"You Grow Up Wanting To Be Luke Skywalker, Then Realize You"ve Become A Stormtrooper For The Empire"

Authored by US Army combat veteran Daniel Crimmins via Upriser.com,

You grew up wanting so bad to be Luke Skywalker, but you realize that you were basically a Stormtrooper, a faceless, nameless rifleman, carrying a spear for empire, and you start to accept the startlingly obvious truth that these are people like you.

Question: How do you Americans as a people walk around head held high, knowing that every few months your country is committing a 9/11 size atrocity to other people. Imagine if the 9/11 terror attacks were happening in America every few months. Again and again, innocent people dying all around you. Your brothers and sisters. For no reason.

Daniel Crimmins from U.S. Army 3rd Infantry Division answered:

Many of us are unable. Many of us watched 9/11, and accepted the government and media’s definition of the attack as a act of war rather than a criminal action. A smaller portion, drifting along passively thought a major war was coming, that people we knew were going to fight and die. Some of us maybe worried about our younger brother being drafted, despite being in college. Now, it seems stupid, but in the 72 hours after 9/11, some Americans, maybe suffering from depression, certainly with a mind shaped by comic books and action movies, ate up the “us vs. them” good vs. evil rhetoric spouted by the cowboy in chief. After all, he was the president, and no matter how bright you might think yourself, you can still be swayed by passion and emotion, led to terrible decisions.

Some of us, therefore, left our dorm rooms, and walked down Main Street to the recruiter’s office. Some of us were genuinely surprised the office wasn’t full to bursting of young men eager to avenge their fallen countrymen. Some of us were genuinely surprised when we had to push the recruiter to stop trying to sell desk jobs and just let us join the damn Infantry.

Image via Upriser.com

Some of us got enlisted, then, and went down to Georgia, head high to mask the anxiety and fear they might have helped. Perhaps some number of Americans in this situation discovered that maybe it hadn’t been the best idea, but would be goddamned if they were going to admit it, and let everyone back home smuggly remark on how right they were.

So they persevere. They learn to work as a unit, to look past personality issues, to see each other as Soldiers rather than as a race, or economic status, or any of the other things people hate about each other. They learn to kill.

Then some of these people, perhaps while sitting hungover in the platoon area in the Republic of Korea hear that we have invaded Iraq. They have “Big Scary Bombs”, and Saddam Hussein, the secular Arab dictator had somehow colluded with the devoutly religious Osama Bin Laden to attack the US. They hated our freedom, you see.

Then some of these young American men might transfer back to Georgia and be assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division, and end up in Iraq in January of 2005. And maybe these kids, still drunk on Fox News and fantasies of glory and renown being enough to win their ex-girlfriends back, are excited to go to Iraq. Sure, we hadn’t found any WMDs yet, and we had Hussein in custody, but they were still somehow a threat and had to be dragged kicking and screaming into Jeffersonian democracy. Inside every dirka is a good American, yearning to be free.

So you fight. You kill. Watch friends die. Its usually quick, almost never quiet, but for the rest of your life, when you remember sitting at the bar with them, they’re blown open. You picture the nights you spent downtown at Scruffy Murphy’s, but instead of the stupid hookah shell necklace, your boy’s jaw is blown off, and his left eye is ruined, and he’s screaming.

You fight, you kill, you watch friends die, and you notice a distinct lack of change. You kick in doors and tell terrified women to sit on the floor while you and your friends ransack their home, tearing the place apart, because they might be hiding weapons. There is no reason to believe this house in particular is enemy, same for the next one, and the one after that, or the seven before; they just happened to be there, and maybe they had weapons. Probably not, they almost never did. There were a few times when we had deliberate raids based on solid intel and we’d turn up some stuff, but generally we were just tossing houses because we could.

Then maybe your FISTer [field artillery forward observer] forgets to carry the remainder, and drops a mess of mortars on the village your supposed to protect. Maybe the big Iraqi running at you screaming was just mentally ill. Of course, you won’t know this until after you’ve put seven rounds through his rib cage, and his wailing, ancient mother is cradling his body, spitting at you.

Maybe when you get back to the FOB [Forward Operating Base], the Platoon Sergeant tells you you did the right thing; next time, it might be a suicide bomber. They tell you it was an honest mistake, it wasn’t your fault. They tell you to go get some chow, take a shower if the water works, and sleep it off. You did good work that day, apparently.

Chris Hondros" well-known "One Night in Tal Afar" photograph (Getty Images) showing the aftermath of a checkpoint shooting - Samar Hassan, 5, screams after her parents were killed after their car unwittingly approached a US Army checkpoint at dusk in Tal Afar, Iraq.

During chow, the TV is on AFN, and they are rebroadcasting some Fox News show, and you’re hearing about drone strikes, and all the great things we’re doing, and you can’t help but see that poor dumb assholes face, looking past his mother as he bleeds to death. He’s in pain, obviously, but he has the most perfectly confused look on his face. He doesn’t comprehend what’s happening. Little more hot sauce on your eggs doesn’t really help.

Then you realize you haven’t seen anything to support the idea that these poor fuckers are a threat to your home. You look around and you see all he contractors making six figure salaries to fix your shit, train Iraqis, maintain the ridiculous SUVs the KBR dicks ride around in. You consider the fact that every 25mm shell costs about forty bucks, and your company has been handing those fuckers out like shrapnel flavored parade candies. You think about all the fuel you’re going through, all the ammo and missiles and grenades. You think about every time you lose a vehicle, the Army buys a new one. Maybe you start to see a lot of people making a lot of money on huge amounts of human suffering.

