The Dish

A reader writes:

I'm going to try not to get into a semantic debate about the realities of war versus civilian perception of war, but I do want to clarify a little of what's happening in a technical sense so that the viewer understands what is and is not allowed in these situations.  And I'm sure that, despite my best abilities, my personal bias as an Active Duty US Soldier will ultimately show through in the end. I'm currently deployed to a region in southeast Baghdad, near where this incident took place, and the Rules of Engagement that dictate the use of lethal force state 51% certainty that the individual represent a threat to you or another US Soldier.  (To my knowledge, it always has been.)

First off, I would be interested in knowing whether or not Reuters reported the presence of journalists to the US Forces who were responsible for operating the battlespace they were located in. 

That fact that the Bradley unit's ground commander clears the Apaches to engage without further target description implies that this was not the case, and if so it means that these journalists were operating completely independent of any ability of the US to track them, or even know they were present somewhere.  This is incredibly dangerous, even now in 2010.  Back in 2007, that sort of thing would have been damn near suicidal.

Despite the video's hesitancy in acknowledging that several of the men 'appear' to have weapons, it is clear to me that several of them are carrying AK-47s.  If you look at graphics representing the positioning of these journalists from a Bradley convoy only a few blocks away, I think that it is entirely reasonable that the pilots would consider them a threat – particularly after mistaking a massive zoom lens peaking out from behind cover on the very street that an American patrol was taking place for an RPG.  Complex ambushes with 8-12 men with AK-47s and RPGs were very common back in early 2007.  I can't speak as to why the two Reuters journalists were walking around with men carrying AK-47s trying to sneak pictures of an unaware American combat patrol, and I certainly do not assume that the reason was nefarious.

My real problem with this video, as media, is that it takes conclusions drawn after careful and repeated analysis and includes those conclusions in the videos for others who are seeing it for the first time.  Try to imagine watching the video WITHOUT the giant textual labels stating who each of the men are, or without the prior knowledge that two of the men are journalists and they're carrying massive camera equipment, or without the selectively enlarged segments near the end of the video that the pilots never had access to. 

It is by no means obvious, without those labels, that the giant cylindrical object that Namir Noor-Eldeen is peeking out from behind the wall with is not an RPG, especially for an Apache gunner whose mind is immediately directed to the US troops down the street he believes this man is probably preparing to fire at.  Saeed Chmagh had the misfortune of being on his cellular phone on top of all of these other circumstantial misfortunes, and the cell phone detonation is a classic element of a complex attack involving small arms, RPGs and radio-controlled IEDs.

Keep in mind also that an Apache cockpit has two Soldiers – a pilot and a gunner, and while you are seeing the gunner's IR footage, it is not necessarily conveying what the pilot saw on his monitors or with his own eyes.

I won't speak as to why they fired on the van after the initial attack.  They were cleared by the ground commander after accurately conveying what was going on over the radio, and I don't have a comprehensive enough understanding of the Law of Land Warfare.  I must say that my stomach turned watching the video at the tragic misunderstanding of it all, and the residual questions about what I would have done have kept me awake for hours now.  If there is one act that this video validates an investigation beyond what's already been conducted, firing on the van would be it. 

As far as the language of the pilots, the emotional status of the guys pulling the trigger… more than anything else, the outrage surrounding that is what I find the most absurd.  Who are you to tell men at war how to react to being in a position that demands they take human life?   Do civilians truly believe that Soldiers would be capable of performing their duties in any capacity if they were forced to confront the sheer wretched magnitude of their most prolific duty in the very instances that people are depending on them to perform it?  Is the romanticized image of the reluctant warrior really so ingrained in the psyche of the general public that they honestly think that shock and melodrama is the only way remorse can manifest itself?  Just hearing the pilot towards the end try and justify (to himself, more than anyone) why the children he had no idea were present were present is more heartbreaking than all the "Oh God, no's" in the world to me.

If the previous commenter is somehow shocked by the words of this incident, I would be willing to bet that his time in the military did not include placement on a line unit.  Or if it did, he must have had shit jammed in his ears the entire time.  The comparison of al-Amin al-Thaniyah to My Lai, where hundreds of unarmed women and children were systematically raped and executed point blank is a little bit ridiculous, regardless.  The fact that his comparison somehow elevates the latter as a sign that we have declined since then is insulting.

There is no script for how one is supposed to react to systematically killing another person.  Many laugh, many make macabre jokes during and after the fact and, in general, line troops revel in the death an destruction of their enemy.  It's how they deal with the enormity of what they're doing.  And if you or any of your readers assume for even a moment that things like that mean that they or the other hundreds of thousands of Soldiers who embrace dark humor and excess to cope with what they're doing are somehow depraved, then you need to be re-introduced to the reality. 

Better yet, you can just look at the rising suicide statistics of Soldiers over the past few years.  The number of PTSD cases.  I'm here to let you know that the dialogue that took place in that cockpit was neither uncommon or, to me, even all that appalling.  It was quite restrained, compared to what usually comes out of the mouths of Soldiers here when radio etiquette is not an issue.  The video editor who included the George Orwell quote at the beginning was laughably misinformed.  They were speaking in sterile terms for the purpose of observing radio protocols and clarity on their ASIPs; nothing more.  Soldiers are intimately familiar with the unsanitary horrors of war, and are not for lack of a thousand unseemly two and three-syllable ways to described it.  People needn't worry. 

