How The U.S. Marines Are Like The Waffen-SS

[Besides the similar extreme rightwing ideology, that is. For a peek into the ideological affinity for fascism of at least some Marines, and the institutional tolerance of it, see "U.S. Marines Really ARE Like the Waffen-S.S."]

The Haditha, Iraq, massacre of unarmed civilians in their homes by U.S. Marines unavoidably looks just like the behavior of the Third Reich's military in World War Two. The defenders of this and other atrocious war crimes by the U.S. military, after the initial stonewall of flat denials and lies gets penetrated, typically fall back on justifications of “scared soldiers in unfamiliar territory” who can't tell who the enemy is, and their comrades were just killed (usually by a planted explosive), so they were angry and upset, which somehow excuses and justifies cold blooded murder. (Funny, that doesn't work when you or I get angry and kill someone. And we aren't trained, disciplined soldiers under someone's command, so that should be an even better excuse for us civilians.)

Typically the Germans would take small numbers of casualties at the hands of resistance fighters- just as some U.S. military unit would suffer a small number of casualties- in the case of the Haditha war crime, one death. In retaliation, the enraged Germans would murder whatever civilians they could get their hands on in the vicinity, typically killing multiples of their own casualties. Likewise, the enraged Marines avenged their comrade's death by attacking and slaughtering two dozen residents of the nearest village in their homes. This is exactly what the Germans did in World War II in the countries they occupied. Nor was Haditha a unique event.

Self-defense is also trotted out as justification for the U.S. Military killing civilians. Of course that doesn't wash under the rules of war. And the U.S. brands it a war crime when its enemies do it. (It's almost redundant to accuse the U.S. of hypocrisy on this score: hypocrisy is so routine for the U.S. in almost everything, it practically can go without saying. Perhaps we should just assume that the U.S. is being hypocritical at all times unless otherwise stated.) Self-defense as justification is no more valid for the U.S. than for the Wehrmacht or Waffen-SS, which could also use it as an excuse.

The U.S. Army behaves the same way in many war crimes- in fact sometimes they just kill for pleasure, as in the infamous joy killing of Reuters employees, and other defenseless civilians walking down the street in Baghdad by a helicopter gunship manned by murderers, as revealed in the infamous video dredged up out of U.S. military secrecy and  brought to the world thanks to WikiLeaks and, possibly, the persecuted scapegoat Bradley Manning. In such cases, after the stonewall of denial and lying falls apart, excuses other than “payback” for casualties have to be invented. Like: Videos lie, or are being “taken out of context.” Or those cameras the slain reporters carried looked like guns. (No they don't.) Or the pilots couldn't see what was plainly visible on the video. (So why are they so eager to mow down some people just walking down the street in broad daylight? And to shoot up a van full of children which stopped to pick up the dead and dying to take them to hospital? And then sneer “they shouldn't take their children into combat”?) And the act of murder is called “engagement” by both the Marines and Army. The civilians being “engaged” refers to the moment when the trigger is pulled- a chilling, emotionally distancing, morally dishonest and despicable euphemism designed to evade reality, evade truth, evade recognition of their own evil, that they are murdering defenseless CIVILIAN human beings.

No, the uniformed killers are NOT honorable. They are NOT “misunderstood,” they SHOULD BE reviled, not feted as “heroes” “defending the nation” (or Reich, as the case may be- at least the Germans honestly called themselves an Empire- Reich- not just a “nation”).

To U.S nationalists, that probably makes me a “traitor.” No, not really. I don't support or work for the U.S.' chosen enemies (although smearing dissidents as foreign agents has long been U.S. standard procedure). I pledge no allegiance to any nation or group, “terrorist” or otherwise. But I sure don't owe a debt of loyalty to an empire which commits mass murder- and has for centuries- and has oppressed me personally for my entire adult life, because I happened to be born here. I didn't get to decide where to be born. (Any sensible person, if given such a choice, would surely choose a Scandinavian nation.)

