The Jump Blog

UPDATE: A completely unscientific poll of OIF vets returns much the same results as GreyHawk found.

Everybody’s favorite fish wrapper, The New York Times, is running a column by Bob Herbert in which he relates the claims of a certain disgruntled conscientious objector mechanic who was later processed out. The “big” portions of the claims are:

even before his unit left the states, a top officer made wisecracks about the soldiers heading off to Iraq to kill some ragheads and burn some turbans.

“Guys in my unit, particularly the younger guys, would drive by in their Humvee and shatter bottles over the heads of Iraqi civilians passing by. They’d keep a bunch of empty Coke bottles in the Humvee to break over people’s heads.”

He said he had confronted guys who were his friends about this practice. “I said to them: ‘What the hell are you doing? Like, what does this accomplish?’ And they responded just completely openly. They said: ‘Look, I hate being in Iraq. I hate being stuck here. And I hate being surrounded by hajis.’ ”

“Haji” is the troops’ term of choice for an Iraqi. It’s used the way “gook” or “Charlie” was used in Vietnam.

Mr. Delgado, who eventually got conscientious objector status and was honorably discharged last January, recalled a disturbance that occurred while he was working in the Abu Ghraib motor pool. Detainees who had been demonstrating over a variety of grievances began throwing rocks at the guards. As the disturbance grew, the Army authorized lethal force. Four detainees were shot to death.

Mr. Delgado confronted a sergeant who, he said, had fired on the detainees. “I asked him,” said Mr. Delgado, “if he was proud that he had shot unarmed men behind barbed wire for throwing stones. He didn’t get mad at all. He was, like, ‘Well, I saw them bloody my buddy’s nose, so I knelt down. I said a prayer. I stood up, and I shot them down.’ ”

OK, first, let me take a look at the charges, then let’s look at some of the statements.

Raghead, Haji and turban wisecracks: Part and parcel of killing someone, if you are a sane person, is dehumanizing them. Soldiers come up with these terms in order to put a singular, non-human, face on the enemy. In the Revolutionary War, and 1812 it was “Redcoats”, The Civil War it was “Reb’s” or “Yankee’s”, WWI it was “Hun’s”, By WWII it was “Kraut’s”, “Jap’s”, “Slant’s”. Getting the picture? For a non-combatant civilian to call an Iraqi a “raghead” indicates a certain level of ultra-nationalist bigotry (though not racism), for a combatant to do so illustrates humanity. A soldier must kill to be effective, in order to kill effectively the soldier needs to see the enemy as just that, an identity-less group of things: Sammy’s, Skinnies, Gooks, Slopes, Dinks, Chinks, Krauts, or Injuns. This is due to the fact that most humans cannot effectively and repeatedly kill “Achmed Yathrib, father of 2, part time plumbers helper”. One cannot impose civilian sensitivities in war. Dehumanizing an entire group by classifying them as sub-human is racist for civilians. Ya see, having our soldiers empathize with the enemy is a “Bad Thing”. This has been a part of warfare since we killed each other with rocks.

Shattering Coke Bottles: Soldiers almost exclusively travel in convoys. This means that not only were soldiers in Delgado’s vehicle supposedly chunking bottles at innocent civilians, all of the soldiers in the vehicles behind him (who would incur the wrath of the Iraqis) regularly did nothing. That means NCO’s in an MP company, if nothing else, thought so little of their careers that they were willing to let Joe Snuffy private break glass bottles on Hajis head? A mechanic waiting for CO status who won’t pick up a weapon is not going to be the senior man (TC) in any vehicle in which he is riding. This means that not only were NCO’s in trailing and leading vehicles willing to ignore the behavior, so was the NCO in that vehicle. Not only that, the service people at GreyHawks site say that glass bottles in Iraq were mostly rare.

Abu Ghraib Disturbances: If it was serious enough for the Army to authorize lethal force, then it was likely a riot, not a “disturbance”. Ever hear of David and Goliath? Rocks kill people, even really big people. The exchange between Delgado and the shooter seems false. The Army is an authoritarian society. One cannot simply saunter up to those senior in rank –especially if one is a private from the motor pool and the NCO is a working MP– and say “Hey Buddy, feel proud of yourself for shooting those people?”, if one did the response would not be some mild mannered response about justification. Sergeants just don’t talk that way. Even E-5 sergeants (some might say especiallyE5 sergeants). What’s more, an American soldier who is dealing with a prison riot, and has just been authorized to use deadly force to stop it, is not likely to kneel, pray then shoot. American soldiers tend to do that in reverse order. Having been ordered to use deadly force the soldier was more likely to follow his orders: shoot and kill some things, then worry about kneeling and praying later. This seems more a construction of imagination to portray American soldiers as religious fanatics and crusaders.

Now let’s see if we can infer anything about the author and his bias from the words he chooses:

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, before hearing anything about the terror attacks that would change the direction of American history, Mr. Delgado enlisted as a private in the Army Reserve. Suddenly, in ways he had never anticipated, the military took over his life

I see, so this nonviolent young man enlisted in the Army Reserve before any of this naughty War on Terrorism started, which means he is a good guy with bad timing. Then this intelligent young man had his life taken over by the Army in ways he had never foreseen when he signed the contract stating that he would let the Army take over his life in cases of: national emergency, one weekend a month, two weeks a year, and roaring western wildfires.

The officer’s comment was a harbinger of the gratuitous violence that, according to Mr. Delgado, is routinely inflicted by American soldiers on ordinary Iraqis

Well given what a thoughtful, well-traveled, cultured young man Mr. Delgado is, how can we not believe him? Especially when we compare him to all of those knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who actually want to be in the military.

“Haji” is the troops’ term of choice for an Iraqi. It’s used the way “gook” or “Charlie” was used in Vietnam

See, the Army isn’t any better now than it was then, the troops are still murderous racist out of control lunatics who don’t have the mental capacity needed to see how brilliant this young man was.

Mr. Delgado, an extremely thoughtful and serious young man, balked at the entire scene.

Unlike the rest of the hooligans in uniform who were overcome by irrational hatred of those that were only trying to kill them. Of course the insurgents only want to kill them because they are too stupid to understand the Arab culture.

He said he believes that the absence of any real understanding of Arab or Muslim culture by most G.I.’s, combined with a lack of proper training and the unrelieved tension of life in a war zone, contributes to levels of fear and rage that lead to frequent instances of unnecessary violence.

Would that violence be unnecessary as compared to say, oh, I dunno, blowing up innocent women and children? Or are we comparing it to random be-headings? Maybe car bombs? Shooting Iraqi police?

The G.I.’s at Abu Ghraib lived in cells while most of the detainees were housed in large overcrowded tents set up in outdoor compounds that were vulnerable to mortars fired by insurgents. The Army acknowledges that at least 32 Abu Ghraib detainees were killed by mortar fire.

The gall of us, to launch mortars on our own compound in order to kill the insurgents that we had left sitting outside instead of throwing them in prison cells. Oh…hey…I must have read that wrong the first time. It was insurgent mortars shelling the prison. That means that the insurgents killed 28 more Iraqi insurgents in this story than the coalition forces did. Maybe they just don’t understand Arab culture.

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