Then you go on leave, and realize that Ayn Rand has no idea what the fuck she’s talking about. You realize that Fox News and Limbaugh and John McCain don’t respect you or your buddies. They don’t give a fuck if you get a parade or a box when you get home, you’re nothing to them but a prop.

Then you get out, and you hate the news. You hate the apathy, and you hate the murder being carried out in your name. You grew up wanting so bad to be Luke Skywalker, but you realize that you were basically a Stormtrooper, a faceless, nameless rifleman, carrying a spear for empire, and you start to accept the startlingly obvious truth that these are people like you.

Maybe your heart breaks a little every time some asshole brags about a “successful” drone strike.

Your statement is correct enough; if all of America was one dude, that dude would not give a shit about the little brown people we’re burning and crushing and choking to death. We aren’t all like that, but it makes me incredibly, profoundly sad to see what my country actually is.

Some of us care, and I think there are more every day.

Caught On Video: ISIS-Driven "Jihadimobile" Explodes In Massive Fireball

Editor"s note: The confrontation depicted in the video below is 100% authentic.

In a showdown that demonstrated the destructive power of ISIS-aligned suicide bombers, a tank manned by Iraqi Shia fighters appeared to trigger a massive explosion when it pointed its muzzle at a rickety pickup truck packed to the brim with explosives. First, militia soldiers try to stop the truck with small-arms fire. Then the truck, presumably driven by ISIS fighters, advances toward the tank.

Then suddenly, there"s a massive explosion.

Debris flies everywhere, hitting the tank and a combat infantry vehicle, and narrowly missing a group of fighters on the ground.

Combat experience in Iraq and Syria prove that light vehicles including trucks can be converted into dangerous weapons capable of inflicting hundreds of casualties if detonated in a densely packed area.

Shia forces in Iraq even have a nickname for these vehicles: They’ve dubbed them "jihadimobiles.”

They are built with the purpose of killing as many people as possible and causing maximum damage in an attack.

A "jihadimobile" can be built on the chassis of both a civilian or military vehicle, according to Sputnik. Though they’re typically built out of old combat infantry vehicles and trucks, as well as passenger cars that are covered with armor plates. It can also have bulletproof tires, a bulldozer bucket and a machine-gun turret.
 

The Worst Mistake In US History

Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

The worst mistake in U.S. history was the conversion after World War II of the U.S. government from a constitutional, limited-government republic to a national-security state.

Nothing has done more to warp and distort the conscience, principles, and values of the American people, including those who serve in the U.S. military.

A good example of how the national-security state has adversely affected the thinking of U.S. soldiers was reflected in an op-ed entitled “What We’re Fighting For” that appeared in the February 10, 2017, issue of the New York Times. Authored by an Iraq War veteran named Phil Klay, the article demonstrates perfectly what the national-security state has done to soldiers and others and why it is so imperative for the American people to restore a constitutional republic to our land.

Klay begins his op-ed by extolling the exploits of another U.S. Marine, First Lt. Brian Chontosh, who, displaying great bravery, succeeded in killing approximately two dozen Iraqis in a fierce firefight during the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Klay writes,

When I was a new Marine, just entering the Corps, this story from the Iraq invasion defined heroism for me. It’s a perfect image of war for inspiring new officer candidates, right in line with youthful notions of what war is and what kind of courage it takes — physical courage, full stop.

Klay then proceeds to tell a story about an event he witnessed when he was deployed to Iraq in 2007. After doctors failed to save the life of a Marine who had been shot by an Iraqi sniper, those same doctors proceeded to treat and save the life of the sniper, who himself had been shot by U.S. troops. Klay used the story to point out the virtuous manner in which U.S. forces carried out their military mission in Iraq.

Well, except perhaps, Klay observes, for Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi prison in which Saddam Hussein’s government had tortured and abused countless Iraqis and which the U.S. military turned into its own torture and abuse center for Iraqis captured during the 2003 U.S. invasion of the country. Klay tells the story of a defense contractor named Eric Fair, who tortured an Iraqi prisoner into divulging information about a car-bomb factory. Encouraged by that successful use of torture, Fair proceeded to employ it against many other Iraqis, none of whom had any incriminating evidence to provide.

Klay points out that both Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay were major turning points in the Iraq War because prisoner abuse at both camps became a driving force for Iraqis to join the insurgency in Iraq. Thus, while Fair may have saved lives through his successful use of torture, he and other U.S. personnel who tortured and abused people at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay may well have cost the lives of many more U.S. soldiers in the long term.

Klay, however, suggests that none of that was really Fair’s fault. While he might have crossed some moral lines, everything he did, Klay suggests, was in accordance with legal rules and regulations. Klay writes,

And Eric did what our nation asked of him, used techniques that were vetted and approved and passed down to intelligence operatives and contractors like himself. Lawyers at the highest levels of government had been consulted, asked to bring us to the furthest edge of what the law might allow. To do what it takes, regardless of whether such actions will secure the “attachment of all good men,” or live up to that oath we swear to support and defend the Constitution.

Klay refers to the oath that U.S. soldiers take to support and defend the Constitution. Clearly patting himself and other members of the U.S. military on the back, he says U.S. soldiers fight with honor to defend a “set of principles” that are reflected in the Constitution and that define America.

It would be difficult to find a better example of a life of the lie than that of Phil Klay. He provides an absolutely perfect demonstration of what a national-security state does to soldiers’ minds and why the Founding Fathers were so opposed to that type of governmental structure.