Soon of course they will be consigning people like me to their global military gulag, their own gulag archipelago, in secret dungeons all around the world, even on ships at sea, as happened to a Somali pirate recently. Like I said, who with any humanity would choose to be born in and stuck in this self-proclaimed “Greatest Nation On Earth”? (It sure can't claim to be the most modest, or modest at all. Notice how they claim the U.S. Has the Best of Everything, even things that are glaringly, patently inferior to some others, like its health care system. And phone system.  Internet access. And legal system.  And their Congress- with the ridiculous U.S. Senate, in which the 21 least populous states, which combined have fewer people than California, have 42 Senators, to California's 2. And lots of things in which the U.S. is patently nothing to brag about, yet brag the jingoists and national chauvinists do.)

Well, one comfort is realizing that nothing lasts forever, including empires. And this one is so badly screwing up its finances that it seems to be slowly self-destructing. The Arab Spring shows that unexpected upsurges of the suppressed human spirit inevitably occur some places, sometimes.

The historian David Kennedy warned some years ago that the U.S. Empire could go the way of the British empire by bankrupting itself through wars of Imperial control and overreach. As trillions of debt, present and future, has been created by the ruinous wars of the Bush-Obama era (including future costs of maimed vets) this looks to becoming at least possibly true. Of course the American bourgeoisie never believed it. Narcissistic and egotistical, they truly believe in “American exceptionalism,” that the U.S. is unique and different, (and Americans are supermen, I guess, somehow different from other peoples). (Didn't a delusion of superiority get the Germans in trouble? Oh, but America is exceptional. No Imperialism, no militarism, no delusions, and certainly no fascists here!)

U.S. military vets should use their skills to train others, so someday there could be a basis for resistance to the inevitably death squad military police state the U.S. is going to have to become. That would be the best way for them to redeem themselves for serving U.S. Imperialism.

Cynical apologists for war crimes say that armies have always done nasty things. If the Bible is to be believed, armies have been slaughtering civilians “since time immemorial.” (Which doesn’t make it right, whatever Bible-thumpers think. Their Holy Book gives its seal of allegedly-divine approval to slavery, genocide, and incest. It should be a scandal, not revered and beyond reproach.)

Postscript: the last murderous war criminal in the Haditha massacre was let off virtually scot-free. [Unlike Bradley Manning, who after a year in solitary confinement- stripped of all clothes- in the notorious Marine brig at Quantico, a domestic version of the Guantanamo Bay political prison, is now being put through a sham Army court-martial that will result in a life sentence unless he cooperates with framing up Julian Assange of WikiLeaks. More below. (1)]

I originally wrote this essay in December 2011 while musing on the Haditha massacre, a U.S. atrocity that haunts me. Now I will summarize what happened with the “case.”

As I said, the Marines invades homes and slaughtered the inhabitants to “avenge” the death of their comrade by a roadside bomb. Shortly thereafter, an Iraqi approached a Time magazine reporter with video of the aftermath. Time approached the Marines, and sat on their story while the Marines “investigated.” The Marine Corps story was that the residents were all killed outside by the road by the bomb that killed the Marine- a preposterous lie in light of the physical evidence, blood-soaked rooms, bodies in bedclothes, and so forth. More Marine lies followed, like they were shot at, etc.

The Marines dragged the matter out for years. Eventually 6 of the culprits had their charges dropped, a seventh of acquitted at “trial,” and now a Sergeant, who rolled a grenade into a bedroom and gunned down terrified families at point blank range, was left, facing only involuntary manslaughter for premeditated murder (he had arranged in advance with his squad to go on such a rampage if one of their number were killed) had his charges reduced to “dereliction of duty,” with a possible penalty of 3 whole months in lockup. His sentence- zippo. So the last murderous war criminal gets off virtually scot-free. (Maybe the Marines figured he’d already “suffered” enough.)

