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=> The Banality of Atrocity

Posted by Andreas (Guest) - Wednesday, December 31 2003, 7:46:19 (EST)
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" [...] We know, by the way, that much the same critique [i.e. of US 'war'fare]can be leveled regarding Iraq.[...]"

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http://www.thenation.com/outrage/index.mhtml?pid=1153

The Banality of Atrocity

12/30/2003 @ 1:22pm

"Since the war ended, the American public has been fed a dose of movies
fictionalizing the excesses of US units in Vietnam, such as 'Apocalypse Now'
and 'Platoon' ... [usually] focused on a single event, like the My Lai
massacre.

http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_massacre

The Tiger Force case is different. The atrocities took place over seven
months, leaving an untold number dead -- possibly several hundred civilians
... Women and children were intentionally blown up in underground bunkers.
Elderly farmers were shot

as they toiled in the fields. Prisoners were tortured and executed ..." --
from the Pulitzer-worthy reporting

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031022/SRTIGERFORCE/110190169

of The Blade,

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=ABOUT

Toledo's oldest newspaper.

The Blade came out in October 2003 with its five-part investigative series

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031022/SRTIGERFORCE/110190169

about those many months of routine atrocity in 1967-era Vietnam (and the
subsequent decades of investigation, cover-up, indifference and
uncertainty). Now The New York Times has added its own peer- review
journalism

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/28/national/28TIGE.html

-- checking out and confirming some of the work of The Blade.

The New York Times has only one quibble -- and it ought to ring true to
anyone familiar with the best Vietnam war reporting, such as, for example,
"The Military Half" by Jonathan Schell

http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/bio.mhtml?id=80

: The men who participated in the Tiger Force rampages deny they were a
rogue unit; they, and many other experts interviewed, say that raging
war-crime atrocity was simply the order of the day. So Hollywood and
Americans can express shock and dismay at My Lais -- but it's essentially a
dishonest reaction. Vietnam was not a war sprinkled with a few much-lamented
My Lais; Vietnam was one long series of organized and approved My Lais, as
policy, period.

"Burning huts and villages, shooting civilians and throwing grenades into
protective shelters were common tactics for American ground forces
throughout Vietnam," The Times quotes

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/28/national/28TIGE.html

the Tiger Force "rogues" as saying, adding, "That contention is backed up by
accounts of journalists, historians and disillusioned troops." The paper
quotes a doctoral candidate at Columbia University, Nicholas Turse, who has
been studying government archives; he says they are filled with such
horrors. "I stumbled across the incidents The Blade reported," Turse is
quoted as saying. "I read through that case a year, year and a half ago, and
it really didn't stand out. There was nothing that made it stand out from
anything else. That's the scary thing. It was just one of hundreds."

Just one of hundreds.

And we've known this for at least, oh, 32 years or so. John Kerry, the
Democratic Senator and presidential candidate

http://www.johnkerry.com/

, was a freshly discharged Navy officer when he went before the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee in April 1971. Americans in Vietnam, he
testified

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1972VVAW.html

, had "raped, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human
genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly
shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan,
shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks and generally ravaged the
countryside ..."

All that was "in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and
very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this
country."

We know, by the way, that much the same critique

http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/122403B.shtml

can be leveled regarding Iraq. When you are the occupying power facing a
furious guerrilla opposition

http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/122803A.shtml

, you've already lost. Because you shoot everyone too quick, or get shot
yourself -- and that makes everyone hate you and join the guerrilla
opposition. And the only good to come of it is a bunch of fine, fine
Hollywood movies many years down the line.

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