US Marines turn fire on civilians

I don't know if your post was directed at me, because it seems to be a standard school essay written by an 15 year old of some backwater school newspaper, carefully experimenting with big words such as "Diplomacy", "inhumanity" and "terms", spiced with complex phrases such as "cover your eyes", "talk in grandiose terms", "live with yourself" and "he doesn't do it for money, fame or power" for the first time, and groping with words he has discovered in books and the press.

I don't know how old you are, but coming from somone who has never seen war, much less experienced the effects a war has on a country and on one's life, I find your posts next to ludicrous. I grew up in a country at war, did 5 years of compulsory military training in that time, had good friends on both sides of that conflict and lost good friends on both sides of that orgy of hatred and killing and even worked with your air force for one and a half years.

You, my friend, I would dare to say, have no idea what you are talking about when you make statements about who is defending whom. In the isolation of your monocultural world, I would seriously doubt that you have the ability to judge on exactly whose eyes are being covered, as you so proudly put it.

But I'll put it in simpler terms, so that you will be able to understand it this time:

If there is ever any soldier in that dirty cesspit of a war in Iraq, be it Iraqi or American, attempting to quiten his conscience or stregthen his resolve by thinking he is doing it for me, then, for my part, he can pack up his stuff and **** off home.

I'll sleep a lot better at night knowing that some more children will live to lead a meaningful life instead.

Two weeks ago when an Israeli bulldozer turned a protester into a carpark I said this:



Blaming Saddam for the civilian deaths that we cause is the same deal.

We started the war - we own the war, and everything that comes with it. Our* troops are firing upon civilians. The "anti-war" types you deride warned that this would happen.

Welcome to war. Now deal with it.

* When I say "Our troops" I'm being polite. AFAIK us Aussies haven't killed anyone we're not supposed to (yet). But I suppose if the war goes on long enough, we will.

Just wait until we actually get to Baghdad... I'm praying that we actually have some sort of reasonable plan to take the city, because if we're facing such stiff resistance from towns along the way then taking a metropolis of 5 million people could turn into an unspeakable disaster...

I suspect that Rumsfeld's plan involves a lot of SPECWAR operations. The troops will engage the Republican Guard surrounding Bagdad and meanwhile all the Seals, Delta Force, and other groups run around the city targeting leadership. That's been going on for sometime. A lot of reports have some of the explosions being directly set and not done by airial assault.

Whether this is sufficient is an other matter. Winning guerilla wars are difficult. Typically what is left over is difficult to really build a strong nation out of. Look at the aftermath of Spain's guerilla war with Napolean.

The hope is that at a sufficent level of defeat, the surrenders will begin. However clearly neutralizing the southern cities is now more important than it was in the initial attacks.

"Get some! Get Some! Get Some! Get Some!
Anyone who runs is V.C., anyone who stands still is a well-disciplined V.C.! [...]
Ain't war hell?!"
(Helicopter door gunner, Full Metal Jacket)

PB.

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Interesting points made here. But some crucial details appear to have been glossed over.

Look over the numbers of civilians and vehicles again. You'll notice something: not enough civilians. Or, more to the point, fewer civilians then vehicles; there is no way they could have been driving. This was a military convoy, which for some reason had a few civilians among their number.

A great and terrible shame, yes. But also an accident.

While not directly related to the story that started this thread, some information has come out about those women and children who were killed yesterday. Arab TV had an interview with their cleric who said that they were forced into the van by the Iraqi irregulars and their husbands held hostage. Rather intersting interview, if true.

It isn't on the Fox website yet, but was a video off one of the Arab stations (Al Jazeera?) that was widely shown all night.

Here's a link to the story. (Yes I know WorldNet Daily is a conservative news source - but they are just quoting the video)

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/artic...RTICLE_ID=31829

Absolute ********.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003...8962796085.html

Well, if you really claim that US Troops are fighting to make this world a better place i ask you: Where were american troops 1998 in Rwanda/Uganda when 2 Million Tutsis were slaughtered? And thats just one example out of many!

I will believe that the soldiers are not doing it for money, fame or power but the US government that sends them is certainly doing it for money and power, maybe even for fame in a historical perspektive.