The rights of invaders

Notice one big omission from Klay’s self-aggrandizing article: Iraq never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so. Instead, it was the U.S government, operating through its troops, that was the aggressor nation in the Iraq War. Wars of aggression — i.e., attacking, invading, and occupying other countries — were among the crimes of which the defendants at Nuremburg were convicted.

It is absolutely fascinating that that critically important point seems to escape Klay so completely. It’s as if it just doesn’t exist or just doesn’t count. His mindset simply begins with the fact that U.S. troops are engaged in war and then it proceeds from there to focus on the courage and humanity of the troops, how their bravery in battle inspired him, and how they treated the enemy humanely. It never occurs to him to ask the vital question: Did U.S. troops have any legal or moral right to be in Iraq and to kill anyone there, including Iraqi soldiers, insurgents, civilians, and civil servants working for the Iraqi government?

Many years ago, I posed a question about the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq to a libertarian friend of mine who was a Catholic priest. I asked him, If a U.S. soldier is placed in Iraq in a kill-or-be-killed situation, does he have a right to fire back at an Iraqi who is shooting at him?

My friend’s answer was unequivocal: Absolutely not, he responded. Since he has no legitimate right to be in Iraq, given that he is part of the aggressor force that initiated the war, under God’s laws he cannot kill anyone, not even by convincing himself that he is only acting in “self-defense.”

I responded, “Are you saying that his only choice is to run away or permit himself to be killed”? He responded, “That is precisely what I am saying. Under the laws of God, he cannot kill anyone in Iraq because he has no right to be there.”

Suppose a burglar enters a person’s home in the dead of night. The homeowner wakes up, discovers the intruder, and begins firing at him. The burglar fires back and kills the homeowner.

The burglar appears in court and explains that he never had any intention of killing the homeowner and that he was simply firing back in self-defense. He might even explain to the judge how bravely he reacted under fire and detail the clever manner in which he outmaneuvered and shot the homeowner.

The judge, however, would reject any claim of self-defense on the part of the burglar. Why? Because the burglar had no right to be in the homeowner’s house. Like the U.S. soldier in Iraq, when the homeowner began firing the burglar had only two legal and moral options: run away or be killed.

That’s what my Catholic priest friend was pointing out about U.S. soldiers in Iraq. They had no right to be there. They invaded a poor, Third World country whose government had never attacked the United States and they were killing, torturing, and abusing people whom they had no right to kill, torture, or abuse.

That’s what Klay as well as most other members of the U.S. military and, for that matter, many Americans still don’t get: that the Iraqi people were the ones who wielded the right of self-defense against an illegal invasion by a foreign power and that U.S. forces, as the aggressor power in the war, had no legal or moral right to kill any Iraqi, not even in “self-defense.”

Klay waxes eloquent about the U.S. Constitution and the oath that soldiers take to support and defend it, but it’s really just another perfect demonstration of the life of the lie that he and so many other U.S. soldiers live. The reality is that when U.S. soldiers vow to support and defend the Constitution, as a practical matter they are vowing to loyally obey the orders and commands of the president, who is their military commander in chief.

There is no better example of this phenomenon than what happened in Iraq. The U.S. Constitution is clear: The president is prohibited from waging war without a declaration of war from Congress. No declaration, no war. Every U.S. soldier ordered to invade Iraq knew that or should have known that.

Everyone, including the troops, also knew that Congress had not declared war on Iraq. Yet, not a single soldier supported or defended the Constitution by refusing George Bush’s order to attack and invade Iraq. Every one of them loyally obeyed his order to attack and invade, knowing full well that it would mean killing people in Iraq — killing people who had never attacked the United States. And they all convinced themselves that by following the president’s orders to invade Iraq and kill Iraqis, they were supporting and defending the Constitution.

How do U.S. soldiers reconcile that? They convince themselves that they are supporting and defending the Constitution by obeying the orders of the president, who has been democratically elected by the citizenry. It’s not their job, they tell themselves, to determine what is constitutional and what isn’t. Their job, they believe, is simply to do what the president, operating through his subordinates, orders them to do. In their minds, they are supporting and defending the Constitution whenever they loyally and obediently carry out the orders of the president.

That means, then, that the standing army is nothing more than the president’s private army. As a practical matter, soldiers are going to do whatever they are ordered to do. If they don’t, they are quickly shot or simply replaced, which provides a good incentive for others to do as they are told. That’s why soldiers invaded Iraq, which had never attacked the United States, and killed people who were defending their country against an unlawful invasion. That’s also why soldiers and defense contractors tortured and abused people at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere. They all believed they were carrying out the orders of their superiors, from the president on down, and that they were supporting and defending the Constitution in the process.

As people throughout history have learned, that is also why a standing army constitutes such a grave threat to the freedom and well-being of the citizenry. It is the means by which a tyrant imposes and enforces his will on the citizenry. Just ask the people of Chile, where the troops of a military regime installed into power by the U.S. national-security establishment rounded up tens of thousands of innocent people and incarcerated, tortured, raped, abused, or executed them, all without due process of law and with the support of the U.S. government.

Prior to the invasion of Iraq, I read that some Catholic soldiers were deeply troubled by the prospect of killing people in a war that the U.S. government was initiating. I was stunned to read that a U.S. military chaplain told them that they had the right under God’s laws to obey the president’s order to invade Iraq and kill Iraqis. God would not hold it against them, he said, if they killed people in the process of following orders.

