes. The immediate family of the victim and civic officials of the towns were present to see the execution.
Privates Robert Skinner and Waiters Yancy were hanged in Normandy for invading a home, shooting and wounding the homeowner and his wife, killing a farmhand, and raping the maid. Privates Louis Till and Fred McMurray were hanged in Italy for kidnapping two Italian women during an air raid alert, raping both and then murdering one. Privates Mansfield Spinks and Charlie Ervin died before a firing squad. They had invaded a house in Italy, killed the husband, raped the wife, and did so as the children looked on. Private Curtis Maxey went to the gallows for invading a home in St Tropez during Operation DRAGOON and raping a woman as her husband and children watched. Private Edward Leonski was hanged for strangling three women in Melbourne, Australia.
Augustine Guerra and Ernest Clark were hanged at Shepton Mallet, UK, (think the opening scene in The Dirty Dozen) for raping and strangling a 15-year-old girl. Three months later William Harrison followed them to the gallows at Shepton Mallet for the rape and murder of a seven-year-old Irish girl. In North Africa, James Kendrick was hanged for raping and killing an invalided 10-year-old Spanish girl.
The 1989 Sean Penn flick, Casualties of War, was based on a real incident in the Vietnam war.
The list of crimes goes on and on and does nothing but prove that evil stalks the world and that any Army will contain a certain number of men of criminal bent. And they will find a way to act our regardless of the righteousness of their cause.
All in all some 154 American soldiers died on the gallows or by firing squad during the Second World War, the overwhelming majority of those were for attacks on defenseless civilians. Their deaths in no way speak to the US role in World War II or to the conduct of our military forces. Far from it. Today they are hardly footnotes and only known to keepers of military aracana like myself.
None of this is to excuse or mitigate the actions of these soldiers if, indeed, the incident is proven to have occurred as described so far. It will be an indelible stain on the honor of American arms and on the honor of a proud battalion of a proud regiment. And if guilty, we should demand the perpetrators be severely punished. We should demand that they are punished not for what the did to the victims so much as for what they have done to us because it was our uniform they were wearing and it is our Army that has been shamed.
Whether or not is has a strategic impact, either on the war or the Army, will be judged at a point in the future, but so far all evidence suggests that it will not.
On the other hand, none of this is to suggest that Bacevich is not an utter poltroon for equating a criminal act with organized massacres and none of this is to suggest that those who seek to make a clear aberration a metaphor for US actions in Iraq are less than dishonest. He is and they are.
It is nothing more than taking advantage of a tragedy that has killed four people and probably destroyed the lives of five others for nothing more substantial than scoring debating points. It is as wrong as it is shameful.
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Thoughts on Mahmoudiya 25 Comments (0 topical, 25 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
So I could be wrong here, but I'm just having a gut reaction here that turning over our soldiers in a time of war to a foreign power.
They're ours to protect and ours to punish.
Its unrestrainable nature provides reason enough to keep the beast of war shackled, and to render it for glue when, as in these cases, it shows itself rabid.
The current Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) prohibits this... as it does in most nations with a US troop presence.
of info but that in no way authenticates anything. I'll wait until we see the charging documents.
I have experience in medical testimony and mental health. It is not at all hard to believe that the soldiers could be drunk and formulate / carry out such a plan. (I recall playing 3 simultaneous games of chess while laying on the floor drunk while my friends described their moves to me and I to them. This while I was still a foolish enlisted"man").
I also agree with Streiff that we should not pre-judge this case either way.
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9603/okinawa_rape/
Does anyone recall why we turned them marines over rather than trying them ourselves? Is it because it was peacetime, or because it was in the territory of an ally?
If convicted, would it be unprecedented to turn the perps over to the Iraq's for punishment?
convict and punish them, then, let it be like all other such things, file it under, "war is hell".
The only thing we can do as a society is to punish the guilty. Any large group of men, an army, a football conference, or a large corporation will have a few bad guys in it.
This is no more an indictment of the entire military than it is an indictment of all men.
This is in the headlines becauase the Army is dealing with it. What is forgotten in the Abu Ghraib mess was that the Army was investigating the abuse - as was the case in Haditha.
Even when our interrogation manuals detail out the limits of how to treat prisoners. To quote my review of an edition of the official guide to prisoner interrogation at Strategypage.com:
Appendix A reprints portions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (military law). This shows what people can be charged with if they carry out physical or mental torture or do anything to coerce someone - or when the guidelines are not followed. Among the possible charges are assault (Article 128), maiming (Article 124), or communicating a threat (Article 134).
