Haditha ..The indictment of U.S. troops was inevitable.

[Bonnie]

How can this be good for our troops or our country??

You knew it had to happen. Haditha, an "incident" involving American troops in Iraq, is now part of the erosion of support for the war in Iraq. The Iraq Syndrome has finally arrived.
This past Monday, Memorial Day, a driver down Manhattan's fast West Side Highway would have slowed at 46th Street to allow the crossing of a constant stream of visitors heading to the USS Intrepid, the aircraft-carrier museum on the Hudson River. It was a beautiful day but a hot day to stand on long lines in the open sun. A small squadron of planes flew up the Hudson in the solemn missing-man formation, with one plane trailing. Amid the sunshine, the chairman of the Intrepid museum, Arnold Fisher, said something to the gathered crowd no one could have expected to hear.
Mr. Fisher, whose family runs the Fisher House Foundation for the military, suggested that the men and women at arms were being forgotten. And he apologized to them. "I apologize to you for carrying the burden of this nation's commitment to freedom and liberty alone." Mr. Fisher's bitterness over the troops is a Cassandra cry, a portent. But why now?

Opinion polls put support for the war below 40%. Still, it has become obligatory now as a nod across the political spectrum to the corrosive Vietnam Syndrome, to reassure that one's opposition is only to the war, not to the men fighting it.

Really? How does that work?

Arnold Fisher said the troops were forgotten, but they are very much on the minds of the news cycle just now. This Memorial Day week the news is preoccupied with stories of the Marine squad that allegedly killed civilians at Haditha, a town in Iraq. The narrative of this story has pretty much set in already: It's another My Lai, we all know they did it, the brass covered it up, and prison sentences for homicide are merely a formality.
Haditha is indeed the new Abu Ghraib. What this most importantly means is that any U.S. military action overseas now, no matter its level of justification, can be taken down by the significance assigned to events by the modern machinery of publicity. This explains why the U.S. commanders in Iraq announced yesterday that all soldiers in the next 30 days would take what the headlines are calling "ethics training." Of the some 150,000 U.S.-led troops there, Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the U.S. combat commander in Iraq, said "99.9% of them perform their jobs magnificently." Yes, and 99.9% of them, after all they've been through, will deeply resent the clear inference they lack "core values." Is that different than standard "Corps values"?
Stories of apparently malfeasant U.S. troop behavior are arriving daily now. A military truck whose brakes failed from overheating crashed and killed Afghan civilians. Press reports are now fly-specking whether the troops shot over or at the rock-throwing mob of more than 300 that surrounded them. Every one of these troops surely knows the story of Mogadishu. Been there, never again. But there will be investigations of their behavior.

Finally came the even more lurid pregnant-woman shooting. As transmitted around the world by the BBC: "A pregnant Iraqi woman in labor and her cousin were shot dead by U.S. forces as they rushed to a hospital along a closed road, police and relatives say." The BBC's next four sentences neatly sum up the common story line now in play around U.S. troops: The soldiers said the car failed to heed a stop warning in a prohibited area; the driver said he heard no warning; U.S. troops will be "trained in moral and ethical conduct" and this "comes in the wake" of the Haditha allegations.





In El Paso, Texas, the father of Marine Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, whose death from a roadside bomb is the event said to have precipitated the Marine shootings at Haditha, said simply: "I don't even listen to the news." This may be the widespread reaction as the Haditha story overwhelms all else--enough, I don't want to hear about it.
And there begins the Iraq Syndrome.

Some elements of the newly ascendant Democratic left may welcome it, but no serious person in American politics should.

The Vietnam Syndrome, a loss of confidence in the efficacy of American military engagement, was mainly a failure of U.S. elites. But it's different this time. This presidency has been steadfast in war. No matter. In a piece this week on the White House's efforts to rally the nation to the idea of defeating terrorism abroad to thwart another attack on the U.S., the AP's Nedra Pickler wrote: "But that hasn't kept the violence and unrest out of the headlines every day." This time the despondency looks to be penetrating the general population. And the issue isn't just body counts; it's more than that.

The missions in Iraq and Afghanistan grew from the moral outrage of September 11. U.S. troops, the best this country has yet produced, went overseas to defend us against repeating that day. Now it isn't just that the war on terror has proven hard; the men and women fighting for us, the magnificent 99%, are being soiled in a repetitive, public way that is unbearable.

