From the San Francisco Chronicle, August 13:
The allegations sound like reports of war crimes committed by someone else’s soldiers: men in black ski masks enter a house, where three of them take turns raping a 14-year-old girl. They then kill her, her parents, and her 5-year-old sister.
It is the kind of atrocity Americans associate with the Nazis, Serbian paramilitary commandos in Kosovo, perhaps Russian troops in Chechnya — not U.S. soldiers.
“One doesn’t expect the American troops to behave the same way, because there are notions that higher morals prevail in the U.S. armed forces,” said Robert Rotberg, an expert on conflict and conflict resolution at Harvard University.
But as a military tribunal in Baghdad is deciding whether five American soldiers must stand trial in connection with the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl and the killing of her parents and sister in March, military experts and historians warn that it will become increasingly difficult for American troops fighting against an elusive enemy in Iraq to maintain military discipline under the intense pressures of war. Wartime atrocities, they say, occur in most wars and are committed by most, if not all, occupying troops — even by such a high-tech, well-trained military as the United States’.
5 Comments
This whole thing wrenches my stomach. As a former infantryman (albeit a Reservist who never served overseas), I can only too well imagine myself in the place of one of the other soldiers in that unit. Nothing you can do in that situation would be right, although there’s only one obvious Right, and righteous, thing that you could do. I’m fairly sure I’d have had the moral strength to do the Right thing, but would I have had a chance?
I linked to your post in a post on my own site (I can include the permalink in another comment if you’d like), but I’d like to say thank you for the thought-provoking piece, although I can’t say I’m terribly happy about some of the thoughts it provoked in me.
Mark,
Let’s assume the story is true. What I don’t understand is this: where were their superior officers? Are troops in Iraq really so poorly supervised? Can you really be out on patrol or whatever and take “time out” for gang rape without being asked to check in or whatever?
In any event, comparing this to the Soviet Army in Berlin in 1945, as the article does, is way over the top.
“In any event, comparing this to the Soviet Army in Berlin in 1945, as the article does, is way over the top.”
Sure. The Russians had plenty of reasons to be so brutal in Germany. Americans don’t.
More to the point, Russian rapes in Eastern Germany occurred with the full knowledge and acquiescence of the Soviet command, from Stalin on down, and was generally regarded as a form of just retribution for what the Germans had done in Russia. One cannot argue that American commanders in Iraq regard rape as something to be “winked at” or as something Iraqis deserve.
More to the point, Russian rapes in Eastern Germany occurred with the full knowledge and acquiescence of the Soviet command, from Stalin on down, and was generally regarded as a form of just retribution for what the Germans had done in Russia.
Is there any proof for that?