Is That Legal?

Thanks for the link. That's a great article. Soldiers in general have no problem with behavior that they know will increase the likelihood of their own death but will increase the overall likelihood of soldiers surviving. I wonder why they have not been trained to view their interactions with Iraqis in the same way.

Marietta, the view on the ground is a little different from the view from 30,000 feet. I was in GW I. I saw the Saudis pull some horrific stuff. We used to have to back of the Kuwaiti interpreters at gun point, to keep them from jumping on and beating the Iraqi POWs. I had dysentary ferchrissakes.

Yet somehow we managed to free Kuwait and to prevent an invasion of Saudi Arabia.

One comment by Bray was striking in its portrayal of this paradox: I also remember reading a news story, just before I left, about an incident in which American soldiers shot and killed an unarmed, 57 year-old high school teacher in Baghdad because they thought she might have been a suicide bomber. After talking with American soldiers who have been in Iraq and have been horribly maimed in Iraq, that mistake seems entirely human and understandable to me.

It will be interesting to see what he talks about after he's been on the ground for a while. I suspect his viewpoint will be heavily colored based on where he winds up working - in one of the mostly peaceful areas, or in one of the handful of large, brutal, turbulent areas. If he's in a headquarters with a 30,000 foot view, it will be different than if he's rolling with grunts.

That's a very, very depressing article. I suspect he sees it, but I hope he (and all of us!) see that it's just as reasonable for the Iraqis who've had their brothers or mothers or fathers mowed down by nervious GI's to think that they are going to blow the hell out of those SOB's the next chance they get. This is clearly not a good sign. What a disaster Bush has lead us into.

For whatever it's worth, my response to Mr. Bray:

You wrote: " . . . it does seem to me that there's a problem with the idea that American military power is the right tool for a pedagogy of liberation. We are partners in freedom with the fucking ragheads, teaching those sneaky little fuckers about the values of a constitutional republic. Something seems a little off, there."

There IS a problem with our military power as a teaching aid for "the values of a constitutional republic," tho' from your remarks you seem, mistakenly, to think the fault lies largely with the Iraqis. We invaded their country, and we've killed thousands of them, on what we now know (not just suspect) was a ginned up pretext. Just what lesson are the "sneaky little fuckers" supposed to learn about the values of a constitutional republic?

C. Schuyler, I think you've missed Chris Bray's point. Read the entire piece to which I link, and I think you might see the quote in a different light.

I want to know why you linked the site from hnn, rather than from the clearly superior historioblogography version (with added dots!) :).

Whoa, Michael! I keep sending readers over to Historiblogography and they return with complaints about seeing spots before their eyes.

Ralph,

In theory if they focus properly on the dots they will spontaneously reach a new level of understanding. Also, they could levitate.

Mainly the observed results have just been nausea.

I've noticed a general thinking pattern that is often used to reach otherwise untenable positions:
1)Consider only one side of the situation (ie in this case, the soldier's viewpoint). Consider what would make them safe, or seems reasonable to them.
2)Extrapolate from that position to how the 'other side' ought to act (ie here, Iraqis ought to give American soldiers every opportunity to see that they aren't hostile, shouldn't react when provoked with blows, etc because they should understand #1).
3)Regard any 'other' behavior that fails to comply with #2 as obtuse, provocative, or even proof of 'enemy' sympathies.

The fallacy of the logic is obvious; one need merely swtich sides, and start by considering exclusively what would be reasonable and safe for Iraqi citizens, in order to reach vastly different conclusions. The nature of the fallacy is that a real compromise solution involves making neither side as confortable or safe as they could be under extreme conditions.
This sort of reasoning was often on display during the cold war (justifying things like the Contras in Nicaragua); currently, it often finds itself being used by both sides of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, in order to manufacture ridiculous, unreachable demands on the other side. I also hear it used to justify some police shootings (eg the Diallo shooting only makes sense if police should always minimize their risks).

Wu

Fair enough.

i hate ragheads.