"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 -- their ears and scalps severed for souvenirs. One soldier kicked out the teeth of executed civilians for their gold fillings." The Toledo Blade won a Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for a long-overdue investigation into the atrocities committed by the elite Tiger Force unit in the Vietnam War. According to the paper, during a 7-month reign of terror, the group of 45 paratroopers may have been responsible for as many as several hundred civilian deaths. Even more shocking -- if that's possible -- is that after a 4 1/2 year investigation reaching the highest levels of the Nixon White House, not one soldier was ever charged.
I'm young enough that all I know about Vietnam is what I've read in the history books. There, the ready explanation for incidents like Mai Lai is that our soldiers were demoralized, trapped in a losing mission, maddened by the assaults of a guerrilla war. Sounds familiar. Also, "Atrocities -- every war has atrocities. War is brutal and not fair. Innocent people get killed." (That's Nixon's line, as cited by the Swift Boaters.) Undeniable, yet insufficient as an excuse, because this is America and we hold our nation and its soldiers to a higher moral standard. More so today than ever, when we're fighting a war of choice for "hearts and minds."
This week, just in time for Independence Day, a fresh hell has appeared on our newspapers' front pages. To the 15 Iraqi civilians (seven women, three children) allegedly murdered for revenge at Haditha, to Ramadi and Thar Thar Lake and Hamdania, we can add another name: Mahmudiyah. That's where Abeer Qasim Hamza, a fifteen-year-old girl, was often harassed by American soldiers at the checkpoint near her home. She was finally found in her home, dress pushed up around her neck, raped and shot. Her mother, father, and younger sister were killed too.
I don't care if you have "compassion fatigue." This horror will turn your stomach, and it should. Maybe the Iraqi insurgent militias have committed the same crimes or worse -- kidnappings, beheadings, more we don't know about. Maybe Vietnam was worse, in numbers. it doesn't matter -- minimizing these crimes is revolting.
This is not a question of scapegoating individual soldiers -- "bad apples" don't fall far from the tree. Instead, we have an opportunity as a nation to begin some collective truth and reconciliation. America is clearly at a turning point in self-scrutiny of our conduct in the war on terror, with these long-delayed atrocity reports finally making headlines, and with the recent Supreme Court decision in favor of trials for the inmates at Guantanamo Bay.
But to make progress, we need citizen action and leadership. The Washington Post said that the soldiers currently being investigated for the crime at Mahmudiyah were bravely turned in by members of their own unit. If only the same guts were shown by those at the top. So far they have charged just one of the four soldiers implicated in this latest crime. He had already been discharged.
This Fourth of July, it's your and my duty as patriotic citizens to uphold the ideal of justice for all. Any servicemen and women who have already crossed the line should be investigated and tried, and as soon as possible, we need to pull our troops out of this ugly and impossible situation. Otherwise, the worst is yet to come.