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Today's
Stories
February 7/8, 2004
Dave Lindorff
Spray and Pray in Iraq: a Marine in
Transit
February
6, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Are the Kurds in the Way?
Joanne
Mariner
Anita Bryant's Legacy
Saul
Landau
Happiness and Botox
Kurt Nimmo
Horror Non--fiction: A How--To Guide from
Perle and Frum
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Real Intelligence Failure: Our
Own
February
5, 2004
Benjamin
Shepard
Turning NYC into a Patriot Act Free
Zone
Khury
Petersen--Smith
A Report from Occupied Iraq: "We Don't Want Army USA"
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2003
Teresa
Josette
The Exeuctioner's Pslam? Christian Nation? Yeah, Right
David Krieger
Why Dr. King's Message on Vietnam is Relevant to Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Monkey Business: Of Recess and Evolution in Georgia Schools
Norman
Solomon
The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Presenting President Edwards!
February
4, 2004
Brian
McKinlay
Bush's Australian Deputy: Howard's
Last Round Up?
Mark
Gaffney
Ariel Sharon's Favorite Senator: Ron Wyden and Israel
Judith
Brown
Palestine and the Media
Frederick
B. Hudson
Moseley--Braun and the Butcher: Campaign for Justice or Big Oil's
Junta?
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Independent Commission: Exonerating
the Spooks
M.
Junaid Alam
Philly School Workers Fight for Fair Contract
Fran Shor
Whose Boob Tube?
Kevin
Cooper
This is Not My Execution and I Will Not Claim It
February
3, 2004
Alan
Maass
The
Dems' New Mantra: What They Really Mean by "Electability"
Nick
Halfinger
How the Other Half Lives: Embedded
in Iraq
Rahul
Mahajan
Our True Intelligence Failure
Neve Gordon
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?
Laura
Carlsen
Mexico: Two Anniversaries; Two Futures
Jordan
Green
Democratic Patronage in Northern New
Mexico
Terry
Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Powell from the Boobs & Body Parts
Fairness Campaign
Hammond
Guthrie
Investigating the Meaningless
Website
of the Day
Waging Peace
January
24/5, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Iraq's Shia: "Our Day Has Come"
Laura
Flanders
State of the Conservative Union
Simon
Helweg--Larsen
Enter Berger: Signs of Hope in Guatemala
Dave
Lindorff
Ground Control to Maj. George
Susan
Davis
The Birdwatcher Menace
Alexander
Cockburn
The Fog of Cop Out: McNamara 10, Morris
0
January
23, 2004
Yonathan Shapira
An Israeli Pilot Speaks Out
Standard
Schaefer
Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben
Protests US Travel Policy
Josh
Frank
In Defense of Polluters: Howard Dean's
Vermont
William
A. Cook
Rule by the Corrupt and the Capricious
January
22, 2004
Sam
Smith
Howards End?
Patricia
Koyce Wanniski
Lost in Space
Alexander
Lukin
Putin and the Clans
Katherine
van Wormer
Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's Revelations
and Bush's Mind
Forrest
Hylton
The Prisoner, the President and the Mafia
|
Weekend
Edition
February 7 / 8, 2004
A Marine in Transit
"Spray
and Pray" in Iraq
By DAVE LINDORFF
While
flying off to Taiwan for a residency, I found myself sitting next to
a young Hispanic man with a recent buzzcut.
Somewhere south of Anchorage, I asked him where he was going and he
said, "Okinawa."
"Are
you in the service?" I asked.
He
answered that he was a U.S. Marine.
"Have
you been to Iraq yet?" I asked him.
"No,"
he replied, "but I'm being sent there in a couple of weeks."
The
thought of this healthy young Californian walking into that mess disturbed
me, but he seemed completely at ease about it.
"I'm
not worried," he said, without any bravado. "We can handle
whatever they throw at us."
It
wasn't the kind of bluster you get from Bush, the AWOl Guardsman with
the fake--and poorly delivered--"Bring 'em on" JohnWayne lines.
This was the real thing: a quiet confidence in his, and his unit's abilities.
I
asked this young man what he thought about the whole Iraq adventure.
"Well,
the problem is that the Army's made a mess of it," he said. "They
haven't handled the occupation right. We in the Marines say that the
Army has a policy of `spray and pray.' If they take a shot from somewhere,
they fire off everything they've got in every direction. When you do
that, you kill lots of innocent people, and then you get a whole lot
more people mad at you. It's stupid, but that's what they do."
Asked
how the Marines would handle things differently, he said they had been
trained to be careful, to only shoot at legitimate targets, and to use
minimal force.
It
sounds nice in the abstract, but I wonder how well this theory of occupation
will work in practice. I'm no veteran but conversations with veterans
of wars from World War I through the first Iraq war have led me to believe
that soldiers, however they're trained, and whatever side they're fighting
for, tend to develop an attitude of dehumanizing the guys on the other
side--an attitude that tends to carry over rather easily to the entire
population of the enemy side, making the slaying of civilian innocents
much easier, at least in the moment. It's a transition that is hard
to resist, and which later can lead to psychological trauma.
The
aging bastards in Washington--most of them arm-chair chickenhawks and
the major domo among them, the commander in chief, a duty-ducking AWOL--
who have dragged this nation into war in Iraq, have much to answer for
already. One of those things is the innocent American lives they have
wantonly destroyed by sending them off to become hired killers.
The
young man sitting next to me certainly didn't look like a hardened killer.
I found it easy to picture him playing with a younger sister and her
friends on the floor of a living room, and very difficult to imagine
him pumping M-16 rounds into an Iraqi teenager or old woman. I hope
he never has to do that--I hope he doesn't have to kill anybody--and
that he comes home himself physically whole and looking as innocent
and optimistic as I found him on the plane.
Dave
Lindorff, author of "KillingTime: An Investigation into
the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, is currently a Fulbright
Scholar at Taiwan's Sun Yat Sen University.
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