Instead of being outraged about the words or tone of the pilot willing the man to pick up a weapon, to give him an excuse, why not think about the discipline necessary to remember his Rules of Engagement?  To recognize, as much hate as he may feel towards the enemy, he was not allowed to fire on the enemy unless he picked up a weapon?

This entire incident is an unbelievably sickening tragedy, and I don't mean for my tone to imply that the loss of Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh was anything but.  But it was also a tragedy when it happened to Pat Tillman.  When it happened to any of the dozens, if not hundreds of Soldiers killed by fratricide in this war so far.  90% of what occurs in that video has been commonplace in Iraq for the last 7 years, and the 10% that differs is entirely based on the fact that two of the gentlemen killed were journalists.

War is a disgusting, horrible thing.  As cliche as that excuse has become, for people to look at the natural heartbreaking nature of it and say that they're somehow anomalous just shows how far people who have not experienced war have to go to understanding it.  That doesn't justify failing to take every reasonable precaution necessary to avoid incidents like these.  However, a little humility, or a little desire to have a broader contextual understanding of why these pilots did what they did before condemning them as war criminals would be appreciated.

Another in the series of "because it's my blog and I'll post what I want to." This cat too.

Dreher's view of the Church's crisis:

OK, look. There are over 400,000 Catholic priests on the planet. Do you know how many priests are on the staff of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which has oversight in these matters? Something like 40. It is inevitable that the Vatican will have to rely on local bishops to attend to most of these matters. I can't think of another church or religious organization that has comparable global reach, and which is centrally administered. I'm not trying to let the Vatican off the hook here, but I am trying to understand how difficult it is for the CDF to do proper oversight with such paltry resources.

Agreed. But the reason for this is the control freakery at the heart of the theocon understanding of the papacy. You cannot both defend total centralization of the church under papal control – which is how Benedict weeded out any dissenters – and then plead for mercy when you fail to handle the situation in weeding out abusers. If the Pope had devoted the same kind of attention to policing child-rape as he did to policing free thought, I'd be with Peggy Noonan on this. But he didn't. How many times did Ratzinger get on the phone directly with a local parish the way he hunted down, say, Charlie Curran? We know the answer to that and it isn't pretty.

Dissent was much more intolerable to Ratzinger than child-rape. And that's why this Pope is now so full of it. He's been hoisted on his own canards.

Even Tom Coburn can get burned by Fox News propaganda.

"I think we have to make clear to Obama that we are not only not freezing construction in Jerusalem, but after the 10-month freeze we will go back to building [in the West Bank]" – Avigdor Lieberman, foreign minister of Israel.

Lieberman also disparaged the Turkish prime minister, in the latest Israeli alienation of a critical former ally.

Brown calls the British election for May 6. Polling crack here. The Dish will be following the campaign closely, and rooting for the Tories.

Arivruaich, Isle of Lewis, Scotland, 9.42 am

A reader writes:

The Dish seems to be the only place that is looking for our memories. 

I was a Catholic boy in the early 1960's in a small town in UpState N.Y.  A nice rural setting with lots of  open fields for a boy to grow up in. My memories from the age of six till twelve are for the most part wrapped around lazy summer days in the fields and cold snowy days of sledding.  Like all adults I gloss over the family problems, the worries of a small boy and the social problems of the day.

I do remember two Catholic Priests. One was a rather remarkable younger Priest who used to visit our house. He was not from our church and I always wondered why he was at our house. He once tried to bless me and I ran under the table and refused to come out. When he left the area he came over and gave me his dog, a wonderfully huge English Setter named Rocky who was my most cherished friend and guardian.

The other Priest was the one who scared you. He was the one who we boys whispered about and at the age of seven or eight the words were not as scary as the tone. No one wanted to be The Altar Boy (capitals reflect the sense we had of it). Such a hideous thing was forced on you by very religious parents.

We had only a vague idea of what happened to those boys but they always looked scared to me and I remember one of them saying only that he dreaded getting changed after mass and that "Father punishes you bad if you don't do what he says". I remember that because I was dressed in my First Communion suit and it was a beautiful spring day and I got in trouble for the grass stains because we were back behind the church hanging out. 

Looking back, there was a lot of talk among boys about all the reasons you did not want to go to the local Catholic School. The reasons you did not want to go to the City with Father to see a movie when he took other boys. The concerned look my dad gave me the one time I asked about being a Priest some day (my mom got up and left the room)  And there was the whole long list of boys who suddenly stopped going to church at all, I always wondered why they would suddenly not come any more.

So looking back I can clearly add my voice to your list of people saying that this scandal goes much farther back than anyone wants to admit. We knew, we boys always knew, we just never said a word, either when it was us or when it was our friends.

Another writes:

I know very few men who are over sixty-five, Catholic and close enough to reveal this kind of secret. For one thing, I'm Jewish. Yet I know three who were molested. One case helps explain the rest: central France, the early 20th Century, very conservative rural family. The local priest starts touching the young son, he tells his mother and she beats him for lying. End of story.

And another:

My grandfather left home at age 13 because his parents would not let him go to high school.  He went to a Catholic boarding school in Wisconsin, where he worked his way through high school (kitchen, grounds-keeping, etc.).  He told me – thirty years ago – that he had been molested by a priest there, and that his chronic deafness in one ear was from a blow to the head by another priest there. That he would talk about it, seventy years after it happened, testifies to its impact.

Greenwald's latest take on the Wikileaks video.