Faced with this disgusting atrocity, I take a small measure of solace in the fact that our guys murder women and children when they "snap".

For folks like, say, the members of Hamas, it's their pre-planned agenda.

apos mate

"Iraq, like Vietnam, will go down as a dark stain on our national history, another episode where we lost our moral bearing and came to resemble that which we set out to defeat."

Sorry to rain on your parade, but in Vietnam, America was on the criminals' side. The people America fought were the good guys. Most of the people killed were civilians. During Operation Phoenix, the CIA and its proxies tortured between 20,000 and 40,000 people to death.

In Iraq, Saddam was America's man. His reign of terror (which has been supplanted by America's reign of terror) was conducted under the benevolent gaze of America's government.

It doesn't take a war to turn a man into an ego-driven brute. A gun and some alcohol will do the trick for anyone that way inclined.

America's 'moral bearing' has been slipping away, war by war, for many years.

"Good guys" is a relative term when applied to Vietnam. We were backing a nasty regime, to be sure, but there weren't any angels involved. And yes, as with all wars, civilians took the brunt of the violence.

RNC tool #1, avoiding responsibility by distraction and moral relativism: "Look!! Over there!! Other people are bad! Our badness is less bad than other people's badness."

"Good" people doing bad things is objectively worse that "bad" people doing bad things.

Yep, that's our Gaijin, always keeping his eye on the ball. Just remember, "our" atrocities are never as bad as "theirs" and you'll never lose any sleep.

This guy is a pal of yours why, 'stropher?

Cross-posted with you, Effjay. Glad to see the "GB is a tool" meme catching on around here...

GB is has demonstrated himself to be a rational person who is willing to engage in substantive debate. Not only that, he has a healthy sense of humor, a seemingly rare quality among conservatives on the net. To simply label him "a tool" serves no productive purpose whatsoever.

Because I don't predicate my friendships on political agreement. A tool has to be used by somebody. GB is just a guy with an opinion you don't agree with, not a political operative or an in-pocket journalist. By you guys' definition, I'm a tool of the Democratic Party.

Perhaps that's why he and I get along. We bask in our shared toolishness.

My Alter and apostropher, read that comment up top again. Do you find the murder of civilians by US soldiers a source of shame or solace? Is it something you think reasonable people can just agree to disagree on?

You mean the one where he calls it a "disgusting atrocity"?

Lemuel, if you think I find solace in the fact that our troops killed women and children, you are either intentionally misrepresenting what I wrote, or are mentally challenged.

Meanwhile, Lemmy, folks like you and Effjay Annongay totally miss the point. Intent makes all the difference in the world when sizing up a crime. If you kill someone in a fit of rage, you'll get a very different punishment in the American judicial system (and many, many others) than if you carry out a pre-planned killing. The former is manslaughter (or perhaps not even that, if the accused is found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity). The latter is premeditated murder.

If you don't see any difference between (1) a group like Hamas that takes as its defining mission the deliberate extermination of civilians, including women and children, and (2) a few Marines, among hundreds of thousands of US troops, who tragically "snapped" after one of their fellow Marines was killed, then you lack the ability to have any meaningful discussion of the matter. Go comment on one of the astronomy posts or something.

Or a 20 year old unemployed Palestinian man who 'tragically snapped' after his family was killed by Israeli soldiers?

Anyone can "snap", of course, even Palestinians. But, two points:

(1) Suicide bombings take time and advance planning. It's not the same thing as "snapping" when you're a soldier in battle with a machine gun in your hands.

(2) Many (most?) Palestinian suicide bombers are young men brainwashed from childhood to believe that suicide bombing is a heroic deed that will make their family proud and earn them martyrdom and paradise in the afterlife. "Snapping" has nothing to do with it at all.

What's not the same on point 1 and what's your source on point 2?

GB, I expected that you would condemn the "disgusting atrocity" at Haditha. Happy that we're on accord with that.

As to lemuel and Effjay, I think you are correct only with respect to lemuel's last point, where he has let his emotions get in the way of his logic - you are right to call him on it.

