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The criminal character of the seven-year-old US war on Iraq came into the open this week in yet another shameful exposé when the wikileaks website carried an 18-minute secret Pentagon tape.
The Swedish based non-profit website that publishes leaked documents regarding government and corporate misconduct got the tape from a Pentagon whistleblower and put it in the public domain on Monday.
The tape shows US gunners in an Apache helicopter shooting at a group of unarmed Iraqi civilians. The incident happened in Baghdad in 2007. Among the dozen people killed were a Reuter photojournalist and a driver who worked for the news agency. Seconds before the shooting, a voice from the Apache helicopter in conversation with the command centre mistakenly or otherwise — or deliberately or otherwise – described the photojournalist’s camera as a rocket-propelled grenade. Those who watched the tape, including this columnist, did not see the camera as an RPG. Minutes after the shooting, some civilians arrived in a van to take the wounded, if there were any, to hospital while the Apache helicopter hovered overhead. The van also came under fire. Several of its occupants were killed and many, including two children, were wounded. When US ground troops who arrived at the scene asked the gunners why they shot at the children, a gunner callously remarked, “Well it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.”
Millions who watched the tape, titled collateral damage, wondered whether the American soldiers were playing some kind of video game. The gunners aim and fire at the civilians and then revel in their hits.
“Look at those dead bastards,” one pilot said. “Nice,” the other responded.
The tape raises questions over the US military’s rules of engagement. Perhaps it shows that even an army of an advanced democracy like that of the United States can be brutal; can be inhumane.
This was just a one tape. Hundreds, if not thousands, of similar tapes are lying safely in Pentagon archives. The Pentagon won’t show them or release them, because they are categorized as classified documents. Wikileaks editors say they have also got tapes that show civilian killings in Afghanistan.
Now that the wikileaks tape has provoked a public debate and an international outcry, the United States is morally bound to appoint a commission to probe all allegations of war crimes, the evidence of which can be found in hundreds, if not thousands, of secret tapes stored in Pentagon supercomputers. If it does that, it will send a message to the world that that the United States is leading by example — the United States can proudly claim that it is morally qualified to be the world’s leading nation. Therein lies the soft power of the sole superpower.
US President Barack Obama on Tuesday tried to demonstrate this soft power by announcing new rules constraining the use of America’s nuclear arsenal. It came days after the United States and Russia agreed to ink a new treaty on the reduction of strategic arms.
However, in effect, neither the announcement nor the proposed treaty on strategic arms will enhance the prospects for world peace or diminish US ability to unleash its nuclear terror. What difference does it make whether the butcher has one hundred knives or 90 knives? All that he needs to slaughter the goat is one knife. Obama’s disarmament measures appear to be perfunctory. They only have an advertising value in that they promote the US president as a leader committed to moral and idealistic politics.
Only when the US becomes serious about moral politics devoid of double standards and duplicity, will America’s real soft power be visible. The wikileaks tape offers an opportunity to demonstrate this soft power. The US should probe not only the 2007 Baghdad incident but also all allegations of war crimes involving US troops in a transparent manner. This would be in keeping with an undertaking the US gave the world when it withdrew from the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court and joined the group of ‘rogue states’ – including China, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Qatar and Israel – that refused to sign the ICC treaty.
Before withdrawing from the Rome Statue, the George W Bush administration unsuccessfully tried to seek an exemption for US soldiers from the jurisdiction of the ICC. When its efforts failed, the Bush administration adopted another strategy – that of signing bilateral treaties with friendly countries. The countries that signed the agreement are obliged not to hand over US military personnel suspected of committing war crimes to the ICC. The US argument was that its judicial system was strong enough to try any US military personnel suspected of committing war crimes.
As though these measures were not enough to undermine the authority of the ICC, the Bush administration also passed the American Service-members’ Protection Act (ASPA) which among other things calls for the invasion of The Hague if the ICC detains or imprisons US military personnel. The act also recommends withdrawal of US aid to countries that cooperate with the ICC in the trial of any US service-member.
Since the US has insulated itself from the jurisdiction of the global war-crimes court, it is doubly duty-bound to strengthen its domestic judicial system that deals with war crimes. True, the US has punished those who were found guilty of committing sex torture on inmates at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prisons. But the moot question is: Would the US have taken action if the Abu Ghraib pictures had not been posted on the internet? There are hundreds of war crimes that have gone unpublicized or uninvestigated. Take for instance, the al-Qaids school massacre in Fallujah — an incident which formally started the armed resistance in Iraq against US occupation.
Parents of schoolchildren gathered outside the school on April 28, 2003 for a protest. They demanded that the US troops occupying the premises leave so that they could send their children back to school. It was a peaceful demonstration until the US soldiers from the school roof top fired at them, killing 17 people and wounding more than 70. The New York-based Human Rights Watch said the shooting at the unarmed civilians lasted about ten minutes. There were no reports of any investigation being carried out. As a result, Fallujah became a hotbed of the armed struggle against US occupation. It took the US forces years and extreme measures to bring the town under control.
The extreme measures included the alleged use of chemical weapons, according to a documentary filmed by RAI, a government-run television channel in Italy, a country that supported Bush’s war. The documentary titled “Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre” claimed that the US troops used white phosphorus shells and an improved form of napalm that turned human beings into “caramelized” fossils, with their skin dissolved and turned to leather on their bones. An article in Counterpunch (counterpunch.org/floyd12172005.html) by Chis Floyd says: “Vivid images show civilians, including women and children, who had been burned alive in their homes, even in their beds. This use of chemical weapons — at the order of the Bushist brass — and the killing of civilians are confirmed by former American soldiers interviewed on camera. ‘I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah,’ said one soldier, quoted in the Independent. ‘In military jargon, it’s known as Willy Pete. Phosphorus burns bodies; in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone. I saw the burned bodies of women and children. Phosphorus explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone within a radius of 150 meters is done for.'”
Then there are reports that the US also used weapons made of depleted uranium in Fallujah. The painful after-effects of depleted uranium bombs and white phosphorus are such that Fallujah’s elders urge young women not to give birth to children. It is because more and more children are born with grotesque deformities. Reports spoke of children being born with multiple heads, children with one eye and children born with scaly bodies and missing limbs. Besides these, the number of cancer deaths has also increased. This is not mere hearsay. There is documented evidence. Remember the My-Lai massacre in Vietnam? There are many more My-Lais remaining buried in Iraq. It is unlikely that the corporate US media, many of which hushed up the wikileaks exposé, will unearth them. Though it is encouraging to note that the Pentagon has pledged to probe the shooting incident shown on the tape posted on the wikileaks website, it is unlikely that all the war crimes will be investigated and justice done, even if Obama suddenly transforms himself into an epitome of justice.