Really? Are God’s laws really nullified by the orders of a government’s military commander? If that were the case, don’t you think God’s commandment would have read: “Thou shalt not kill, unless your ruler orders you to do so in a war of aggression against another nation”?

To this day, there are those who claim that George W. Bush simply made an honest mistake in claiming that Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s dictator, was maintaining weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and that U.S. soldiers were justified in trusting him by loyally obeying his orders to invade and occupy Iraq to “disarm Saddam.”

They ignore three important points:

it was a distinct possibility that Bush and his people were simply lying. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that a president had lied in order to garner support for a war. Lyndon Johnson’s lies regarding a supposed North Vietnamese attack on U.S. warships in the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam come to mind.

Two, Bush didn’t secure the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war, most likely because he knew that congressional hearings on the issue would expose his WMD scare for the lie it was.

And three, only the UN, not the U.S. government, was entitled to enforce its resolutions regarding Iraq’s WMDs.

Moreover, the circumstantial evidence establishes that Bush was lying and that the WMD scare was entirely bogus. Many people forget that throughout the 1990s the U.S. government was hell-bent on regime change in Iraq. That’s what the brutal sanctions were all about, which contributed to the deaths of half a million Iraqi children. When U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright was asked on Sixty Minutes whether the deaths of half a million Iraqi children from the sanctions were “worth it,” she responded that such deaths were “worth it.” By “it,” she was referring to regime change.

That desire for regime change in Iraq grew with each passing year in the 1990s, both among liberals and conservatives. Demands were ever growing to get rid of Saddam. Therefore, when Bush started coming up with his WMD scare after the 9/11 attacks, everyone should have been wary because it had all the earmarks of an excuse to invade Iraq after more than 10 years of sanctions had failed to achieve the job.

The best circumstantial evidence that Bush lied about the WMD scare appeared after it was determined that there were no WMDs in Iraq. At that point, if Bush had been telling the truth, he could have said, “I’m very sorry. I have made a grave mistake and my army has killed multitudes of people as a consequence of my mistake. I am hereby ordering all U.S. troops home and I hereby announce my resignation as president.”

Bush didn’t do that. In fact, he expressed not one iota of remorse or regret over the loss of life for what supposedly had been the result of a mistake. He knew that he had achieved what the U.S. national-security state had been trying to achieve for more than a decade with its brutal sanctions — regime change in Iraq — and he had used the bogus WMD scare to garner support for his invasion. And significantly, the troops were kept occupying Iraq for several more years, during which they killed more tens of thousands of Iraqis.

One thing is for sure: By the time Phil Klay arrived in Iraq in 2007, he knew full well that there had been no WMDs in Iraq. He also knew that Iraq had never attacked the United States. By that time, he knew full well that the U.S. government had invaded a country under false or, at the very least, mistaken pretenses. He knew there had been no congressional declaration of war. He knew that there was no legal or moral foundation for a military occupation that was continuing to kill people in an impoverished Third World country whose worst “crime” was simply trying to rid their country of an illegal occupier.

Yet, reinforced by people who were thanking them for “their service in Iraq,” Klay, like other U.S. troops, convinced himself that their “service” in Iraq was a grand and glorious sacrifice for his nation, that they were defending Americans’ rights and freedoms, and that they were keeping us safe. It was a classic life of the lie because our nation, our rights and freedoms, and our safety were never threatened by anyone in Iraq, including the millions of Iraqis who were killed, maimed, injured, tortured, abused, or exiled, or whose homes, businesses, or infrastructure were destroyed by bombs, missiles, bullets, and tanks.

In fact, the entity that actually threatened the rights and freedoms of the American people was the U.S. government, given the totalitarian-like powers that it assumed as part of its effort to keep us safe from the enemies its interventionist policies were producing. Coming to mind are the totalitarian-like power to assassinate Americans, secret mass surveillance, and the incarceration and torture of American citizens as suspected terrorists — all without due process of law and without trial by jury.

This is what a national-security state does to people - it warps, damages, or destroys their conscience, principles, and values; induces them to subscribe to false bromides; and nurtures all sorts of mental contortions to enable people to avoid confronting reality.

Many years after Brian Chontosh’s exploits in Iraq, Phil Klay was surprised to learn that Chontosh was experiencing some ambivalence about what he had done. “It’s ugly, it’s violent, it’s disgusting. I wish it wasn’t part of what we had to do,” Chontosh later wrote.

Perhaps that’s because conscience was beginning to stir within him. That’s a good sign. Maybe it will begin to stir in Phil Klay too. And other members of the military as well.

"Never Forget" - A Marine Reflects On The Lies Of Our Endless Wars

Submitted by Brad Hoff via The Canary

The fires which began with the 9/11 attacks were never extinguished. They continue to burn fiercely from Afghanistan to Iraq to Syria to Yemen to North Africa, as the region and its regimes came unglued in the wake of George W. Bush’s ‘war on terror’.

The 16th anniversary of 9/11 was marked in America with the usual somber memorials and directives to ‘never forget". But this definitive 9/11 slogan always takes me back to the overwhelming tide of pro-war fervor that swept the US and stifled any deeper reflection or debate in the years after September 11, 2001. Sadly, I was part of that fervor – and this too I will never forget.

The militarism of my youth

I joined the US Marine Corps as an idealistic 18-year-old in 2000, with a firm resolve – as I enthusiastically told my military recruiter shortly before leaving for boot camp – to “fight evil in the world”. This resolve was rooted more deeply in my veins after the 9/11 attacks. As a relatively new Marine, I had temporarily worked at the Pentagon while attached to a headquarters computer programming unit in the two months just prior to that tragic day, and was fortunate not to be there when it was attacked.

