Making Haditha My Lai

The Washington Post's editorial, "What Happened in Haditha," is another example of a trial by media and an agenda-driven construction of a reality.

Witness the delight that the Left takes in the Haditha story.

PRESIDENT BUSH said last week that "the biggest mistake" the United States had made in Iraq was the mistreatment of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison, adding, "We've been paying for that for a long period of time." Now another case of American misconduct may add greatly to that cost. The day after Mr. Bush spoke, The Post and other newspapers reported that some members of a Marine unit may soon be charged with murder, among other offenses, for the slaying of up to 24 Iraqis, including women and small children, in the town of Haditha in November. Other Marines may be culpable in trying to cover up the crime.

Accounts provided to The Post and other news organizations -- including Time magazine, which first reported on the incident in March -- describe a horrific and shameful episode. After a roadside bomb exploded near a Marine convoy, killing a corporal, a number of members of a Marine company allegedly went on a rampage, entering houses and methodically gunning down the families they found inside.

The "allegedly" gets lost in the shuffle.

If Marines killed innocents "in cold blood," as John Murtha loves to put it, they must be tried and held accountable for the atrocities they committed.

Gunning down families is horrific. No justification can be made for it, just as no justification can be made for the 9/11 attacks or other acts of terrorism.

It is worth noting that the individuals condemning the Marines are likely the same ones who called for Americans to understand why we're so hated by the Arab World and others. What is it that we did to bring the 9/11 attacks on ourselves?

Look at the flip side.

Has anyone told the Iraqis to make an effort to understand the allegedly guilty Marines, like Americans were told after 9/11 to examine why we deserved to be attacked? What is it that those Iraqi men, women, and children did to bring the killings on themselves? Why do the Marines hate them so much?

That's pretty twisted, isn't it?

I wouldn't expect that from the Iraqis. There's nothing to understand. There's no excuse for intentionally slaughtering innocents, ever. Accordingly, there was no excuse for murdering 3000 men, women, and children on September 11, 2001. There's nothing to understand about the events of that horrible day other than that the perpetrators were killers.

...Though we don't yet know the details of the Marine investigation, there is no way to mitigate or excuse such despicable acts if they occurred, and hardly any way to alleviate the tremendous damage that will be done to U.S. honor in Iraq and around the world. The only remediation can come through a thorough investigation, the full disclosure of all misconduct and accountability for all those responsible. In that respect, the Marines began poorly: Serious investigation of the events in Haditha began only after Time shared its findings with the Pentagon. Reports that some senior officers may have been following the events in Haditha or were aware that an unusual number of civilians had been killed raise troubling questions about whether crimes were deliberately overlooked.

"WE DON'T YET KNOW THE DETAILS OF THE MARINE INVESTIGATION."

That's important to keep in mind. There must be full disclosure and punishment for any wrongdoing by all parties involved.

That said, it's wrong for opportunists to make political hay out of Haditha and exploit the matter to advance an agenda. That endangers our troops, and undermines their mission.

The alleged crimes of a few cannot be allowed to taint those serving with bravery and honor.

Let the investigation play out. The details will be revealed when it's completed.

If the allegations are true, that some Marines killed indiscriminately and others covered up for them, then that is a reflection on those individuals only -- not the Marines, not the mission, not the United States.

I have a real problem with so many shameless politicians and the Old Media taking pleasure in the possibility that Marines murdered Iraqi civilians, and their implications that such behavior is the norm.

They don't hesitate to disparage our troops, in order to move their anti-Bush, anti-Iraq war agenda forward.

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Do you want propaganda or do you want to know the truth?

If you've already determined the guilt of the Marines, you'll enjoy this account from Aljazeera.

John Murtha is depicted as a hero, and United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) is praised for its efforts to oppose the "U.S. 'government's policy of permanent warfare and empire-building.'"

The Aljazeera report includes this press release from UFPJ, "Haditha Massacre is Iraq's My Lai."

19 May 2006, New York, New York--Appearing on "Hardball with Chris Matthews" on Wednesday, Rep. John Murtha (D-Penn.) confirmed that, in an incident occurring in Haditha, Iraq, last November, Marines killed 23 Iraqi civilians, including women and children, "in cold blood" as revenge for the death of a Marine from an IED. Asked by Matthews, whether by "in cold blood" he meant that the killings were like those in the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, Murtha said they were. Military sources consulted by other media outlets have confirmed those claims.

At a press conference on Thursday, May 18, Congressperson John Murtha (D-OH) said, "It's much worse than reported in Time magazine. There was no firefight. There was no IED that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood. And that's what the report is going to tell."

"The massacre of up to 500 Vietnamese civilians in the village of My Lai was the tip of an iceberg of atrocities," said Rahul Mahajan, a United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) spokesperson. "The same is true of the Haditha massacre. Although it is the largest documented example of the deliberate mass murder of civilians (there are smaller ones), it joins a series of actions that, while short of this degree of cold-blooded brutality, involve neglect and indifference so pervasive and deep that it amounts to depraved indifference to Iraqi life."

Reports of the massacre include shooting people and leaving them to bleed to death on house raids, checkpoint killings, and indiscriminate return fire in crowded civilian neighborhoods.

Larger-scale offensives like the two assaults on Fallujah in 2004 and, to a lesser extent, operations in Tall Afar and other northern cities last summer and fall also caused massive civilian fatalities. In the April 2004 assault on Fallujah, the lesser of the two, it is estimated that 1000 people were killed, at least 600 of whom were civilians.

The Marines involved in the massacre originally tried to cover it up, claiming that the unarmed men they killed were insurgents and that the women and children killed were "collateral damage." Those claims were only challenged because they were contradicted by video evidence (of the corpses in the morgue). This raises serious questions about how often incidents like this occur and are successfully covered up.

According to British officers serving in Iraq, most recently Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster in an article in Military Review, U.S. troops show a widespread pattern of institutionalized racism toward Iraqis. This is part of the explanation of the atrocity. On top of that, the Iraq occupation, like the Vietnam War, repeatedly leads to "atrocity-producing situations," where crimes like the Haditha or My Lai massacres become almost inevitable. Marines who are guilty of murder should be severely punished, but the policy-makers should not be let off the hook. As long as the occupation continues, crimes like the Haditha massacre will as well.

UFPJ claims that our troops "show a widespread pattern of institutionalized racism toward Iraqis."

This is not a condemnation of ALLEGED atrocities committed by a few. This is an assault on all of our troops.

That's wrong.

That's aiding and abetting the enemy.