The greatest danger at this moment is that the American public will decide it wants to pull back because it has concluded that when the U.S. goes in, it always gets hung out to dry.

Two major military reports will come out soon on the Haditha incident, and no one will gainsay justice if that is required. But the atmosphere around this event is going to get uncontrollably manic, and that will feed the dark, inward-turning sentiments already poisoning the country's mood over issues like the immigration debate.

Good for Democrats? Don't count on it. After this, the public appetite for a Democratic president's "humanitarian" military intervention in a Darfur or East Timor will be close to zero.

One suspects that U.S. troops were party to some awful events in the Pacific and European theaters of World War II, all gone in the mists of history and the enemy's defeat. Not now. Gen. Chiarelli's magnificent "99.9%" notwithstanding, it's the phenomenon of the so-very-public 0.01%--at Abu Ghraib, on an Afghan street, at Haditha--that is breaking America's will this time.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/dhenninger/?id=110008458

 

[nt250]

But it's politics.

Two things just kill me about the Haditha story. One, the comparison to Abu Ghraib. Please. If the worse thing our soldiers ever did was humiliate a couple of Muslims, and got long prison sentences for taking pictures and laughing at a prisoner of war, what the HELL are we supposed to do with a soldier who really does commit a "war crime"? Two, even if all the speculation about what happened at Haditha is true, and our troops did go on a search and destroy after being attacked, and having one of their own killed, what the hell is the war crime here? So some innocent people got killed?

3000 innocent people got killed five years ago. Including babies sitting on their parents lap on airplanes. I guess these people only dance in the street when it's Americans who die when their fellow Muslims kill in the defense Islam.

Yeah, that must be it. Only Muslims are allowed to kill little kids.

 

[William Joyce]

I don't drop many tears over dead Muslims, but it can't be good, no matter how you slice it. Haditha is being revealed as pure vengeance. Not up to military honor. What are we doing there?

We must get out of Iraq.

 

[manu1959]

c note says..............

NIGHTTIME RAID

U.S. officials described a nighttime raid aimed at finding a specific guerrilla, who then fled the building but was later caught. Another guerrilla who fired from the building was killed in the raid, they said.

"When the assault force arrived, they took fire," said one official. The U.S. troops then pulled back and called in air support from an AC-130 gunship, and U.S. forces then fired on the house, the official said.

http://reuters.myway.com/article/20...005473_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-IRAQ-USA-ISHAQI-DC.html

 

[pegwinn]

More Core Values training.

Funny, before my unit deployed to Iraq we had boocoo hours of training on Rules of Engagement. I remember when Tailhook occurred. A few Naval Aviators screwed up and the entire US Marine Corps and the US Navy had to sit down for sexual harassment/sensitivity training for two days, and follow up annually from then on. PME no longer meant Professional Military Education, it became Punishing My Enlisted.

Same Same.

Investigate, Exonerate or Take it to Court Martial, Repeat as required.

Oh, and kick the press out of Iraq. Let the PAO LIASONS handle it out of theater.

 

[Gunny]

More Core Values training.

Funny, before my unit deployed to Iraq we had boocoo hours of training on Rules of Engagement. I remember when Tailhook occurred. A few Naval Aviators screwed up and the entire US Marine Corps and the US Navy had to sit down for sexual harassment/sensitivity training for two days, and follow up annually from then on. PME no longer meant Professional Military Education, it became Punishing My Enlisted.

Same Same.

Investigate, Exonerate or Take it to Court Martial, Repeat as required.

Oh, and kick the press out of Iraq. Let the PAO LIASONS handle it out of theater.

I think we're tag-teaming the Haditha threads. I posted pretty much the same in another thread. Rules of Engagement are drummed into our heads repeatedly. Same with the Law of Land Warfare, use of deadly force, et al. "I didn't know" isn't going to cut it; especially, when each Marine signs a page 11 entry saying he/she does following each period of instruction.

 

[shepherdboy]

I don't drop many tears over dead Muslims, but it can't be good, no matter how you slice it. Haditha is being revealed as pure vengeance. Not up to military honor. What are we doing there?

We must get out of Iraq.