However, lemuel and Effjay have a fair point in noticing that what you're doing is an attempt to psychologically reduce the moral burden of the consequences of America's actions by shifting attention to the behavior of others - an understandable, natural effort, but a trap. This is basically the "we're right, they're wrong; we're acting with a good purpose, them with a bad one; they're inhuman butcherers, we're not" impulse. All sides to a dispute do it; lefties for example frequently fail to condemn the rhetorical excess of others on the left, saying that whatever lefties do is not as bad as what Bush and his supporters do.

Did you notice that you trotted out Hamas, which is an Israeli opponent and is not involved in the Iraq war, as a contrast to "our guys"? I did.

I leave for you and others the proper comparison between Hamas and the Israelis. Personally, I am more interested in exploring the consequences of the past few decades of American foreign policy - not limited to the Bush administrations - and our collective moral responsibility for them, in contrast to the wave of terror that we, our allies and others have experienced. Even in the context simply of Iraq, does all of our supposed good intentions justify the suffering that we have caused or unleashed? It's tough to do the calculation when the administration still won't clearly tell us what our motivation and objectives were/are.

TT, if you don't like the Hamas example, just substitute the "insurgent" groups in Iraq that deliberately suicide-bomb crowds of civilians and videotape themselves beheading helpless hostages.

I'm sure Wolfowitz, Scalia, or GaBiker are rational people who can discuss substance well. At the end of the day, its always Party above all for them, the defining characteristic of the modern Republican and the reason for their electoral success (as well as their continuing failures as a governing entity). The fact that GB is reduced to comparing the Republican occupation of Iraq to terrorist groups tells you everything you need to know in that regard.

GB wears the US blinders that only see the American point of view; and falsely compares this latest incident from the Republican occupation to the entire history of Hamas. How many civilian dead are there in Iraq, GB? How big a slideshow do you want?

Having a sophist tell me to comment on astronomy is a sick joke. The dead of an unjustly invaded country are dead - their survivors don't care why someone pulled the trigger. The child whose entire family was gunned down in front of her eyes, the WP victims, the man whose son was crushed under a humvee - the intentions of the responsible American matter to you but that's just because the Iraqi people and their losses are abstractions, and fodder for talking points.

Lemuel, if you think I find solace in the fact that our troops killed women and children, you are either intentionally misrepresenting what I wrote, or are mentally challenged.

Or a third possibility: I read the sentence, "I take a small measure of solace in the fact that our guys murder women and children when they 'snap'." Which is what you wrote.

Intent makes all the difference in the world when sizing up a crime.

There's some truth to that, as a defense of the soldiers invovled. (Though I'm inclined to think that this sort of thing would happen less if it were treated as a serious crime.) But it is not in any way a defense of those responsible for the war. Bush and Cheney -- and their tools, like you -- have not seen a buddy killed. Those who supported this war bear full moral responsibility for its predictable results. Will the ends, will the means.

As for Hamas, far be it from me to defend them. But, I am pretty confident that your average Palestinian has far more cause for rage than any US Marine. As for their leaders -- yes, they are willingly to sacrifice innnocent lives for an abstract, immoral cause. Just like ours.

I do agree with you on one point: the astronomy posts here are great.

Uh... you conveniently left out the beginning of that sentence, which reads, "Faced with this disgusting atrocity..." And that sentence was then immediately followed by, "For folks like, say, the members of Hamas, it's their pre-planned agenda."

For anyone not trying to play cute games, the meaning of the comment is clear: Killing innocent civilians is a terrible thing, but at least when our guys do it it's because they "snapped", instead of as part of a deliberate plan.

I suspect it was clear to you, too, but you thought it would be fun to misrepresent my position. Whatever.

I'm not sure how well established this is in lingustics, but it seems to me that when you have a sentence of the form, "Though A, B" or "A, though B," you're putting the main emphasis on A. And when you say "A, but B," you're putting the main emphasis on B. Worth thinking about. Also worth thinking about is that Hamas has nothing whatsoever to do with atrocities committed by American soldiers.

Also worth thinking about is that Hamas has nothing whatsoever to do with atrocities committed by American soldiers.

Well, they are connected via Kevin Bacon (despite the fact that bacon is haraam).

Matt,

Don't much about linguistics, but grammatically, constructions of the form "When faced by this disgusting atrocity" are called subordinate clauses for a reason.

GB, who unleased the violence in Iraq tha t causes our guys to snap?

Was our action deliberate, or unintentional? What is the moral calculus involved?

