More Military Horror Stories

    

And we were told that Abu Ghraib was the responsibility of "bad apples"...

American soldiers keeping fingers as souvenirs… photographs of mutilated corpses swapped in a bizarre “Top Trumps” culture… posing for grinning photographs with severed heads… yep, it’s the thoroughly modern military. 

And let’s not kid ourselves that this is an American disease.  What is happening  everywhere – The Balkans, Chechnya, Cambodia, Africa – is that armies, freed from any moral or judicial constraint, sink to the basest of inhuman actions, usually with the collusion of their political masters.  Last week’s Panorama on the British army’s shocking lack of responsiveness to allegations of murder and torture  brought the message uncomfortably into UK sitting rooms. 

The modern military – of all countries – is morally bankrupt because they have for generations promulgated the notion that anyone going into battle is some sort of saintly warrior/poet, or that they are “our boys” and deserve unqualified and hysterical support.  Not so. They are paid professionals, and, as such, should be held to the same professional accountability as teachers, doctors, etc. Those who behave like professionals deserve the best equipment, health care and salaries: but because that accountability has never adequately been imposed, the “bad apple” argument is now thoroughly discredited because the vast majority of soldiers know they will, ultimately, escape any form of justice.   And I think we suffer from the same myths regarding the police. Give someone a gun and a uniform of some sort, they should be held more accountable: yet it seems we are happy to hold them to less.

Shoot them, bomb them and… MICROWAVE them!

Active Denial System

News that the US is testing a crowd-control microwave weapon in Afghanistan.

At the same time, US companies like JP Morgan are investigating the massive mineral deposits in the country for potential exploitation.

Yeah, what an honourable war this is…

Thoroughly Morally Bankrupt Military

So the Paras behaved badly on Bloody Sunday: tell us something we didn’t know 40 years ago.  As ever, men with guns and what they believed was a licence to kill went on the rampage and shot innocent civilians.  The fact that it has taken so long to decide that – and still no prosecutions – has merely encouraged armies around the world to continue their policy of doing whatever the fuck they like.

The “bad apple” argument doesn’t wash anymore, not when revelations about military brutality against civilians are an almost daily occurrence.  Forget the glossy recruiting adverts showing soldiers helping civilians in disaster areas: just one example of troops overstepping the mark into illegal violence is enough to tarnish that image irreparably. 

Just today:

• Wikileaks (heroes for the release of the video of the shooting of Reuters journalists by Apache helicopters in Iraq) promise to leak video of the infamous Garani air strike, in which the Afghans say 140 civilians were killed.  Of course, the US military dispute that: they seem comfortable with their figure of 30 civilian dead.  This coming at a time when the Pentagon are reported to be searching for Australian Wikilieaks founder  Julian Assange, to do to him God knows what.  It is chilling how many US forums call for his incarceration in Gitmo or his execution.
• Five US soldiers charged with premeditated murder of civilians in Afghanistan.
• The owner  of officially-sanctioned mercenaries Blackwater, Erik Prince, seems set to flee the US to take refuge in the United Arab Emirates, where he will be free from extradition proceedings,  to avoid a slew of gun-running and conspiracy charges.

And, of course, in the last few weeks, we’ve had Mossad agents arrested in Poland for their illegal use of passports in the Dubai assassination plot and Israeli commandos killing Turkish peace activists while raiding a ship in international waters.

The demands of our politicians and media for unqualified support for “our boys” mean nothing unless soldiers can be held to the highest standards.  Those who do their jobs, who are wounded in battle, who face horrendous situations and still maintain their dignity and professionalism – these soldiers deserve the best equipment, the best health care, the best wages, the most respect.  But while the system delays and obfuscates, while it covers up corruption and murder, while it tries to maintain the fiction that anyone wearing the right  uniform is automatically some sort of warrior-poet-saint, I can’t help but  look at it all with suspicion and cynicism.