not just an American thing, alas

The Brits just made public a very long report of an official inquiry into the Sept. 2003 torture and death of Baha Mousa, a 26-year-old Iraqi who died in British custody, and into British military abuses of Iraqi prisoners in general.  Seven UK soldiers were court-martialed over the Mousa incident in 2007, but 6 were acquitted. The seventh, Cpl. Donald Payne, was acquitted of manslaughter, but pled guilty to inhumane treatment, making him Britain's first convicted war criminal (presumably in this war, not all others). He was sentenced to a year in prison, the British defense ministry apologized for mistreating Mousa and 9 other Iraqis and coughed up $4.8 mil. in a settlement. (There was good coverage  of those (expensive and controversial) trials in The Independent and The Guardian at the time.)

This inquiry, led by retired judge William Gage, labels the torture an "appalling episode of serious gratuitous violence," but concludes with the perfect bad-apple defense: while soldiers and officers were responsible for their actions, what happened "did not amount to an entrenched culture of violence."  Mousa had 93 injuries (someone counted), fractured ribs, a broken nose, and death by asphyxiation because they kept him in a stress position.  C'est la guerre, eh?

talk about selective objection!

      Jason Naser Abdo has said he intended to kill other soldiers, which makes his claim to conscientious objection suspect.  My first thought (this should go without saying) was, good, one potential atrocity averted, but I confess that my second thought was, uh oh for CO.  I've long held that there are much easier ways to get out of the army, which is as it's supposed to be.  Conscientious objection should be a deeply held and hard-won belief and it should be predicated on valuing human life, even when the objection is to a specific war.  It usually is all that; I don't know of any other CO who followed up his or her discharge with murder, state-sanctioned or otherwise.  So that leaves me wondering about the process which approved Abdo's CO, when many other applicants I know of were forced to jump through hoops for months, only to be denied. And when, according to a WashPo story, some GI rights counselors found him fishy. 
       Which brings me to my third thought: I hoped like hell he wasn't a member of IVAW.  Turns out, he wasn't, per a statement from IVAW, but also turns out that they were as credulous as the chain of command who granted his CO.  Not something they'd like to have in common with the army, I'd guess.  I never came across this guy or his case, but, depending on what I knew about him, I might have been credulous too, given my sympathy for soldiers who oppose the wars, refuse to fight, advocate resistance, or are "anti-army."
       IVAW is staunchly committed to nonviolence -- a critical difference here -- but this isn't the first time they've backed the wrong horse. That may be a price of grassroots organizing -- you can't vet everyone who agrees with your cause -- but IVAW is hardly alone in its willingness to believe.  I'm always surprised, naively, probably, at pols, profs and Joe Schmos who lie about military experience for years wihout being called on it.  It's a credential everyone is loathe to challenge.  Well, almost everyone.  It's usually the real vets who smell a rat.  The cliche is that people who have been to war tell true about it -- which is kind of like the cliche that no one who has been to war is in favor of it.  which can't be true because someone keeps starting wars and sending other someones to fight them, and those someones aren't all civilians.
     As for Abdo, I circle back to: good, they got him.  I don't want any more additions to my list of bad apples.

Does 10% constitute a few?

       Going through old clippings, I came across a story in the WashPo from May 2007, reporting the findings of the military's 4th mental health study, the first and, apparently, only one to ask questions about ethics.  The study found that about 10% of the 1,767 soldiers and marines in Iraq who were surveyed reported having mistreated civilians there.  The greatest portion of that abuse involved insults and swearing (a small portion confessed to physical abuse) and nearly 2/3 said they wouldn't report a violation by a battle buddy.  Over a third condoned torture under certain circumstances --  like if it got important info or would save lives, which are pretty much the same hypotheticals civilians buy into, even though torture isn't usually that efficient or effective. 
       There were approximately 125,000 U.S. troops in Iraq in August & September 2006, when the survey was done.  If the findings are representative, that would come to 12,500 soldiers who did stuff like kicking Iraqi civilians or damaging their possessions when it wasn't warranted -- or worse.  (I don't believe, btw, that such a small proportion swore at Iraqis or used epithets against them.  Do you?) The survey didn't seem to count if these were single or multiple incidents, but we can guess.  And guess that, if 176 soldiers in the survey admitted to such actions, there were at least that many who didn't fess up.
      Probably not coincidentally, over 40% of those surveyed and/or interviewed reported low morale in their units. The Pentagon completed the study in Nov. 2006, but didn't release it for about 5 months.  They didn't say why.

NYT on apples, good & bad

     The Sunday magazine ran this long, solidly reported, thoughtful story by Luke Mogelson about the 5 soldiers stationed at FOB Ramrod (shall we take a glance at language here?), who were accused of murdering unarmed civilians in Afghanistan for sport or vengence or self-aggrandizement or excitement or, hey, whatever.  Lots of theories, especially now that some of them are coming to trial.  Their names are Calvin Gibbs, Jeremy Morlock, Michael Wagnon, Adam Winfield and Andrew Holmes.  The men they killed were named Gul Mudin, Marach Agha, and Mullah Allah Dad.
     (And for the record, a "weapon drop" -- putting a gun or grenade or shovel next to a dead civilian to imply that he was a threat -- is, if not exactly routine, common enough for several of the veterans I've talked with to mention.) 
      Mogelson raises the question of who is responsible, sounds skeptical of the aberration explanation, makes good use of an expert on war crimes who names the misbegotten nature of the conflicts as a factor in such behavior, and and points a finger up the chain of command to a Col. Harry D. Tunnell IV, who apparently wanted little to do with counterinsurgency ops.  He gets bad apples in there somewhere too.
     What doesn't get mentioned, or at least, not explored, is that we have no business being in Afghanistan or Iraq in the first place. 
     If the premise of an invasion is corrupt, then the invasion and its aftermath and everyone involved will be too.  That's not to exonerate these soldiers.  They did what they did and their courts martial will (or won't) deal with that.  Also, it can be useful to try to affix blame at some point in the hierarchy, instead of letting it float free as collective guilt or moral injury, although those can be real. 
     And yet, and yet. 
     Ding dong, bin Laden's dead, and we're talking about whether, after nearly 10 years of war and deaths that will never be counted accurately, it was waterboarding that lead to hideout. 
     I'm beginning to think that we're all bad apples.

soldiers killing each other

I've compiled a list of 17 instances of soldier-on-soldier killing, including a case of friendly fire (Pat Tillman), a case of harassment leading to suicide (Adrian Wilhelm), and a case reported as suicide, but believed by her family to be murder after rape (Lavena Johnson).  That comes to 39 dead and 35 severely wounded (most of the wounded and many of the deaths were at Fort Hood in Nov. 2009).  Twenty service members have been charged in the crimes.  The majority of instances seemed to be eruptions of violence fueled by drink or drugs, though a few had ideological implications.  I have no idea how this stacks up statistically with murders in a similar demographic, nor how many cases have gone unreported), but I do know that most of those charged were stationed in or had recently returned from Iraq or Afghanistan and all had ready access to weapons.  I'll post the chart with details soon.