The conflict is immediate there, and we are felt by most to be occupiers (even for those who welcomed liberation from Saddam). Here the conflict is remote, and we have little information on the many Iraqi lives lost, and discount them.

GB - Please don't ever be surprised by a request for more information on my part. This whole issue is a very interesting one to me. I guess I just consider the perpetrators of the disgusting atrocities against innocent Israeli civilians to have snapped. For whatever reason, they have gone off the deep end and find it necessary to shed blood and think innocent people - as opposed to occupying / enemy soldiers - are fit targets. A guy with an M-16 can snap on the spot; for a budding young terrorist, immediate rage won't get very far against armed security forces and builds up. He'll be exercising power the only way he thinks he can. Thank you for the articles. Although they didn't address exactly what I was pondering, they certainly remind me that religious zealotry is civilization's enemy.

However, just because what these people do is unforgivable, I am not willing to turn a blind eye to the horrible conditions - imposed by the inhumane actions of the Israeli government - that make such "snapping" so commonplace. Calling my reference to Israeli soldiers killing palestinians a "melodramatic hypothetical" is rather disingenuous, don't you agree?

Back to Haditha, it's naive to imagine these soldiers were happily handing out candy bars to Iraqi children every day until one comrade died and they blew their colllective gasket. There's a lot of ignorance steeping and hatred brewing in the heads of planty of soldiers as they're kept in Iraq. No matter how un-PC it is to imply anything about a US soldier is less than honorable, I've heard "sand nigger" and "towel head" enough times in my life to know the step to "unhuman, unworthy of living" is a short one for many people. And I don't think that sentiment disqualifies you from service.

Sorry if I sounded snippy, Froz, but how would you have felt if I asked you for sources to back up the claim that Christian fundamentalists aren't big fans of homosexuality? It's just one of those things you don't expect to get called on.

Iraq is obviously an intensely stressful environment for our troops. I don't think they're handing out candy bars all the time. And hostile, racist attitudes can be the ugly consequence of spending time in a combat zone fighting an enemy of a particular ethnicity. I imagine these attitudes are even more common when the fighting takes place in urban areas against non-uniformed enemies who try to blend in with the civilian population.

In ages past, racism and brutality in war weren't a pressing problem, since no one cared about "winning hearts and minds"; they just cared about conquest and domination. But in the modern era, America rightly has different, better aims, and we ask our troops to be simultaneously killing machines and ambassadors for peace. I can't speak from experience here, but that strikes me as a tough line to walk. The amazing thing may be that our troops, by and large, are so disciplined that when something like Haditha happens, it's news.

(Also, on a separate, technical point: Marines, like the ones involved in the Haditha incident, are not soldiers, they're Marines. Soldiers are in the Army. "Troops" is a generic term that refers to people in any branch of the Armed Forces.)

No offense intended; none taken, GB. Thanks for the technical clarification but be on notice that I will likely use the words incorrectly again. I invite you to point that out when you see it.

Nah, once is enough for me. Probably not very important that you get it right unless you are talking to a Marine... :-)

Man, all this comity around here these days is making my teeth hurt.

Fuck you, clown.

Use of the terms "sand nigger" and "towel head" is rife not only in the military, but also among our domestic supporters of the Iraq war - along with using terms like "Islamofacists" and "terrorists" to describe Muslims generally. This objectification is a predictible consequence of our invasion. That Marines from time to time will "snap" is also to be expected.

GB says, "Killing innocent civilians is a terrible thing, but at least when our guys do it it's because they "snapped", instead of as part of a deliberate plan." I agree with this, as far as it goes, but it conveniently sidesteps any analysis of our responsibility for the war as a whole. Effjay correctly says, "Those who supported this war bear full moral responsibility for its predictable results," but this does not go far enough - those who support the war have moral responsibility for ALL of its consequences, and not merely its predictible ones. The "unknown unknowns" were considered and discounted in goin to war, in favor of whatever benefits were expected to be gained.

Wouldn't it be nice to know what the expected benefits and costs were, so we could actually consider whether the moral calculus in the decision to invade Iraq (and to not capture bin Laden)? Too bad the administration doesn't trust the American people enough to have this discussion. I get a bad feeling that maybe we were manipulated for private and partisan gain, but it's probably just me.

