We’re going to focus a little on the Iraq War this week, as Wednesday is the 5 year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Over the weekend, Iraq Veterans against the War gathered in Washington D.C. in a reprise of an event that happened back in 1971 called Winter Soldier. In both event, veterans publicized and protested war crimes and atrocities by the U.S. military. Here’s a news report on the recent event. Here’s a little of the testimony.
You can find lots of other coverage via this google blog search
Or via this youtube search
Posted in War, War Crimes | 4 Comments »Martin recently directed us to a statement from the head of the Vermont chapter of Iraq Veterans against the War, Matt Howard. Matt Howard was a corporal in the U.S. Marine corps. Here are some excerpts.
In 2003 I illegally invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq with 1st Tank battalion 1st Marine Division. My commander in chief unleashed the world’s fiercest fighting force upon the country and people of Iraq, and now those of us used and betrayed by him are demanding justice.
…
As a two-tour combat veteran of this brutal war, I have a responsibility to speak honestly and openly about what has been done and what continues to be done in our name. We veterans know that this war is not the one being sanitized on the nightly news. It has nothing to do with the liberation of the people of Iraq; instead it has everything to do with the subjugation and domination of these people in the name of U.S. imperial economic and strategic interests.
We did not go to war with the country of Iraq, we went to war with the people of Iraq. During the initial invasion we killed women. We killed children. We senselessly killed farm animals. We were the United States Marine Corps, not the Peace Corps, and we left a swath of death and destruction in our wake all the way to Baghdad.
Posted in War, War Crimes | No Comments »Read the rest of this news item »
Quote for the day
Wednesday, October 17th, 2007Between 1979 and 1987, the Unites States armed, trained, and financially backed the military forces of the government of El Salvador, which over the same period carried out a policy of ongoing, systematic murder against the Salvadoran population. … I am speaking of the systematic murder of over seventy thousand men, women, and children who were noncombatants–journalists, priests, nuns, teachers, labor organizers, students, political figures, and others. Roughly one percent of El Salvador’s population was destroyed. Also as a direct result of United States actions, another seventy thousand civilians were similarly murdered during the same period by the military government of Guatemala. Finally, and again during the same period, the United States created a force of counterrevolutionaries (the “contras”) to overthrow the revolutionary Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The contras … deliberately attacked defenseless civilians, including old people, women, and children.It is true that the United States did not itself carry out the systematic murder in any of these countries. Yet it put the bullets and guns in the hands of the murderers, trained the murderers how to use them, and organized them for that end. The United States might just as well have pulled the triggers of the guns itself. What concerns me is that the people of the United States, like the people of Nazi Germany, allowed their government to do such a thing.From How Holocausts Happen: The United States in Central America by Douglas Porpora
Iraq body count has documented the violent deaths of 80,000 noncombatants (read: journalists, priests, nuns, teachers, labor organizers, students, political figures, and others) in Iraq during the U.S. unprovoked invasion and ongoing occupation of that nation since 2003.
So here are my questions:
Posted in Quote for the Day, United States, War, War Crimes, What can we do? | 11 Comments »
- To what extent were “normal” citizens of Nazi Germany responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews?
- To what extent were “normal” U.S. citizens responsible for the deaths of 150,000+ noncombatants in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua in the 1980’s.
- To what extent am I responsible for the deaths of 80,000 “normal” Iraqi’s over the last 54 months?
- Did you even *know* about the whole thing in South America in the 80’s? When did you learn about it? I was between 6 and 15 years old during the Reagan years. I’m really just learning about this now, and finding it pretty disturbing.
- Will we here in the U.S. ever even be able to stop killing people on such large scales? Or are we more or less doomed to never learn/never change? Why or why not?
Upcoming Movie Review: In the Valley of Elah
Friday, September 21st, 2007Next Friday we will be reviewing the new movie In the Valley of Elah. It’s getting 67% over at Rotten Tomatoes, so it’s got to be at least watchable. If you get a chance, see the movie this week and join us to talk about it next Friday.
Posted in Movie Reviews, Videos, War, War Crimes | 5 Comments »
“Comfort Women”
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007In the news this week was the passage of House Resolution 121 (a non binding resolution) by the U.S. House of Representatives. The resolution describes the issue it is addresses thusly
the `comfort women’ system of forced military prostitution by the Government of Japan, considered unprecedented in its cruelty and magnitude, included gang rape, forced abortions, humiliation, and sexual violence resulting in mutilation, death, or eventual suicide in one of the largest cases of human trafficking in the 20th century;
And it accuses unnamed public officials in Japan of trying to deny the reality or magnitude of the “comfort women system”. It calls on the government of Japan to publicly, officially, and unequivocally acknowledge the crimes Japan committed with regards to this system.
Putting aside the question of the horror of forced prostitution and the crimes Japan committed during World War II, I find myself completely stymied by the audacity and arrogance of the resolution. Where has the U.S. publicly, unequivocally, and officially acknowledged it’s crimes during WWII? No, not the internment of Japanese Americans, which has been officially apologized for. How about the murder of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians by way of firebombing their cities and the dropping of two nuclear (note how I resisted mockingly writing “nucular” (or didn’t)) weapons?
Am I missing something? Is our government,
- whose armed forces are currently occupying a nation where 600+ civilians a week are dying under our occupation,
- which is currently denying pow’s a fair trial,
- which is apparently using torture at CIA black sites,
demanding another foreign nation to apologize for war crimes committed 60 years ago?
Posted in United States, War Crimes | 7 Comments »|