Consequences
If you drive West out of Baghdad passed the airport you get to Abu Ghraib. If you stay on that road the next town is Fallujah. They aren’t that far apart.
In January of 2004 the Defense Department announced, with little notice taken by the US media, that they were investigating charges of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. We have seen the pictures, so this had been going on for quite some time.
At the end of March, 2004, four Blackwater convoy escorts were ambushed in Fallujah. They were killed, burned, dragged through the streets, and finally displayed on a bridge.
Americans couldn’t understand why that happened. They didn’t have a clue as to why people would be so enraged as to do something like that. The Americans screamed for revenge.
The Iraqis in Fallujah screamed for revenge first, and they made sure the world saw their revenge.
This is what torture does. This is how torture threatens military personnel. It turns people into a mob.
8 comments
Exactly. Good point Bryan. 🙂
You need a timeline to understand the cause and effect. Americans learned about Abu Ghraib after Fallujah, so they wouldn’t understand the timing, and they certainly don’t know anything about the geography.
Actions have consequences. Screw up and someone will pay a price. Americans just don’t understand why a lot of people in the world hate our guts, but they have some damn good reasons, based on things the US government has done over the years.
I learned all about this kind of ’cause and effect’ in Cambodia. Every time we killed a KR warlord, they would torture and kill everyone in several villages. For every KR fighter killed or captured, an entire village would pay. We never had enough troops to defend many villages. So, teams like mine were sent in to take out as many leaders as possible as fast as possible, and to sow much fear and confusion. We turned the tables. every time a village was destroyed, every warlord in the area was taken out and as many of their fighters as we could. My team pinpointed and mapped the movements of many warlords. We knew where they were or would be when we needed to and when we needed to, we’d call in a full air strike and mop up the rest. The ONLY way the villages could be protected was to keep the KR on the run and afraid. The stupid politicians didn’t like out *methods*, they wanted to negotiate. they had no idea, no matter how often we told them, what would happen if we stopped. And one day, we were ordered to cease and return to the alpha base. We learned a month later over 60 villages were totally destroyed.
I’m still angry. And so, nothing changes. Whenever politicians are involved in any conflict, you can guarantee the casualties will escalate. It’s all a game to them.
Politicians don’t understand that you can’t make threats, you must make promises. If you tell them that if you do A, B will happen. When they do A, B must happen or you are a liar and a fraud not worthy of respect.
That isn’t something you do in the Third World, it is something you do on the streets as a cop. It is a universal truth that the only way you get any real respect is by keeping your word. Even your worse enemy will respect that. That is one of the biggest mistakes of the Hedgemony, running around making threats about things they couldn’t possibly accomplish.
Failing to really go after bin Laden, really hurt the credibility of the US. If we really wouldn’t pursue the individual responsible for 9/11, we were weak and hollow. The “bad guys” don’t believe us, and we have to undertake more missions, with more innocents dying, because we didn’t follow through.
That’s the same crap that went on in South Vietnam. You clear an area, but provide no protection, and it’s gone in month and the locals hate you.
Bush/Cheney were never going to go after Bin Laden. The Bin Laden and Bush families are thick as thieves (probably literally), and Osama was trained and worked for Cheney back in the ‘good ol’ days’.
The only way the World will ever know for sure what happened on 9/11 is to arrest and interrogate Bush/Cheney. But that will never happen.
Regarding Cambodia: Like Vietnam, it was never classified as a war. It was a completely unofficial police action in the early 80’s, and didn’t become official until ’91 I think (UNAMIC and then UNTAC). So, it was all controlled by Politicians. It was always doomed to be a failure. None of us who served in Cambodia after Vietnam until ’91 have ever been officially recognized. It’s how the Gov bean counters can save a few bucks and escape any responsibility.
The US had decided to back Sihanouk’s Cambodian Army during the 70’s to fight the Khmer Rouge, but the KR were backed by Nth Vietnam and the Viet Cong. As usual, the US did it half-assed and the Cambodian Army was defeated and Pol Pot became leader. Sihanouk had originally asked China for help and China had agreed to send a sizable force to help fight the KR. This scared the crap out of the American Politicians (in particular, a certain very influential Dr who was also mostly responsible for the Vietnam debacle), and so, as with Vietnam, with little thought or military consultation, a small force was sent to defeat the combined forces of the KR, NV and VC. Obviously, Americans have extremely short memories, like a goldfish. And so, Pol Pot was able to murder millions of innocents. Well Done USA!
BTW, Pol Pot’s real name was Saloth Sar. 🙂
To be honest Bryan, the USA has had little credibility since the 60’s. But it has dropped even further.
BTW, did you know that there is supposed to be a War Crimes tribunal this year for the remaining leaders of the KR? Will be interesting to see if it will be for real or a sham. It’s only taken over 30 years. So maybe the Bush Cartel will be prosecuted in 30 or 40 years. Maybe. 😉
For anyone interested, here’s a brief history of how it all happened and why:
This is all readily available at the Library of Congress BTW, which is where I first came across the details when I went looking for answers some years ago.
Oh, no, it can’t be. John Kerry couldn’t have actually been in Cambodia, and we would never violate the borders of neutral countries, and Air America would never be involved in running weapons and drugs, and there were no missions flown in Laos, Burma, and Thailand, and Santa Claus provides all of the presents under the tree on Christmas morning.
That was such an illegal, illogical, totally FUBAR operation. You tend to get really PO’ed when you discover that someone is changing your targeting and either hitting jungle or, too often, innocent villages instead of the places you know you had a concentration. The pattern was too damn consistent to have been accidental.
You have to keep your mouth shut when you heard official spokesweasels spouting crap that was 180° out of sync with what you knew to be the situation on the ground.
I was really glad I didn’t ever have to stay for more than short periods on loan to cover assignment changes. I would probably have blown up, and they might have noticed I was sending in grid coordinates for certain government buildings in Saigon.
The potential for the annihilation of all life on the planet by the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces was a much nicer portfolio. Soothing in a way, almost Zen, after the cesspit of SEA. At least I knew “my side” wasn’t attempting to get me killed by seemingly refusing to take out AA sites.