by Klaus Rohrich
November 22, 2004
The shooting of an unarmed wounded combatant by a U.S. Marine in a Fallujah mosque last week has set off a firestorm of outrage throughout the West. The incident was videotaped by NBC freelance, Kevin Sites and then shown on national and international television. Of course, extensive protests by Sunni Muslims were held throughout Iraq. Coincidentally on the same day U.S. troops discovered the badly mutilated body of Margaret Porter Hassan, an Irish aid worker in charge of CaRE in Iraq. Previously on several occasions a number of westerners had been taken hostage and executed by slow decapitation. Margaret Hassan’s execution by a bullet through the head and the decapitations of american, British and Italian hostages were also filmed for posterity and shown around the world on international television. For some reason, the Sunni Muslims didn’t seem to have a problem with these incidents.
What is interesting to me is how quick our reporters and media personalities are to condemn sordid acts that are committed by U.S. or allied soldiers and how “understanding” they appear to be about atrocities committed against westerners. The disparity in reactions to the killing of Margaret Hassan and the shooting of the wounded insurgent in that mosque are like night and day, as if somehow atrocities committed against individuals by Iraqi and al Qaeda insurgents were somehow excusable and any actions undertaken by the U.S. military were proof of their inherent evilness.
amnesty International was quick to say "The deliberate shooting of unarmed and wounded fighters who pose no immediate threat is a war crime under international law, and there is therefore an obligation on the U.S. authorities to investigate all such reports and to hold perpetrators of such crimes accountable before the law." However, amnesty seemed strangely silent about Hassan and the others.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel was quick to editorialize about the incident: “The "fog of war" can explain and perhaps even justify certain things. But Saturday's shooting did not occur during the tumult of a firefight. It occurred the day after one. It is true that Iraqi insurgents sometimes rig corpses with booby traps. But that could not have been a matter of concern on Saturday, since Marines had treated the wounded at the mosque the day earlier and taken their weapons from them.
“Of course, even if it was unprovoked, the shooting of that Iraqi insurgent was not nearly as horrible as the all-but-certain murder of Margaret Hassan, the Dublin-born woman who was kidnapped last month by insurgents. For one thing, Hassan was an aid worker devoted to saving Iraqi lives. She was the victim of moral monsters. It is not too much to expect that U.S. soldiers should adhere to a loftier standard. War is a horrible thing, but it can't be allowed to degenerate into a free-for-all.” [Emphasis added] and this came from the heartland. Some of the other comments were not quite so balanced.
The idea that americans must be held to a higher standard is ludicrous, given that the people they are fighting are adhering to no standard other than to kill and maim as many people- military or civilian, as they possibly can. Yes, the Marines did treat and disarm the wounded in the mosque the previous day, but who’s to say they were not joined by others ready and willing to kill more americans? It’s easy to write about “the fog of war” from a warm comfy office in Milwaukee, where one’s most pressing worry is making it across town in time to join one’s friends for dinner and a show. But the Marine who allegedly killed the wounded, unarmed “insurgent” had taken a gunshot in the face the previous day, had lost his friends to booby-trapped bodies and “wounded” Iraqis playing opossum. How can anyone who has not experienced this deign to second-guess this soldier’s actions? But the fact that so much of the mainstream media appears to be doing so is a testament to how out of touch they really are with the reality of our situation.
We in the West tend to view everyone, including Islamist Terrorists through the rosy paradigm of our own personal frames of reference. We think and believe that people everywhere have the same values that we do. Hence, we cannot comprehend a hatred toward us so visceral and strong that nothing but our total destruction would allay it. and that, I believe is our achilles heel. If we continue on this vein, the unthinkable could well happen, as no amount of negotiation or hand wringing about “root causes” will change anything.
The war in Iraq is not a law-enforcement operation, contrary to what many would have us believe. It is a clash of cultures that is laying bare our total lack of understanding of what we are really facing. Thus precipitous actions on the part of some of our troops are inevitable. That is not to say that they should be allowed to act outside the framework of the rules of engagement, but to make an example of a young man who has continuously fought for close to seven days, lost close friends and was personally injured under fire is preposterous. Given the circumstances he found himself in and knowing what he learned from fighting this enemy over the past few months, this young Marine did what in his judgment was the right thing to do.