You also forget who was in Power in 1998. The Man who got 18 Special forces soldiers killed because he didn't give them the proper Hardware for the Mission.

The same place the German troops were and especially the UN. Walking on the other side of the road pretending not to see the bleeding body. We all should be ashamed of our behavior. We all ignored that genocide until it was too late and 800,000 were already hacked to death.

I'm ashamed, aren't you?

Yes, but he flew to Rwanda afterwards to apologize. All better now.

Sure i was ashamed and i never said i didnt blame every western government for not acting but i am not walking around telling everyone how americans are always fighting for freedom and a better world if there are enough examples where they didnt act even though they could have acted. And thats because they didnt gain anything, even though i think thats also the reason why other western government didnt act.

What I don't understand is why you seem to think it has to be either/or? I thought Europeans were supposed to be the ones who see the shades of gray, and that it is us dumb Americans who see everything in black and white.

Most wars are fought for a variety of reasons. It is very rare that one reason alone is so compelling that war is justified. I'm perfectly comfortable in saying that part of the justification for going to war against Saddam's regime is self-interest. That's been the explicit rationale all along. Why else do you think that there is concern about weapons of mass destruction? It is because of the fear that they could be used. In other words, it is self interest.

But that doesn't eliminate the other explanations. Disposing of a horrible regime will be an objective good. Indirectly, the US expects to benefit from a world with one less tyrant. But the direct benefit will be felt by the Iraqi people.

Is it so difficult to see that these are complementary and overlapping goals? Why does it have to be either/or?

And that would have been? B-52s carpet bombing Mogadishu? The incidents in Mogadishu were the US special forces were ambushed by Somali clan members and members of the civilain population was not an isolated one. A week or two before that happened, a Pakistani patrol was ambushed and slaughtered to a man. Why that wasn't taken into account I don't know. But it certainly didn't have anything to do with hardware. The operation was badly planned and highly risky, considering that by then everyone knew that the Somali population was not looking at the UN mission as a bunch of friends. The whole mission was also not well coordinated. The various nations troop units were squabbling with one another and accusing one another of various things. The Italians were accused by the US of trading information about UN troop movements to the the Somalis in exchange for safe passage on their patrols.

Bulldozing the city and slaughtering all the civilians there would not exactly have been in line with the UN's mission there, which was to end the war in the first place. Why no one realised that the Somalis clan bonds would be stronger than their looking at the UN mission as peace bringers is also open to question. Before the US mission went awry, there had aleady been a number of incidents, one most notably in a Canadian army camp, where Somalis trying to steal food were tortured to death. News about tha got out to the locals and probably did not exactly so much to improve the UN mission's image amongst them.

I find it both typical and ridiculous that, as usual, for some reason only known by the lunatic fringe amongst this board, that Clinton is once agains blamed for all things that ever went wrong in the USA according to them. No one had had any experience of Somali clan structures by then, and as they are doing today in Iraq they automatically assumed that the Somalis would welcome "democracy". The inability to learn from past mistakes and the tendancy to blame figures who had litle culpibility in those mistakes, seems to be a trend. Thing is, who are you going to blame if the war in Iraq goes tits up and becomes a bloodbath and a massacre.

Oh yes, I forgot, silly of me. France.

The screeching of the far right for every person to take responsibility for their owns lives and actions doesn't seem to apply to themselves.

That person who said that history repeats itself was a very wise person.

I think the day you'ld really be ashamed Simey, is the day that God is going to come down from heaven and admit that he didn't actually want the job in the first place.

Your quote about Clinton apologising to the people of Rwanda is quite absurd. The year before the massacres started, in 1993, the US lost 18 soldiers in that mission in Mogadishu in Somalia. I somehow doubt that your country's people would have approved a large (because anything short of large would not have had any chance of working) military mission to Rwanda. If I remember correctly, the images of that dead American soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu were then still very much present in the minds of the American public.

I find it so typical of you to point out that some other country or President (the Germans and Clinton this time instead of the French for a change) is at fault. As if you didn't know, the German constitution (the one that the Americans "helped" them make after World War II) forbade the German military from duty outside Germany's border at that time. The German constitution was ammended to allow German military involvement outside of Germany in the action in Bosnia in 1995, a year later, where the US, UK, France, Holland and others finally did intervene in the NATO sponsored action there to end the genocide taking place by Bosnian Serbs against Bosnian Muslims. Something which gained the US a very favourable image abroad at the time, by the way.