Now, this shows why the Iraqis were right to demand that for U.S. soldiers to remain in Iraq past December 2011, they must not have immunity to prosecution under Iraqi law. Obama tried hard until the last minute to get the Iraqis to grant continuing immunity to U.S. soldiers so he could keep U.S. troops in Iraq, but failed. Cynically, he then claimed “credit” for “ending the war in Iraq” and withdrawing the troops he had tried to leave there. Amazingly, or cynically, the U.S. media went along with this obvious falsehood, even though the facts I just mentioned were in the U.S. media itself.

Just as My Lai was no aberration in the Vietnam War, but a common event, so the Haditha massacre was unusual only in that it received attention through the accident of an interested American journalist with a normal human conscience. (Had a Vietnamese or Iraqi journalist reported these stories, no doubt they would be dismissed to this day as mere enemy propaganda. Just like U.S. germ warfare during the Korean War is. Hey, was that real or not? I don’t even know.)

1)     The reason I call the Marine prison at Quantico, VA, a political prison is the history of its use to psychologically break- indeed destroy- political prisoners. Before Manning was sent there for special treatment, political prisoner Jose Padillo, a civilian, was kept there for years and mentally destroyed. Padillo, a U.S. citizen by birth, was seized upon arrival at Chicago’s O’Hare airport by the Bush regime. That regime, for propaganda purposes, sought scalps it could brandish in public, both as evidence of its fearless terrorist-fighting prowess, and to keep the public in a state of fear in order to have a fertile climate in which to continue to ram through draconian repressive legislation and expand executive power by fiat a la Hitler, following the Cheney “doctrine.” Attorney General John Ashcroft, a fanatic reactionary and ex-Missouri U.S. Senator, claimed Padillo was planning to detonate a “dirty bomb” in a U.S. city. (A bomb of conventional explosives laden with radioactive material, which would spread contamination.) Padillo was imprisoned, incommunicado and completely illegally, in the Marine Corps brig at their base in Quantico for years, not actually legally charged with anything, and unable to communicate with anyone, until finally his mind was destroyed.

On the eve of the case being taken up by the Supreme Court (there were lawyers challenging this illegal imprisonment using a writ of habeas corpus) the Bush regime mooted the case by suddenly bring an indictment against Padillo and transferring him into the civilian Federal prison system, in order to avoid a judgment setting a precedent in the matter. The indictment said nothing about any dirty bomb. Instead Padillo was charged with ‘terrorist” offenses for – remember?- aiding Muslims being killed by Serbs in the Balkans. Duly convicted and sentenced to a long prison term, no one remembers Jose Padillo, victim of a cynical regime who victimized him for propaganda purposes.

One can remark on the irony of Padillo being viciously punished for defending the Balkan Muslims when it was precisely to defend them that was part of the reason the U.S. militarily intervened against the Serbs. That’s just another one of those infuriating mind-fucks you get so often from the U.S. Following the changing political line of the U.S. is kind of like playing Simon Says. Saddam Hussein kills Commies in Iraq- Friend! Saddam Hussein invades Iran- Friend! Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait- Enemy! Mujahideen fight Soviets- Allies! Brave Freedom Fighters! Mujahideen give sanctuary to Al-Qaeda- Evil Terrorists! Get caught on the wrong side of Simon’s latest instruction, go to prison.

In the Third Reich, those who conspired against Hitler were traitors and executed. War criminals were honored for their “heroism” and devotion to “duty.” In the U.S., Bradley Manning is a “traitor” who “aided the enemy,” and was threatened with the death penalty, although for political reasons they probably won’t execute him. Julian Assange, who exposed just a few U.S. war crimes, is under full scale assault by the U.S. Not a U.S. citizen, a number of U.S. citizens still consider him a traitor and have publicly called for his death. Murderers are heroes and patriots; those who expose their misdeeds are evil scum worthy of death, or life imprisonment.

Thus do criminal empires invert the natural moral order.