Good news and bad news on ethics among US troops in Iraq

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/7278

Good news and bad news on ethics among US troops in Iraq
by Weldon Berger | May 5 2007


A front-page story in today's Washington Post says that US soldiers are "at odds with ethics standards." The story cites a Pentagon survey showing that "one-third of U.S. soldiers in Iraq ... believe torture should be allowed if it helps gather important information about insurgents," while 40% "said they approve of such illegal abuse if it would save the life of a fellow soldier" and 10% said they had "mistreated civilians in Iraq."

snip//

Let me say now that the people who are presumed in our warped national political narrative to care about the troops, who are also the people responsible for placing the troops in an untenable situation and keeping them there and using their plights for base political purposes, will be accusing the people who actually regard the troops as human and cite the survey in support of better treatment for the troops of manufacturing outrage for base political purposes. You know the argument; it's the one that goes "If you truly cared about the suffering and hardships of our men and women in Iraq, you'd subject them to even more of it."

What the authors of the survey concluded is that Iraq is the most stressful combat duty required of US troops in modern history, because you're behind enemy lines as soon as you cross the border and you stay there until you cross it again on your way out, and that the troops should be provided in-country breaks from combat along with 18-36 months between tours. The trend is in the opposite direction; when the Pentagon extended tours from 12 to 15 months, the ostensible reason was to guarantee 12 months between deployments. The reason that the down time was slipping below 12 months is that we don't have enough troops to meet the requirements of the current escalation without extending the combat tours.

Since there's not the slightest chance that US troops in Iraq will ever get 18 months between deployments unless we double the size of the Army, the natural response from war supporters to anyone who points out that the Army's own experts think this is necessary will be something along the lines of what I described above: "You don't care about the troops; you just want them to stay home for 18 months because they can't unless we leave Iraq."

That's excepting someone like Michael Ledeen, who once said that "we may not need new troops, just better use of the ones already there," by which he meant that far too many of our coddled soldiers were frittering away their tours in coffee shops and gyms. And no, I'm not making that up. Ledeen would probably argue that any Army shrink who has the time to sit around whining about the mental health and emotional well being of our troops should pick up a gun, buy some body armor and head off to the war.

I’m glad that two-thirds of our troops haven’t completely slipped their ethical moorings. I wish the Post writers had examined the difficulties of maintaining a sense of proportion in alien circumstances, and had thought to favorably compare the sensibilities of that two-thirds with those of Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, George W. Bush and other luminaries who have endorsed and in some cases mandated torture and lesser forms of brutality.

[MichiganVote]

1. Given the conditions, I don't find it surprising that "ethics" takes a backseat to

fire first, ask questions later. Any vet with extended duty in extreme circumstances during which you watch your buddies get mutilated will attest to that fact.

[dave_p]

2. That's how they justified My Lai

It's no excuse, and little consolation to the victims.

If the US can't carry out these operations without turning a sizeable part of its army into potential criminals, it needs to stop undertaking them.

[MichiganVote]

3. I don't recall offering excuses. And the idea that the US army has control over any

part of this out of control occupation is not proven. There was no justification for My Lai,imo. And yes, there were many pointless rationalizations offered by the military.

But if you haven't been in the shoes of overworked, overstressed, and overused soldiers, many of them young, its pointless to speculate on what you or I would do in a similar situation.

[dave_p]

4. I wasn't accusing you

I just thought it needed saying: as you say, there's no justification

[MichiganVote]

5. Seems to me you can say it all on your own without me.