GB, by the way, my note to you about how you referred to Hamas as a contrast to "our guys" was intended as a follow up to our earlier dialogue about how you link our war in Iraq to your support for Israel. Do you understand how I might think that your support for Israel might subconsciously color your perceptions about the rest of our ME policy?

Use of the terms "sand n****r" and "towel head" is rife not only in the military, but also among our domestic supporters of the Iraq war - along with using terms like "Islamofacists" and "terrorists" to describe Muslims generally.

I call BS. I am sure you could Google up examples of people using those words in the manner you describe, but that's a long way from being "rife".

I feel quite confident in saying that most supporters of the war would like nothing better than for the Iraqi people to enjoy peace, freedom, democracy, and prosperity. They don't use terms like the crude epithets you cite to describe either the insurgents in particular, the Iraqi people, or Muslims in general.

Oh the other hand, I have seen the terms "Islamofascist" and "terrorist" used quite a bit, but almost always in connection with specific people or subgroups who are acting like, well, Islamofascists or terrorists — not all Muslims.

Well, Coulter is a freak show, and I'm not going to support her. Who knows why she got applause? Maybe something of a mob mentality took hold of the crowd. I'm sure you could get a similar reaction if you had Al Franken making fun of red-state "rednecks" at a MoveOn rally. Come to think about it, what about sites like Red State Update... why do those get the Liberal Seal of Approval? Aren't they just as bigoted and as guilty of negative stereotyping?

Getting back to the cases you cited above, you could argue that in each case, the person is referring to Muslims who are our enemies, and just failing to make that distinction as clear as it might be. That still doesn't make use of derogatory slurs acceptable, but, well, I have a hard time believing any of the folks you mentioned really would want to kill Muslims who are living peacefully amongst their neighbors.

Of course, a critical distinction we should keep in mind is that Islam is an ideology, not a race, and ideologies are not (yet) beyond the bounds of fair criticism and debate. Racially-tinged epithets from the likes of Coulter muddy the issue.

GB, I agree with your comments, and they prove my bigger point - that bigotry, negative stereotyping, derogatory slurs and racially-tinged epithets abound in all types of conflicts, muddy the issues and mess with our perceptions, by seeming to make conflicts into a black and white kind of struggle in which one's own side is always "right" and the others are not merely wrong, but the Devil incarnate.

We need to constantly struggle with the politics and perception of tribal identity - not only with respect to our own perceptions and justifications for our actions, but also with how our actions are likely to be perceived by others.

On that note, while I share your concern about sterotyping and mob-like behavior from the left (although I've never heard of Red State Update), may I remind you once again that I'm not a liberal? No offense taken, of course ;)

This whole 'snapping' thing doesn't give me a lot of solace. Wife beaters claim that they 'just snapped', and we still judge them harshly. Whether or not someones snapping reduces the guilt on them depends on how we feel about their reasons for snapping. In the case of wife beaters, we don't care that they commited the act in a fit of rage, when she didn't bring him a beer, because we don't think that's a very good reason for 'snapping'. If someone can 'snap' over something they shouldn't 'snap' over, then most people think of them as just as guilty.

For most of us, having your friend killed next to you seems like a good reason to snap, but I think that it is very different when you're in a war situation and your friend is standing there with a machine gun. In that situation, you should expect him to be killed, and if you can't handle that without committing atrocities than you really really really should not be in the army.

When you work with wife beaters and get them to analyse their thought processes, you discover that 'snapping' is not so thoughtless a process as they and it appears you believe. Even in a fit of rage, people plan and have the ability to reason. 'Snapping' is a choice, and you can be trained to make it a less appealing choice (one way is through harsh punishments, other ways include self-talk, etc). This is something that should be one of the main concerns in training anyone who is going to be given a gun.

As an aside to an earlier point, historically speaking, battles in the past weren't always brute attempts at domination. There were rules to war even before the Geneva convention, to the extent that when Henry gave the order to kill the prisoners at Agincourt because they didn't have enough men to keep them all under control (they were outnumbered 6 to 1) his orders were ignored. There have always been people who broke the rules of war, and in the past there was little that could be done, except not to invite them to parties, but there has been the notion of morality in the way you treat prisoners and enemy noncombatants for a long time.