This has been official policy.
and, as an additional duty while in the Pentagon, served on the Army's equivalent of a parole board.
I have no problem believing a premeditated liquor-stoked crime.
And though I have broken the rule, I really wish these kids accused of heinous crimes, this one as well as Haditha and Hamdaniya, would be given a chance at a trial which will determine what they do for the rest of their lives without a thousand Dick Tracys writing about what they did.
She was 14. The girl's passport and identity documents have been authenticated. Check out Sarah Weber's comments on the girl/woman confusions:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_conten
t_id=1002803062
She was 14. CNN reported this erlier today.
Also, the kdnapping, torture and executions of 2 of our soldiers last month by AlQaeda in Iraq was reportedly done in response to the rape of that girl.
I would just like to point out that the world didn't know about the rape and the the executions were not claimed to have been in response to that crime (let alone have occurred) until the first report came out in the American Press.
A little too much for random circumstance.
a) the investigators say she was 25.
b) so they say, if you believe that you have to believe they hadn't been shooting at the 502 before and that the incident was unknown locally prior to the AP story. Filed under horsecrap.
Or just bad CNN again?
I didn't really have much else to do today and the folks in control of the TV had CNN on...
but Iraq is, allegedly, an allied power. We have been saying that we trust the Iraq justice system to try Saddam and his henchmen rather than an international or occupiers tribunal. Would it complete the picture to recognize a warrant for extradition if the US was to receive one?
in a Japanese prison for a rape committed in Okinawa? I seem to recall that to be the case.
I agree that this has the feel of authenticity.
And also, I do not get the impression that this can be filed under "fortunes of war"...
If it is as has been characterized, I think the lead defendent is a sick puppy and IF it turns out to be true, this fellow deserves whatever he gets up to and including being turned over to the Iraqi authorities for trial and punishment under their "brand new" domestic law.
The one with Japan dictates such things I believe.
this? I understand that we would want to have a court martial to determine whether the crimes occurred and whether they were, in fact, crimes under the ROE (doesn't really apply in this case since the allegation is rape). Are we prohibited from extraditing the perps to an ally? Is there a regulation that takes effect during wartime? I'm seriously asking.
It's good to have a frame of reference pointed out, and thanks.
Streiff, I'm glad you posted this; thoughtful piece, and I agree. Evil stalks the world during times of war.
As Ilario Pantano pointed out on Chris Matthews last night -- if the (still) alledged rape and murder happened, it is not part of war, it is a crime; and the perps if found guilty should be prosecuted to the max. But -- prosecuted by the justice system, not in the press, or in leftie fantasies. He also said that the military loathes rape; officers are permitted to prevent rape -- using deadly force, i.e., they can shoot the would-be rapist.
The evidence as leaked looks pretty incriminating; one soldier who was supposed to have been at the scene reportdly confessed, and two soldiers who were not at the scene talked in a counseling session about what they thought might happened. (The two soldiers who were not at the scene were the first picked up by the news. Figure that one.)
Here's how it's supposed to have come down, according to the AP: The soldiers drank alcohol, abandoned their checkpoint, changed clothes to avoid detection and headed to the victims' house, about 200 yards from a US checkpoint in a Sunni Arab area south of Baghdad known for its violence, the affidavit said. http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2006/07/11/sergeants_c
harged_in_alleged_slay_case/Another report says Green seized an AK-47 from the father to perform the murders with, then dumped it in the river afterwards.
For me, it's possible they left their post. It's possible they got drunk, and it's possible they raped the victim, and murdered their family.
The flakey features for me are that the soldiers supposedly had the presence of mind to make an elaborate plan, change clothes, burn the afterwards -- and to carry it off flawlessly While they were drunk. And, they talked their sargent into joining them. And, they talked another sargent into covering for them, after telling him about it when they were all drinking together again.
This means that the sargent would have had to agree to the abandonment of the post, changing out of uniform ... the rape of the girl, and the murder of civilians.
I wish the screaming headlines had been held until the trial was finished, or at least underway. There would be less room for speculation, and freedom of the press and the "need to know" would still be satisfied. Of course, that would deny the leftist media, and hopeful liberal partisans the opportunity to try like crazy to re-live Nam.
Anyway, the girl's family has agreed to an exhumation and an autopsy. if there's any DNA evidence, it could settle alot of speculation quickly.