After the smoke cleared in New York, Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon, I and many others wanted ‘justice’ at all costs against an enemy we were told was present in multiple Middle Eastern countries. Slogans such as ‘let’s roll!’ echoed in my ears, and my zeal for ‘the mission’ influenced others to follow my path of military service.

While stationed in Quantico, outside of Washington DC, I became close friends with a local civilian nearing his high school graduation, and I encouraged him to join the Marine Corps. This occurred just as the Bush administration was making the case for war in Iraq.

The author as an idealistic 18-year-old not long before 9/11. Attending ‘Marine Combat Training’ (MCT) near San Diego, California.

A close friend dies in Anbar Province

While I remained at my headquarters unit in Virginia, my friend embarked on multiple tours of duty within a short two years as a Marine infantryman. I remember even then being surprised and unsettled by how rapidly his overseas deployments came. He was killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq on his third deployment overseas prior to his twenty-first birthday. He had selflessly tried to stop a car laden with explosives as it sped into his checkpoint, possibly preventing more deaths among the nearby group of Marines wounded in the attack.

Paul Wolfowitz, considered one of the chief architects of the Iraq War, attended my friend’s funeral at Arlington National Cemetery. More recently, Wolfowitz spent last year"s anniversary of the 9/11 attack on NBC’s Meet the Press shamelessly arguing that he and the Bush administration had done nothing wrong in selling the war and were honest with the American people.

Neither my friend nor I had ever really understood much about the place of his eventual death or the politics of the war. This had been clear during our brief visits together as we reconnected prior to what we didn’t know would be his final deployment to the Middle East. We were never encouraged to learn about the history of Iraq or the Arab world, or to ask too many questions for that matter.

“You’re either with us or against us” was enough for us to want to go out and “win hearts and minds” – a constant refrain in the post-9/11 atmosphere.

At 2:40 pm on 9/11, exactly 16 years ago, Donald Rumsfeld was pushing to invade Iraq:

Hit SH [Saddam Hussein] @ same time—
Not only UBL pic.twitter.com/H3gYIWCgLd

— Jon Schwarz (@tinyrevolution) September 11, 2017

Uncovering a disturbing history

As the power of such simple platitudes faded, I began to investigate for myself the history of US involvement in the region. My search began in the library of the Marine Corps University at MCB Quantico, and would later lead to my travelling to Syria after completion of active service.

Few Americans know of the absurd contradictions of our foreign policy in Iraq and other places over the past few decades, yet I soon found that many Iraqis and Syrians know the history well.

The United States, through covert support of the Iraqi Ba’ath Party in the 1960s and 1970s, sponsored Saddam Hussein’s rise to power as a way to combat perceived communist influence and populist national movements in the Middle East. Throughout that time, the CIA-supported Ba’ath engaged in ‘cleansing campaigns‘ which involved door-to-door death squads offing Washington’s enemies, based on questionable lists provided through covert liaisons.

Absurd contradictions of endless militarism

Upon Hussein’s rise to the Iraqi presidency in 1979, and the increasing boldness of the Iranian Revolution, the United States encouraged Hussein to invade Iran, kick-starting the most devastating war in the region’s history. Most Americans still haven’t seen the easily accessible archive footage of Reagan’s then special envoy to the Middle East, Donald Rumsfeld (another architect of the 2003 Iraq regime change), shaking hands with Hussein in 1983, in what was clearly a warm and cordial visit.

CNN coverage of the first 9/11 anniversary, Sept. 12, 2002 interview: a visibly upset Rumsfeld asks "Where did you get this video?" when confronted with footage of his prior chummy relations with Saddam Hussein.

Saddam would go on, during the course of the Iran-Iraq war that took over a million lives (1980-1988), to frequently employ chemical nerve agents against Iranian troop movements. Later into the war, this occurred with the assistance of the CIA and DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency). By the time of the 1988 gas attack against Kurdish citizens in Halabja, US covert assistance to Iraq’s military was established and routine.

And yet, Hussein soon became the new super-villain of the 1990s and the post-9/11 world. The very image of evil incarnate in the world. Even though his brutal dictatorial rule and regional aggression had undergone little change from when he was the CIA’s man in Baghdad. It was only American perceptions of him that changed.

The United States had helped to create the very monster it was telling young men and women to travel across the world to destroy in 2003. Ironically, one of the main justifications for going after the ‘evil tyrant’ offered by Bush was Hussein’s gassing of Halabja.

Resisting a ‘forever war’ culture

By the final year of my military contract, I was learning too many uncomfortable truths. But ultimately, it was meeting families with roots in Iraq and Syria during social functions outside of military work that finally transformed my thinking. Military culture and the general pro-war atmosphere in America had warped me into thinking of Iraqis as ‘savage’ and ‘tribal’, according to the usual simplistic stereotypes.

But I saw very quickly that Arab people and others from the region tended to have a much more nuanced understanding of the world, reflecting its true complexities, than the average American. Looking back, it was these Arab-American friends (who gave predictions and warnings about what was to come of the US invasion of Iraq) who were proven exactly right. At the time, they were sneered at and ridiculed by most for daring to offer a contrary viewpoint, even though they knew the history of America’s prior destructive meddling in the Middle East quite well.

I remember that my friend who had died so young in Iraq said, during one our last conversations, that his heart had been warmed by his brief encounters with the Iraqi civilians he spoke to during his first tour. He saw hope in their faces. He soon redeployed to Iraq, still trusting that our leaders had it right.

