US Colonel, "If these f---ing hajis learned to drive, this shit wouldn't happen."

[JohnyCanuck]

This unit sets up this traffic control point, and this 18-year-old kid is on top of an armored Humvee with a .50-caliber machine gun," remembered Sergeant Geoffrey Millard, who served in Tikrit with the 42nd Infantry Division. "And this car speeds at him pretty quick and he makes a split-second decision that that's a suicide bomber, and he presses the butterfly trigger and puts 200 rounds in less than a minute into this vehicle. It killed the mother, a father and two kids. The boy was aged four and the daughter was aged three.

"And they briefed this to the general," Millard said, "and they briefed it gruesome. I mean, they had pictures. They briefed it to him. And this colonel turns around to this full division staff and says, 'If these f---ing hajis learned to drive, this shit wouldn't happen'."

http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JF07Ak01.html

And if fucking US Army Colonels refused to commit war crimes and justify it by claiming to be "just following orders" (where have I heard that excuse before?) this shit wouldn't happen either.

[sui generis]

1. a little humanity here though

I do NOT believe for a second that the colonel was anything but mortally wounded in his own soul. The man is human and was reacting in frustration using the first thing his mind settled on. He knows his own men had to make a decision, so without questioning the decision the next thing is what triggered the decision. Bad driving. Clearly not intellectually logical, but emotionally logical. If he said that I will cut him slack in the heat of the moment, he was saying goddammit why did this have to happen. He was expressing pain.

If he defends the statement though, that's whole nother story.

[gateley]

3. I'm with you.

The feelings of frustration and angst must be immense.

A horrible event occurred, and he lashed out. I think most of us have reacted similarly.

And my heart goes out to the kid who opened fire. If I'm there, I see a car speeding toward me, I'm going to thing 'suicide' bomber, too.

[countryjake]

6. The man's choice of words indicates to me that he meant what he said...

using the "h" word in Iraq is equivalent to using the "n" word, or any other racist, derogatory label.

If the guy carries that opinion of the people whose nation he is occupying, how can we expect his men see them any differently?

[sui generis]

7. he's a soldier

we use the "asshole" word when referring to people we find distasteful, but it doesn't mean we think of everyone as assholes.

If you have ever been to the middle east, you would understand how very different the culture on the ground is. My experience in Pakistan was that there were people who were very very poor doing things that I found abhorrent. If I had some concept in my head that I didn't like it or didn't agree with it, it would also include a cultural put down aimed at the culture of poverty, the culture of ignorance, not skin color or eye color or faith regardless of the expletive.

Life can be more than one color at the same time. Yes, he probably does feel culturally superior. After all, they're not in our country manning checkpoints, so they must deserve us, and if we're there it's because we're right and they are wrong, etc. All the mental habitual baggae, for right or wrong reasons.

At the very least I would give the guy a chance to retract his statement before I judge him for it. Even your statement is made out of hatred of the situation - and you've settled on this guy as the first item to attack under emotional inspection.

Hate the reason we're there and let's just get the fuck out. And yes, that soldier will be living with grief and shame over this for the rest of his life. He's an American and little more than a boy himself and if you don't believe that our soldiers live every day with regret and despair take a look at the suicide statistic in returning soldiers.

It's really hard to be human, and even harder to let others be human.

[OmahaBlueDog]

8. You're 18, you're scared, and you're sitting behind a machine gun

All you know is a car is coming at you, and people who have reacted slowly to cars coming at them have blown up.

This isn't Eichmann supervising the wholesale slaughter, slave labor, and medical experimentation of prisoners at a death camp. This is a soldier doing what the military has trained him to do. The blame rests not with the kid, and not with the Colonel (who made an unfortunate, but I suspect emotional comment he wishes he had back); the blame rests squarely with those who entered the nation into this ill advised war - beginning with the Decider-in-chief (I won't dignify him by calling him a commander).

[Selatius]

2. "If these fucking neocons learned to negotiate, this shit wouldn't happen." nt

[gateley]

5. Amen. nt

[gratuitous]

4. Uh, and then the car sped at me . . . pretty quick

So, naturally, I put 200 rounds into it. Thanks for understanding, Colonel. And as long as the war crimes tribunals are all conducted by the U.S. military, we can all be sure of never having to face justice for our actions.

The secret tribunal of a man's mind, however, might not be quite so lenient.