Why oh why are we fighting a war with political correctness in mind? Do people forget what the neighborhoods of Germany and Japan looked like after a battle? The current U.S. Military is one of the very few Nations that puts its political correctness ahead of its Military personal well being. How can we fight a war with such restrictions and look for a easy victory? Just read this clip-FORT MEADE, Maryland - A military jury sentenced an Army dog handler to 90 days hard labor and a reduction in rank Friday for allowing his Belgian shepherd to bark within inches of an Iraqi detainee's face at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. People! What in the hell are we doing to our soldiers? The press attacks them daily. The leadership in Government is leaderless. The average Joe on the street has no clue to what really is going on in Iraq. People go about their lives like we are not fighting anyone. Gone are the days of WW2 and most of the people who fought and won those battles. That generation understood warfare and how hard and bloody it is to achieve victory. I wish my Dad was still around.

 

[CSM]

Why oh why are we fighting a war with political correctness in mind? Do people forget what the neighborhoods of Germany and Japan looked like after a battle? The current U.S. Military is one of the very few Nations that puts its political correctness ahead of its Military personal well being. How can we fight a war with such restrictions and look for a easy victory? Just read this clip-FORT MEADE, Maryland - A military jury sentenced an Army dog handler to 90 days hard labor and a reduction in rank Friday for allowing his Belgian shepherd to bark within inches of an Iraqi detainee's face at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. People! What in the hell are we doing to our soldiers? The press attacks them daily. The leadership in Government is leaderless. The average Joe on the street has no clue to what really is going on in Iraq. People go about their lives like we are not fighting anyone. Gone are the days of WW2 and most of the people who fought and won those battles. That generation understood warfare and how hard and bloody it is to achieve victory. I wish my Dad was still around.

You got it!

 

[USMCDevilDog]

Why oh why are we fighting a war with political correctness in mind? Do people forget what the neighborhoods of Germany and Japan looked like after a battle? The current U.S. Military is one of the very few Nations that puts its political correctness ahead of its Military personal well being. How can we fight a war with such restrictions and look for a easy victory? Just read this clip-FORT MEADE, Maryland - A military jury sentenced an Army dog handler to 90 days hard labor and a reduction in rank Friday for allowing his Belgian shepherd to bark within inches of an Iraqi detainee's face at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. People! What in the hell are we doing to our soldiers? The press attacks them daily. The leadership in Government is leaderless. The average Joe on the street has no clue to what really is going on in Iraq. People go about their lives like we are not fighting anyone. Gone are the days of WW2 and most of the people who fought and won those battles. That generation understood warfare and how hard and bloody it is to achieve victory. I wish my Dad was still around.

Oorah to that brother!

 

[nt250]

Why oh why are we fighting a war with political correctness in mind? Do people forget what the neighborhoods of Germany and Japan looked like after a battle? The current U.S. Military is one of the very few Nations that puts its political correctness ahead of its Military personal well being. How can we fight a war with such restrictions and look for a easy victory? Just read this clip-FORT MEADE, Maryland - A military jury sentenced an Army dog handler to 90 days hard labor and a reduction in rank Friday for allowing his Belgian shepherd to bark within inches of an Iraqi detainee's face at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. People! What in the hell are we doing to our soldiers? The press attacks them daily. The leadership in Government is leaderless. The average Joe on the street has no clue to what really is going on in Iraq. People go about their lives like we are not fighting anyone. Gone are the days of WW2 and most of the people who fought and won those battles. That generation understood warfare and how hard and bloody it is to achieve victory. I wish my Dad was still around.

Me three.

Great post.

 

[trobinett]

The following article pretty much sums up how I feel...........

http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/287wfyfv.asp

When WILL the liberal hand wringers grow up, and realize they have lead sheltered lives.

Our soldiers live and WORK in the real world, to insure that our freedoms are not lost.

 

[dilloduck]

Why oh why are we fighting a war with political correctness in mind? Do people forget what the neighborhoods of Germany and Japan looked like after a battle? The current U.S. Military is one of the very few Nations that puts its political correctness ahead of its Military personal well being. How can we fight a war with such restrictions and look for a easy victory? Just read this clip-FORT MEADE, Maryland - A military jury sentenced an Army dog handler to 90 days hard labor and a reduction in rank Friday for allowing his Belgian shepherd to bark within inches of an Iraqi detainee's face at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. People! What in the hell are we doing to our soldiers? The press attacks them daily. The leadership in Government is leaderless. The average Joe on the street has no clue to what really is going on in Iraq. People go about their lives like we are not fighting anyone. Gone are the days of WW2 and most of the people who fought and won those battles. That generation understood warfare and how hard and bloody it is to achieve victory. I wish my Dad was still around.

Why ? Because those with power and money are running the show.