My friend, like thousands of others among the US war dead, loved his country. But the architects and promoters of the war were playing the same cynical and deceitful game they’ve played for decades in the Middle East. The men that led us into war lost no friends, grieved no loved ones, and suffered no lasting consequences. They left government and went on book tours, headed up powerful global institutions, retired to comfortable jobs at think tanks, and continued to make millions – as war profiteers have always done.

My young friend is buried in the ground at Arlington Cemetery. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are also long dead. And the region is still on fire.

Leaving the Marines

During my last work day as an active duty member, I sat in an administrative room in Quantico with about 30 other marines about to receive ‘honorable discharge‘. Our final debriefing included having to sit through multiple presentations from representatives of major private military contractor firms (mercenary groups like Blackwater/Academi). As active military personnel we were forced to hear the mercenary companies" recruitment pitches before being able to access our official discharge papers. I later learned that it was never widely known among the public that this happened on bases that were especially located around D.C. during the years just after 9/11.

They boasted of huge payouts to deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq in a private capacity, at a time when both countries were engulfed in chaos and ruin. There was a smug grin on each mercenary recruiter’s face.

It seems that almost every Marine in the room flocked to the contractors’ tables after receiving official discharge papers. I walked past these mercenary recruitment tables in disgust, jumped in my packed-up car, and drove back to Texas as a civilian.

Federal Court Tosses Murder Conviction Of Ex-Blackwater Guard In 2007 Iraq Massacre

In a highly unusual decision sure to open old wounds among Iraqis and further prolong an already protracted legal saga, a US appeals court has thrown out the murder conviction of an ex-Blackwater security guard and ordered three co-defendants to be resentenced for their roles in the deadliest incident involving the controversial private security firm to date. The men were responsible for the September 16, 2007 Nisour Square shooting in Baghdad, which killed 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians and wounded 17 others, and threatened to inflame tensions at the height of what was an already bloody and volatile coalition occupation.

On Friday afternoon a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that Nicholas Slatten should be given a new trial which would allow for fresh testimony concerning his 2014 first-degree murder conviction. Among the four ex-Blackwater employees sentenced in the 2014 trial, Slatten was the only one convicted of murder as it was believed that he fired on the unarmed civilians first. The other three men - Evan Liberty, Paul Slough, and Dustin Heard - were each given 30-years for manslaughter and other related charges (Slatten had been given a life sentence). Friday"s decision also directed that the three men be given new sentences because it deemed the previous 30-year sentences to constitute "cruel and unusual punishment." However, Iraqi family members of the slain (who in some instances lost children) are sure to disagree.

Image source: The Real News

The event received broad international media attention at the time as Blackwater already had a reputation for heavy-handed and trigger happy tactics, and for being "above the law" as a private mercenary firm while operating in Iraq.

The firm, run by former Navy Seal Erik Prince - himself a shadowy figure subject of federal investigations and civil lawsuits - went through multiple name changes after what was dubbed the "Nisour Square Massacre". Prince"s company is currently called Academi and has been awarded hundreds of millions in contracts by the Pentagon, the CIA, and foreign governments since its 1997 founding. 

Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill authored the book Blackwater: The Rise of the World"s Most Powerful Mercenary Army and produced this documentary exploring the Nisour Square Massacre:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68jAnTh18TY

Friday"s appeals court decision hinged on the issue that the 2014 case found that Nicholas Slatten had fired first, which prompted the other Blackwater contractors in the four vehicle armored convoy to assume they were coming under attack. At the time the group was clearing a path as a US diplomatic escort (one of Blackwater"s primary roles in Iraq was protection of high level officials working out of Baghdad"s "Green Zone") and upon entering the heavily congested Nisour Square opened fire with heavy machine guns and grenade launchers indiscriminately killing men, women, and children. Numerous complaints had already plagued Blackwater in Iraq up to that point for their brazen disregard for Iraqis on roadways.

Slatten"s murder conviction was specifically for the first shooting death of a man in a white Kia which had stopped at the traffic circle and threatened to block the convoy"s movement. This had marked the beginning of the drawn out bloody and chaotic incident wherein the convoy expended hundreds of rounds of ammunition. The appeals court concluded:

The government"s case against Slatten hinged on his having fired the first shots, his animosity toward the Iraqis having led him to target the white Kia unprovoked.

The prior 2014 case tried the four defendants together, which meant that Slatten could not enter evidence based on testimony from his co-defendants. Friday"s decision allows for him to be retried separately in order to allow his colleagues to testify in his defense . While the specific co-defendant remains unnamed, the court acknowledged a previous statement issued by one of the three charged with manslaughter that it was he and not Slatten that was first to "engage and hit the driver."

"They kept pumping bullets into us" according to Iraqi testimony at the time. Aftermath of the Nisour Square Massacre. Image source: Al Jazeera.

Source: Defense One, based on official DoD numbers.

The 2014 convictions were met with mixed reactions in Iraq at the time. Friday"s ruling came down while it was night in Iraq, and it is likely to spark major protests in Baghdad as the news breaks over the weekend. Even after the US formally and "officially" pulled out of Iraq in December 2011 (though counter-terrorism personnel later advised anti-ISIL missions), tens of thousands of private US contractors remained.

