Iraq Vet From WikiLeaks Video Unit: Video Is Shocking But Shouldn't Be Surprising, This Is What They Are Trained to Do
Sign up to stay up to date on the latest headlines via email.
Josh Stieber was deployed to Iraq in February 2007 as part of the "surge" overseen by George W. Bush. An enthusiastic supporter of the war when he enlisted, Stieber served with Bravo Company 2-16, the same unit now depicted in the chilling video released last week by WikiLeaks.org, which shows American troops massacre 12 Iraqi civilians from an Apache helicopter, including two Reuters employees, photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver, Saeed Chmagh. Also killed was Saleh Mutashar, the father of two young children who were themselves injured on the scene, when their father attempted to pick up the wounded Saeed to take him to the hospital, only to get shot by U.S. troops.
Josh Stieber was not on the mission over Baghdad that day. By then he had already begun questioning the actions he was being asked to carry out in Iraq; he had refused an order from his commanding officers a few days earlier -- "a command that I didn't feel right in following," as he told Glenn Greenwald on Friday -- and he was kept behind. Otherwise, he said, "I would have been in that video."
AlterNet's Liliana Segura spoke with Stieber over the phone on Sunday night about his reaction to the video, the response from the Pentagon, and why the Iraq Veterans Against the War member has devoted himself to speaking out.
Liliana Segura: Today, on ABC's "This Week," Jake Tapper asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates about the Wikileaks video, asking if the release of that video damages the image of the U.S. in the world. And Gates basically said, it's "clearly not helpful" but "by the same token … it should not have any lasting consequences." How would you respond to this?
Josh Stieber: Yeah, I looked at the interview, and it seemed a little strange that he would say some of those things. I guess I agree that militarily speaking -- which is far different from saying morally speaking -- I don't think what was shown in the video is anything out of the ordinary and I think Gates reaffirmed that. There are a lot of troubling implications with that. But I would definitely disagree that the video will have no effect on America's image. Even some of the comments that I'm receiving as a former soldier from people internationally have been pretty harsh and, you know, I'm one of the few who have chosen to say 'this is wrong and I'm not going to be a part of it anymore,' and if I'm hearing that, then I can only imagine some of the things that are being said to people who haven't come to that conclusion.
LS: One of the really jarring things about watching the video is not only the fact that these are images that the average American is really insulated from -- but what WikiLeaks did, that I thought was very effective, was intersperse quotes from corporate media outlets like the Washington Post and the New York Times that create a narrative in which these soldiers were going out of their way to preserve civilian life -- and then the footage that follows clearly disproves what was being written in the media. It certainly doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in the media and the way it covers these wars.
JS: Yeah, one very interesting aspect that I think is very telling is that this particular story and stories like it are not new. If you look at David Finkel's book,The Good Soldiers, that was about the unit I was with and about the unit on the ground in this video. Pretty much word for word, this event is described in this book -- but there was no huge outrage about the event [when it was] described in words. And then there are other examples like the Winter Soldier testimonies; soldiers have been saying this and trying to tell people what's been going on and for one reason or another people haven't been listening. But now that it's right in front of them and they can watch it visually, the conversation is changing. I guess the reason why this video is such a big thing is that it's a visual that we haven't been receiving.
LS: Did you read Collateral Damage, by Chris Hedges and Laila al-Arian? It's about the question of Rules of Engagement at checkpoints in Iraq. They interviewed many veterans who describe the way in which the Rules of Engagement, in theory, look good on paper but once you're in that situation all bets are off, and the result has been a lot of dead civilians. I wonder how you compare what we see in this video to, for instance, civilians getting killed at checkpoints.
JS: I'm not quite as familiar with checkpoints, but I can definitely say that other policies and practices that we had contributed to civilians being killed. I think that this video and other reports that are similar should be pointing us to a larger conversation, that if the Secretary of Defense or someone that high up is trying to defend this, it should be pointing out pretty clearly the gap in logic that if we're over there claiming to be spreading freedom and democracy. Even if top military advisers are saying the actions in this video are justified in terms of military procedure, that's not even beginning to ask the question: Is this an effective or even logical way to try to help another country and spread these values that we claim that we're doing it in the name of?
