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Our Soldiers are Victims of the American War Machine |
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by Alex Joyce
Email: alexj (nospam) loadmail.com |
08 May 2004
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Their stories reveal the purposeful fomenting of hatred against Iraqis by superior officers. They describe being taught how to fire an M16 by holding the trigger down long enough to say “die Iraqi die.” This training exercise dehumanizes Iraqis, desensitizing troops to the act of killing them. |
I heard the news today, oh boy. Bush Administration hacks and conservative pundits acting stunned and appalled at the behavior of American troops in Iraq. Don Rumsfeld testifying that the troops charged with torturing Iraqi prisoners are not representative of American Army. They seem to think our military has a respectable human rights history. At least most of them do. Rush Limbaugh, god bless him, doesn’t even pretend to care. Rush tells us to lighten up, he says troops were “just letting off some steam.” By framing these abuses as out of the ordinary, conservatives are able to pin full responsibility on the individual perpetrators, American soldiers. But the ‘aberrant behavior’ and ‘a few bad apples’ excuses are hogwash.
A Red Cross internal report on prisoner abuse in Iraq was recently leaked to the Wall Street Times. In it contained accounts of prisoner abuse and murder. Several prisoners were shot from guard towers for no identifiable reason. Prisoners were forced to where bags over their heads for days and subjected to repeated beatings. The conclusion of the report was that ‘it is impossible to conclude that these events were isolated.’ This report’s findings, added to a growing body of evidence, suggest that prisoner torture was widespread, systematic and encouraged by Army superiors. Indeed, the military is on the cutting edge of torture technique. In fact, our torture curriculum is so bad-ass, people travel to America from all over the world to learn the art of “tactical information extraction.” Topping the list of hot spots to study torture, for the third decade running, is the School of the Americas (SOA) in Fort Benning, Georgia.
A day after returning from the FTAA protests in Miami, Steve Payne and I drove up to Fort Benning for the annual SOA Protest. The protest was early on a Sunday morning so we drove in Saturday night and parked in a cozy spot at a local hotel. As we were rolling out our sleeping bags in the back of the truck, several young Army trainees came walking by drinking beers. They asked us about the chalk on the truck’s side window that read “Close the SOA.” The recruits were on a short vacation from basic training at Fort Benning and wanted to know why we didn’t like the SOA. We told them about it being used as a training center for the military leaders of governments we prop up around the world. Because these governments lack popular legitimacy, we told them, they must use brutal repression to maintain power. That’s where the SOA steps in to teach military leadership how to train an army capable of subduing and subordinating the population.
This talk of training techniques led to the recruits comparing their experiences in basic training. Their stories reveal the purposeful fomenting of hatred against Iraqis by superior officers. They describe being taught how to fire an M16 by holding the trigger down long enough to say “die Iraqi die.” This training exercise dehumanizes Iraqis, desensitizing troops to the act of killing them. One of the recruits said that at first he was disturbed by the emphasis on killing Iraqis. But he said he had been “brainwashed” and proceeded to sight up an imaginary M16 and fire, repeating “die Iraqi die” with a satisfied smile on his face.
It is always easier to get a soldier to kill if they believe the people they are shooting are “evil” and “less than” themselves. The humiliation and killing of Iraqi prisoners by American troops is not surprising considering the Amy trains soldiers to hate Iraqis. The recruits we spoke to joined the military because they had no other options. They needed income and the Army was the only place hiring. These kids have no conception of the geopolitical context for our war on Iraq, they just needed a job. If asked by their superiors to “soften up” some prisoners, these guys would likely do as they were told. Soldiers are victims of the war machine which is driven by the economic and power elite in this country. Bush’s war for Iraqi oil is but one example. |
This work is in the public domain |