Moscow, Baghdad Sign Huge Arms Deal

Authored by Peter Korzun via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

It was reported on July 20 that Russia and Iraq have struck a deal on supplying a large batch of T-90 tanks. Vladimir Kozhin, the Russian president’s aide for military technical cooperation, confirmed the agreement but declined to provide details, saying only «the number of tanks is substantial». Russian military analyst Ruslan Pukhov told Russian newspaper Izvestia that the deal might cover deliveries of several hundred T-90 tanks, and that the contract may exceed $1 billion.

The T-90 is among the best-selling tanks in the world. Hundreds of vehicles have been sold to India, Algeria, Azerbaijan and other countries. A small number of tanks has been delivered to Syria to reinforce the military’s capabilities of combatting Islamic State (IS). Kuwait, Vietnam and Egypt are considering the option of purchasing T-90s.

Known for its firepower, enhanced protection and mobility, the T-90 features a smoothbore 2A46M 125mm main gun that can fire both armor-piercing shells and anti-tank missiles and the 1A45T fire-control system. Standard protective measures include sophisticated armor, ensuring all-round protection of the crew and critical systems, including Kontakt-5 explosive reactive armor and active infrared jammers to defend the T-90 from inbound rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank missiles and other projectiles.

During the battle for Aleppo, Syria, a T-90 was hit by US-made BGM-71 TOW missile. The direct impact caused no damage

The agreement to purchase the tanks was also confirmed by the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. The T-90s will reinforce the Iraqi M1A1 Abrams fleet damaged in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) militants. The decision to buy the Russian tanks was prompted by the successful performance of T-90s in Syria. During the battle for Aleppo, Syria, a T-90 was hit by US-made BGM-71 TOW missile. The direct impact caused no damage. For comparison, in October last year, an M1 Abrams was hit by a 9M133 Kornet anti-tank missile at the Qurayyah crossroads south of Mosul. The missile rammed into the turret from behind to make the ammunition compartment explode.

In 2014-2016, Iraq received 15 Mi-28 NE Night Hunter attack helicopters from Russia. The delivery was part of a wider $4.2 billion defense package signed in 2012. The deal included a combination of 43 Mi-35 (28) and Mi-28NE (15) attack helicopters, plus 42-50 Pantsir-S1 combined short to medium range surface-to-air missile and anti-aircraft artillery weapons systems. The contract was fulfilled in October, 2016, as the attack helicopters and anti-aircraft systems had been delivered to the Iraqi military.

In 2014, Russia urgently sent several Su-25 aircraft upon the request of Iraqi government when the country’s military was losing ground during the IS offensive. The Iraqi military also uses Russia-produced TOS-1A Buratino heavy flamethrowers, Grad truck-mounted 122mm multiple rocket launchers, 152mm MSTA howitzers, Su-25 attack planes and armored vehicles.

Russia-made weapons were widely used in the battle for Mosul. One of the systems vastly used in the operation was TOS-1A 220mm 24-barrel multiple rocket launcher and thermobaric weapon mounted on the T-72 tank chassis designed for defeating enemy personnel in fortifications, in open country, and in lightly armored vehicles and transport. It can fire incendiary and thermobaric rockets. The munitions disperse a cloud of flammable liquid into the air around the target, and then ignite it to produce an explosion significantly longer and stronger in comparison to a conventional warhead. This is an effective weapon to strike terrorists hidden in bunkers and caves. Iraqi Russia-made Mi-28 and Mi-35 helicopters also effectively launched attacks against IS positions in Mosul.

A joint Baghdad-based Russia-Iraq-Iran-Syria operational center was established in 2015 to exchange intelligence and coordinate activities against terrorists. Iraq has allowed the Russian Air Space Forces to use its airspace for airstrikes against Islamists in Syria.

Trade turnout between the two countries is roughly $2 billion, mostly made up of Russian exports. In early 2016, a delegation of nearly 100 government and business officials headed by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, visited Iraq to boost cooperation on all spheres. The officials signed a wide-ranging memorandum of understanding that included measures to more than double bilateral trade and boost Iraq"s electricity production, which only meets around 60 percent of its peak demand during the hot summer months. The head of the delegation said Russia was ready to sell Sukhoi Superjet civil airliners to Iraq and keep providing it with military aid to fight Islamic State. Moscow has invested millions of dollars in Iraq"s energy sector.

Moscow and Baghdad are in talks on opening of a direct air line between Baghdad and Moscow and the abolition of visas for diplomats.

The US still has large influence in Iraq but it does not own it. The impressive performance of Russian weapons in Syria makes them in high demand among the countries facing the terrorist threat. The tank deal between Russia and Iraq reflects the trend. It also serves as an example of Russia’s growing clout in the Middle East and North Africa.

The US Government Punishes People For Helping Dying Children

Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

In my article “The Evil of Killing Children,” I pointed out how the U.S. government, in an attempt to achieve regime change in Iraq, knowingly and intentionally killed hundreds of thousands of innocent children in Iraq.

Unfortunately, killing those innocent Iraqi children was not the only evil action taken by U.S. officials regarding the Iraq sanctions. They also went after an American man for trying to help the children that U.S. officials were trying to kill with their sanctions.

The man’s name is Bert Sacks. They didn’t try to kill him but they did prosecute him both criminally and civilly for trying to help the Iraqi children who U.S. officials were killing.

What specifically did Sacks do that caused U.S. officials to put him in their sights? He took medicine to Iraq. That infuriated U.S. officials because the medicine that Sacks took into Iraq interfered with their ability to kill more Iraqi children, which in turn, impeded their ability to achieve regime change in Iraq.

In a 2003 article entitled “Sanctions in Iraq Hurt the Innocent in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Sacks explained the origins and consequences of the U.S. government’s system of sanctions against Iraq.