LS: For me one of the irritating things about people discussing the Rules of Engagement in the wake of this video is that it seems like such a bankrupt conversation in a way because, how much do "Rules of Engagement" really mean when the sort of original engagement of this war, the invasion, was so clearly illegal. Are any of these deaths justified in an illegal war of aggression? It obviates the more important questions that you're talking about.
So, to back up a little bit, for you having served in this unit, what was your initial reaction to the video?
JS: My initial reaction was one of shock, to recognize exactly what this video was. And there's a difference between shock and surprise. When I watched the video -- and when the average American watches the video -- there is definitely a shock factor, but I don't think there should really be a surprise factor. This is what war looks like. This is nothing really out of the ordinary. The surprise and the outrage that there's been … have been detracting from a conversation that we can have, where we can take this video and say, 'Look I think this is telling of the contradictions about why we are there.' But it seems like a lot of the discussion has been about, 'Look at these few soldiers, look how horrible they are, we should just punish them.' If we only look at that, then we're missing this larger conversation. And if we take all our wrath and judgment out on them, then, yeah, they might get punished, but the larger system in general that created them -- they were following what we're trained with on a day to day basis -- then that larger system is going to continue to do the exact same thing.
LS: Right. It's sort of like the reaction to Abu Ghraib, where the underlings were disciplined but the torture program and those who designed it had nothing happen to them.
You mentioned the Winter Soldier hearings; one of the things that was very powerful was the way in which veterans spoke about the ways in which the military trained them to dehumanize Iraqis. That seems pretty clearly at play in the video; there's this casual disregard for the lives of even the two children who were injured in the van. When it comes to training and the way soldiers perceive Iraqis, are all Iraqis just viewed as a potential threat?
JS: Yeah, I mean, that's been an interesting thing to think over these last few days. The reality of the situation is that a lot of times when attacks [on U.S. troops] happen it's from a faceless enemy. A roadside bomb goes off and you don't see who set that bomb, or a sniper hits one of your friends and you don't know where the shot came from. There's this invisible enemy and it puts people on edge that any second, without knowing it, something can happen. So yeah, that kind of paranoia and that kind of fear that that situation creates combined with the military training, is a huge thing.
I've been thinking about it a lot since watching the video … Obviously the way the people in the helicopter were talking was very callous, but compared to things that I was being taught in basic training, from training videos that we had to watch, to cadences that we sang, the language in the helicopter was relatively mild. I've been thinking even more about our culture in general; going back to high school, I remember learning about the atomic bomb. It was never talked about as being morally wrong but that was a much larger example of people saying 'Yeah, innocent civilians are going to die … but so be it if it helps us accomplish our end goal.' So a lot of aspects of our society even outside the military justify the same mindset that are shown in the video.
lees verder: http://www.alternet.org/story/146411/
1 opmerking:
Omdat je dit plaatst onder mijn naam wil ik best een reaktie geven.
Wat Steiber vertelt verbaast mij helemaal niet zo, hij beschrijft volgens mij de dynamiek van een asymmetrische oorlog. Het is geen nieuws dat militairen worden getraind in een shoot first think later mentaliteit in geval van nood. Dat zijn dan jongens van nog geen of begin twintig, die hebben zelden iets van de wereld gezien buiten hun high school en komen dan in de chaos van Irak terecht. Wat verwacht je? Cowboys and Indians.
En wat verwacht je van de amerikaanse publieke opninie, van de journalistiek? Dat die een evenwichtig beeld zal schetsen? Nee natuurlijk. Op de meest genuanceerde nieuwszender die je in de USA kan bekijken, die waartoe men daar nog enigszins toegang heeft moet je buitenlands nieuws met een vergrootglas zoeken. En dan nog: Alleen als het heel direct verband houdt met amerikaans belang. Je kan in de USA gewoonweg niet aan nieuws komen met enige diepgang tenzij je actief zoekt op internet bijvoorbeeld. Joe Sixpack krijgt het niet te zien, het interesseert hem geen bal bovendien.
Een reactie posten