Reply #135: Ah yes, a tragic mistake all too often in war

[Oilwellian]

Our killing women and children in Iraq and Afghanistan is just a "tragic" part of war. We've seen very little real time coverage of the occupations in Iraq & Afghanistan. There have been hints like the Abu Ghraib & Fallujah photos, but for the most part, Americans are completely desensitized and ignorant of the horrors taking place in those countries we occupy. Our media has failed us completely and that includes ALL of those on MSNBC. This video is one of those rare moments caught on tape, where Americans can see how our military operates every day of the week in those lands we occupy. This video is a clue as to why we are becoming more and more hated, not only in the Middle East, but all over the world.

I can't understand why any progressive would excuse the military's behavior toward the civilian populations. Perhaps you can live with the bulls eye this paints on OUR country, but I personally prefer to expose their war crimes and not poo poo them or cover them up. Another story comes to mind, our special forces digging the bullets out of the civilians they massacred in Afghanistan, all to cover up their crime. I suppose that too, is just a "tragic mistake all to often in war." Please. Enough. I've had enough of this "good German" mentality being spewed on DU of all places.

Glenn Greenwald said it best:

The more I think about it, the more astounding I find it that there could even be a debate over the fact that incidents like the one depicted on this video are exceedingly common, and not at all rare (let alone that vile "He-Hates-The-Troops!" smears would be directed at those who point out this basic truth). Aside from the mountains of evidence making it undeniably clear how common such events are -- (a) the enormous number of dead civilians in Iraq; (b) the countless incidents where the U.S. military killed large numbers of civilians, lied about it, and then was forced by investigations to admit the truth; (c) the definitive statements from war correspondents and even our own soldiers about how common such incidents are -- just consider what Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the war in Afghanistan, said not more than a month ago:

In a stark assessment of shootings of locals by US troops at checkpoints in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal said in little-noticed comments last month that during his time as commander there, "We've shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force . . . . o my knowledge, in the nine-plus months I've been here, not a single case where we have engaged in an escalation of force incident and hurt someone has it turned out that the vehicle had a suicide bomb or weapons in it and, in many cases, had families in it."

What rational person can maintain that incidents like the one in the Iraq video are extraordinary and rare when the top General in Afghanistan is stating publicly that -- even in Afghanistan, where avoidance of civilian casualties is a claimed top priority -- we're shooting an "amazing number" of completely innocent people, including "families"? Do you think if we had videos of those checkpoint shootings (or the countless air attacks on civilians) that they would be any less appalling than what we see in the one WikiLeaks released? McChrystal's comments were reported in The New York Times and yet barely caused a ripple. Why? Because this is what war is; it's what we do when we invade and occupy other countries. It's hard to express the blinding jingoistic delusion necessary to insist -- in the face of this mountain of evidence and dead civilians left in the wake of our wars -- that the Apache attack is some sort of rare or exceptional event. That's why the military concluded that what happened in this Apache attack (including the shooting of unarmed rescuers) is consistent with U.S. military policy: because it is.

Glenn Greenwald provides many links