Response to Haditha

I don’t think I’m an uncompromising pacifist. There have been too many dangerous powers in history for me to be absolutely confident that diplomacy will always be a better alternative than war.
But I’m a pacifist, nonetheless, those caveats noted. And I think all human beings would be pacifists as well, if we fully understood what war does.
Ethics training as a response assumes that the Haditha massacre was an aberration, an avoidable blemish, not how things are done. This is a lie. Haditha is to be expected. Whether the war in question is a noble determined stand against evil or a petty oil-grab annexation is irrelevant to this truth – incidents like Haditha will happen during war. We are human beings. Give us guns and the idea of an enemy, and innocent people will die horribly.
War makes us beasts.

6 thoughts on “Response to Haditha”

  1. In the words of Guns’n’Roses “What’s so civil about war anyway?”.
    I had a chat while in Amsterdam with my buddy Ryan. Ryan is an American. Ryan was also in the military for a number of years. It was a good conversation.
    In a perfect word, I believe diplomacy would be able to solve all problems. However, we do not live in a perfect world. I see the military as a necessary evil. Please note the distinction between ‘military’ and ‘war’.
    But, I think this is an issue that can’t really be fully discussed in a comment on a blog post. It’s much more complex than that. So let me just end with a “yeah man, it sucks”.

  2. Morgue,
    while Haditha might not be an aberration, ethics training is without a doubt necessary. The rights and wrongs of military action aside, no country that I’m aware of sends its brightest talents to the front lines (hence the term cannon-fodder), and I in no way at all mean dis-respect to soldiers, I respect them as they do a job I’m not sure I could do. But, they are not exactly taught to think. I think having the Geneva convention, the UN charter, respect for humanity etc spelled out to them and then constantly reinforced should be an essential mandatory part of their training as much as combat maneouvers. If you are standing there with a gun, you need to be able to make an informed decision about what you are doing and what effect your actions will have. I just can’t conceive that ethics training was not already an essential part of the military curriculum.

  3. Part of the cause of Haditha is that most militaries are not designed to be armies of occupation, which is essentially what the US is doing in Iraq. They are not trained for it, and not equipped for it (part of the reason the British army was doing so well in Basra was because of their enormous experience from occupying Northern Ireland). What they are set up for is taking ground from an identifiable enemy, with a clear goal, neither of which are readily apparent in Iraq. While not in any way excusing or justifying this apparent massacre, it is in some way inevitable.
    Kiwi I think the training you talking about does take place. There’s lots of anecdotal evidence that soldiers will question/refuse tasks they feel to be immoral. If combatants feel immediately threatened ethics will be ignored though. Plus the soldiers involved were probably not particularly rational at the time, and it is highly unlikely in my opinion that this was something that was ordered in any way.
    In all my years of being interested in the military and things that go bang, I have never lost sight of the fact that they are designed to break things and hurt people, as a lot of enthusiasts seem to do. I’m a big fan of deterrence. As such I am something of a pacifist also. Warfare should only ever be a reluctant last resort. At the same time, I feel that war is sometimes a necessary evil.

  4. Whoops, just read the ethics link. I am surprised that this sort of training isn’t official, as based on some of the stuff I have read I thought it was.
    Morgue I’m not sure I agree about ‘not the way things are done’ statement being a lie, in the sense that I doubt that killing non-combatants is in any way part of the US training or standard operating procedures.
    Fully agree with the rest of your post though.

  5. ‘not how things are done’ was my way of getting at this: training and SOP != all behaviour in a warzone.
    Likewise, my response to the ethics training doesn’t suggest that ethics training is valueless; just that the most comprehensive ethics training possible would only reduce the number of Hadithas, not eliminate them.
    I think we’re in agreement. It isn’t the Haditha massacre itself that repulses me; that’s part and parcel of the horror of war. What repulses me is presenting (as so many warbloggers and rightie pundits do) war as inherently noble, and events like Haditha as bizarre, unexpected, and solvable. They’re none of these things. If you have soldiers in a warzone, you will have violence against innocents, regardless of ethics training, operating procedures, and anything else you could bring to bear. Fundamentals of human behaviour are at work here.
    As an aside, I find it hard to condemn the soldiers who commit this kind of atrocity. Not that I exactly forgive them; but the circumstances have enormous power.

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