Ironically, very ironically, the French defintely were culpable to a certain extent in Rwanda. The cabal of murky French African politics and business deals, under the Mitterand government was a continuation of business as usual for France's attitude to Africa. The Distinction between Hutu's and Tutsi's only became a buring point in Rwanda and Burundi, when French colonial powers in the previous century empowered the Tutsi to have privileges not accorded to the Hutu, something which simmered away for almost a century. The region was split into Rwanda and Burndi, with the the Hutu being in power in Rwanda, and the Tutsi in Burundi. Tribal animosity and government failures to do anything of substance were turned against the Tutsi in Rwanda by Nazi like propagnada radio broadcasts (Radio "Milles Colines"). The French knew this, did nothing to intervene or stop these actions, and had supplied the Hutu led army with weapons and training in previous years. They would definitely have had the power to do so, but for them, just like for just about every other western nation, Rwanda had no resources worth anything to the west and, because of this was mostly ignored.

It was only after Mitterand had died and after some French journalists started finally doing some investigative journalism into the behind the scenes going ons, that the filthy, diseased and corrupt band of criminals in high office and industry started coming to light in France. This triggered off what has been the biggest round of judicial investigations into corruption between industry and politics in Frances history. These investigations led to the trials of many top managers in French industry and cases aginst many French politicians, including an attempted one against Chirac for accepting bribes while he was Mayor of Paris. It also led to the collapse of Helmut Kohl, the long time Chancellor of Germany, for his complicity in accepting illegal "donations" for his party's finances from the French oil company, TotalFinalElf, in exchange for contracts in Gas stations in eastern Germany. TotalFinalElf is now on trial in France for those and other illegal bribes and payments after years of investigation by the French judiciary.

The next time you'ld like to point fingers about how posters in Europe only see the good side of their countries, please remember this post.

"The United Nations? In 1994, Kofi Annan, then head of the UN's peacekeeping operations, blocked any use of UN troops in Rwanda even though he was told by his representative there that the genocide could be stopped before it started.

Bill Clinton refused to act as well, instructing the State Department not to use the word genocide because then the United States would be expected to do something. And President Clinton instructed Madeleine Albright, then our representative to the UN, to block any possible attempts to intervene despite Kofi Annan. Some 800,000 lives could have been saved."


That is why nothing was done in Rwanda.
Below is an interesting Article from a protestor of Vietnam

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0314/hentoff.php

No one had had any experience of Somali clan structures by then, and as they are doing today in Iraq they automatically assumed that the Somalis would welcome "democracy".

Not really equivalent. For one Iraq was much more stable and much more educated than Somalia. For an other in Somalia we were in with fairly limited goals - capturing a warlord and distributing food aid. Also there was a massive civil war with many sides. In Iraq you basically have only two sides.

Further the Somali situation really was a matter of not having the hardware. The Pakistani did have heavy armor. The general on the ground was being told to find Aristide without the proper equipment because Clinton didn't want to send the message he felt extra equipment would give. Which was fine. But in that case he should have told the general to stop going after Aristide like he was.

The problem really was mission creep, a lack of support, and then not knowing what to do about the humanitarian crisis.

However Somalia was important in that it was the straw that broke the camel's back in the US with respect to George Bush's "New World Order." The somewhat naive view of nation building was never taken the same. Unfortanately that also affected Ruwanda where we could have done something but fear of Somalia (and public opinion) kept us from doing anything. Part of the reason the UN did nothing was pressure from Clinton.

Horrible.

But I honestly think most of Africa has to be considered different from nations like Iraq, Iran or so forth that are more advanced. Some level of stability and education is needed before democracy can really work.

That was the problem Clinton din't want to send a message that the extra equipment would send. It cost the needless death of special forces soldiers. The pressure from Clinton for the reason why the UN didn't do anything was the same reason Clinton didn't want to give the troops the proper equipment to do the job. He Loaths the Military and because he feels that the Military the new World Meals on wheels instead of a fighting force.