June 08, 2006

Rushing Towards Judgment

By Mike Zacchea

Mike Zacchea, from Long Island, NY, is a Marine Reserve Officer who served in Iraq from 2004 to 2005. He is also a member of the New York-based advocacy group IAVA: Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America

I am a reserve Marine officer. I served a year in Iraq as an advisor to the first Iraqi Army battalion trained by the US military. We participated in the assault on Fallujah in November 2004. I have served with the relieved battalion commander, LtCol Jeff Chessani, in garrison and in Iraq, in peace and war. I am completely comfortable in writing publicly that LtCol Chessani was among the Marine Corps' best and brightest officers, and had a sterling reputation and distinguished career until this incident. Significantly, Arwa Damon, a CNN reporter embedded with the battalion, has offered similar testimony.

I have been observing the media reports and shameless political grandstanding surrounding the allegations of a massacre of Iraqi civilians in Haditha in November 2005. There is much that disturbs me about these allegations, and the way they are being covered in the press. What concerns me is how the media, and the politicians, rush towards judgment, even before the facts have been made public. What concerns me even more is the lack of understanding of Iraqi culture, and the cultural dissonance between America and Iraq. Strike that. I was concerned about the allegations a week ago. Now these allegations are starting to royally piss me off. Here's why:

First, training in the Rules of Engagement and Law of Land Warfare is an annual training requirement in the Marine Corps, along with a number of other basic military skills. An integral part of Marine combat training includes target identification, and discerning friend from foe. It is difficult to overstate the Marine Corps' training emphasis on only engaging combatant targets.

Second, American troops receive extensive training in the Rules of Engagement and the Law of Land Warfare. During a unit's pre-deployment training, classroom instruction in these subjects is supported by application during field training in mock-Iraqi towns. Before entering Iraq, units going through Kuwait are given a general orientation to the theater of combat, including Rules of Engagement and the Law of Land Warfare.

Third, before every mission, the mission brief includes a review of applicable Rules of Engagement, including what to do with any enemy prisoners of war or detainees. This mission briefing occurs all the way down to the individual soldier/Marine level.

Fourth, I will stipulate that it is tragic when innocent Iraqis are killed, whether inadvertently or as a result of criminal behavior. But there is something profoundly offensive about a dynamic where American troops alleged to have killed an undetermined number of Iraqi civilians under hostile circumstances, while the insurgents are given a pass despite indiscriminately murdering dozens of Iraqis every day, hundreds of innocent Iraqis every month. Should Iraqis protest the killing of innocents? Absolutely. Should they give their own a pass, out of fear or sympathy? Hell no, that is completely and utterly unacceptable.

Fifth, there is what I call cultural dissonance between America and Iraq. The payment of money for damages is a staple of Iraqi culture, a society where there is an unreliable banking system, almost no civil court system, and no insurance system. In Iraq, the payment of cash for damages is the equivalent of our own "no fault" insurance. It is common for US units to compensate Iraqis for damages, whether a destroyed building, a car accident, or inadvertent injury or death. It is important to note, and this has not been reported by the American media, that the insurgents do not provide compensation to the families of those indiscriminately wounded or killed. By the rules of Iraqi culture, the insurgents are entirely beyond the pale of acceptable behavior. The American media wouldn't know this, and haven't bothered to report it.

Sixth, the insurgents are squeezing this story for every drop of publicity in their own information war. Whereas the American media's intended audience is the average American consumer, insulated from the war except as an abstract event, the insurgents' intended market for their information is the so-called Arab street, much of which is now experiencing the violence of occupation directly. For their cause, this story, regardless of the facts, has invaluable strategic value because it allows them to paint the American occupation of Iraq as criminal, and rally the Arab public to their cause.

Seventh, the pictures of the scene in Haditha and the interviews with Iraqis beg scrutiny, and more than a little skepticism. In a world where speaking to the media can be a death sentence, many Iraqis speaking to the American media have an ulterior motive. Unfortunately, the average American wouldn't know this. The average American will instead find a lamentable lack of journalistic balance. The average news consumer will form his or her opinion based on little more than rank speculation, incomplete facts, and overt sensationalism by ambitious journalists and politicians rushing to "get out in front of this."

Eighth, Americans don't understand that Iraqi society is in agony. Hundreds and hundreds or people are kidnapped, tortured, and indiscriminately murdered by a grim array of militias, security forces, criminal gangs, and foreign fundamentalists. For the average Iraqi, there is no where to hide from the spiraling violence. Those able to get out of the country, who can bribe the right officials to get a passport and set up a life in a neighboring country, the middle class and professional classes, are fleeing by the tens of thousands.

Iraqis should be enraged by the murder of innocents, whether by Americans or by Iraqi militia or by foreign fighters. Americans should be angry about the murder of innocents by American troops. I am angry about these allegations, and I will be angrier if they turn out to be true. Whatever did happen, indisputably, it is a tragedy for all those whose lives have been destroyed, Iraqis and Americans alike.



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