He began the article by focusing on the large number of Iraqi children that that the U.S. government killed with the sanctions. Quoting an article from the New York Times magazine, he wrote: “American officials may quarrel with the numbers but there is little doubt that at least several hundred thousand children who could reasonably have been expected to live, died before their fifth birthdays.” Sacks then cited Richard Garfield, a health specialist at Columbia University, who estimated the death toll among the Iraqi children to be 400,000.

We also should also note that when U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright was asked in 1996 whether the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children were worth it, she didn’t deny the number and said that the deaths were, in fact, worth it. After she said that, no other U.S. official, to my knowledge, took her to task, either on the number of Iraqi children they had killed up to that year or the fact that the official U.S. spokesperson to the UN considered the deaths to be worth it. (The sanctions weren’t lifted until 2003, after the U.S. government had finally achieved regime change with its invasion of Iraq.)

While it’s true that several hundred thousand doesn’t rise to the number of people killed by Hitler’s Nazi regime or Stalin’s communist regime, nonetheless hundreds of thousands is not a small number of dead people. Moreover, while all innocent life is sacred, it seems, instinctively, that killing innocent children might be more evil than killing innocent adults.

Citing the New England Journal of Medicine, Sacks pointed out that during the Persian Gulf War, “The [U.S. government’s] destruction of the country’s power plants had brought [Iraq’s] entire system of water purification and distribution to a halt, leading to epidemics of cholera, typhoid fever, and gastroenteritis, particularly among children.”

One of the important things to note about the sanctions, which were continued after the war, is that they prevented Iraq from repairing the water and sewage treatments that the U.S. military had intentionally destroyed during the war. Naturally, that ensured that that the cholera, typhoid fever, gastroenteritis, and other illnesses would continue, particularly among the Iraqi children, who were dying en masse.

A 1991 Washington Post article pointed out:

The worst civilian suffering, senior officers say, has resulted not from bombs that went astray but from precision-guided weapons that hit exactly where they were aimed — at electrical plants, oil refineries and transportation networks. Each of these targets was acknowledged during the war, but all the purposes and consequences of their destruction were not divulged. Among the justifications offered now, particularly by the Air Force in recent briefings, is that Iraqi civilians were not blameless for Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait.

“The definition of innocents gets to be a little bit unclear,” said a senior Air Force officer, noting that many Iraqis supported the invasion of Kuwait. “They do live there, and ultimately the people have some control over what goes on in their country.”

A 1991 New York Times article cited in Sacks’ article pointed out what U.S. officials were aiming for: “Ever since the trade embargo was imposed on Aug. 6, after the invasion of Kuwait, the United States has argued against any premature relaxation in the belief that by making life uncomfortable for the Iraqi people it will eventually encourage them to remove President Saddam Hussein from power.”

In a 2002 article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a U.S. official was quoted on U.S. policy: “We have made it clear that the world would be better off with a regime change in Iraq. Regime change has always been part of United States policy.”

The article also pointed out, “After 12 years of sanctions, Saddam is still in power but more than 70 percent of the population does not have clean drinking water.” As a 2011 article in the Seattle Times put it, “For 12 years, Iraqis had bacteria-infected water. The result was cholera, typhoid and gastroenteritis. Add malnutrition and a shortage of common medicines. The problem was known; in 1992, the New England Journal of Medicine raised the alarm about it. By the late 1990s, UNICEF estimated that an extra half a million Iraqi children had died because of war and sanctions.”

The U.S. government just didn’t care because that was their aim — to kill as many Iraqi children as necessary with their sanctions until the Iraqi people cried “Uncle” and ousted Saddam from power and replaced him with a pro-U.S. dictator.

Enter Bert Sacks. Struck by conscience by the massive number of deaths that his own government was inflicting on the children of Iraq, Sacks traveled to Iraq with $40,000 in medicines to help the victims of the sanctions.

Not surprisingly, Sacks attracted the attention of U.S. officials, who deemed him an anti-American criminal for helping America’s enemies by bringing them medicine that could save their lives.

To make it appear that they were not objecting to Sack’s bringing medicine into Iraq, the U.S. government filed criminal charges against him and also levied a civil fine of $10,000 on him $10,000 for spending money in Iraq. They said that spending money in Iraq violated their sanctions.

The criminal charges went nowhere but U.S. officials pursued the civil fine with an obsession that bordered on the pathological.

To the everlasting credit of Bert Sacks, who can only be described as a genuine real-life hero for standing up against manifest evil, he told the U.S. government to go take a hike. He told them that he would never pay their stupid and evil fine.

U.S. officials went after Sacks with the same vengeance they pursued against the hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi children they were killing, harassing Sacks for years in an Ahab-like manner in their angry attempt to collect their $10,000 fine. While the money was no doubt important to them, what was much more important was sending a message to other Americans: Don’t even think of helping people in Iraq, including the innocent children we are killing, because doing so interferes with our foreign policy goal for Iraq, which is regime change.

Sacks stood his ground. Like Hans von Sponek, Dennis Halliday, and Jutta Purghart, the three UN officials who resigned their positions in a crisis of conscience over the U.S. government’s killing of Iraqi children, Sacks steadfastly followed the convictions of his conscience and refused to pay the fine.

In 2012, a U.S. federal court threw out the government’s claim against Sacks, which now totaled $16,000 with accumulated interest, based on a technicality. While the decision did not save the lives of any Iraqi children, at least in the case of the U.S. government versus Bert Sacks, good triumphed over evil.