It does seem unfair to conclude, after the US special forces operation to hunt and kill Osama bin Laden, that all Navy SEAL teams are death squads, but is it a logical fallacy? No one is now pretending there was any other objective but to kill the al-Qaeda leader and everyone who stood in our path, preferably unarmed. Now the latest revelation is that a duplicate assault team was kept at the ready. That’s how many executioners ready? The question becomes, are all Navy Seals trained to kill in cold blood? The answer could lay with the instructors at Fort Benning, the notorious “School of the Americas” where it used to be understood the death squads of South American dictators learned their trade, although now torture is taught at military camps and private contractor schools literally coast to coast, so isn’t that the problem? Torture being among other unsavory practices we say we do not do, while simultaneously forbidding revelations to come from Wikileaks.
When the Germans set their minds to liquidate civilians as their Operation Barbarossa drove toward Russia, they dedicated “special forces” called the “Einsatzgruppen” to do the deed. One because the task detracted from the forward advance, and two, because executing unarmed civilians proved a demoralizing task for the ordinary soldier. On the other hand, gathering noncombatants and shooting them in the back of the head didn’t require combat skills either, so the Einsatzgruppen were recruited from the police force of German cities like Hamburg, where the principle skill was exerting authority and pulling the trigger where others might flinch.
The Einsatzgruppen present vexing evidence for Holocaust deniers. Skeptics can point to inconsistencies about the function of gas chambers in the concentration camps, to suggest that the Nazis might have managed to work their prison laborers to death, but never intended to exterminate them. That argument fails when considering the role of the Einsatzgruppen, to hunt down Jewish civilians, take them to where no one is looking and shoot them. Prisoners of war, yes, and Slavs too, but by primary directive, the Jews.
When partisan acts of sabotage necessitated disciplinary retribution, the Germans had other squads to raze entire villages, these soldiers were chosen from the military brig or from convicts offered a military probation from civilian prison.
In either case the German Wehrmacht chose to match the criminal mindset to the crime. Though overwhelming in its savagery, WWII predated the “Free Fire Zone” where civilians are pretended to be adversaries and/or dismissed as collateral damage.
That’s not to say that today’s soldiers are all bad, many of them I’m sure are earnest peacekeepers determined to win hearts to Pax Americana. I’m sure your average Navy SEAL has rescued his share of kittens from trees.
So which is it, do the Navy SEALs train every member not to shy from shooting defenseless people at point-blank range, or are there designated specialists? Are those chosen based on excellence of performance, as the PR has it, or from among the sailors with disciplinary troubles? Because it’s looking like the bin Laden raid was not out of the ordinary, and no one’s defending it as such.
Bin Laden’s assassination offered a curious ray of hope for me when President Obama’s mission accomplished message was “justice has been served.” Might I dream that bankers and the world’s biggest criminals could feel a draft of discomfort at the idea that no one is untouchable, and the Commander in Chief’s idea of serving justice means a hail of bullets to whomever’s home he chooses.
Don’t worry, there are unspecial forces enough to go around. When Wikileaks released the video of unarmed Iraqis being gunned down by relentless, trigger-giddy helicopter crews, most soldiers acknowledged that such events were commonplace. In the US military, you don’t even have to be a specially rated soldier to rank as Einsatzgruppen.
In my 20-year experience with local policemen, owning two retail stores, soliciting their help with shoplifters, vandals, and whatever disturbances, I can honestly report that all were professional, competent, and very pleasant. That’s 100% of them, very nice people. I can also say that in my experiences protesting, those police-persons who arrested me were unwavering bastards. Also 100%. Not in any particular case the same officers, but statistically, if you compare the two absolute groups, they’re the same people.
So… you’re saying that the US military is similar to the Schutzstaffel and Sonderkommando (do your research you ignorant fool, Wehrmacht were common soldiers, any war crimes perpertrated by them were unorganized. The SS and SD were the people responsible for staffing and running death camps, etc). Firstly, I freely admit that the US has commited war crimes, such as My Lai, but these are unorganized, commited by the common soldier. It’s impossible to make sure that everyone obeys the rules of war. In the case of My Lai, Mr Calley’s commanding officer told him to kill all members of the enemy and take no prisoners. In case you don’t know, the Geneva convention states that while an army must treat all POWs well, they do not have to give the enemy the right to surrender. This amendament was made after the pacific battles (Guandalcanal, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa) where Imperial Japanese Soldiers abused prisoner’s rights, hiding grenades in their clothes then faking surrender to kill a few unlucky marines with them. So the order was well within the rules of war. However, during the battle insurgents hid in the village of My Lai. Assuming his orders gave him impunity as he was ordered to ‘annhilate the enemy at all cost’ he ordered the villagers to give up the insurgents or he would call in an airstrike on their village. It is important to note that he did not actually carry this out. When the villagers refused he moved up his troops. At this point they drew sniper fire from un-uniformed combatants. One of the sergeants snapped and assembled a crowd of 20 to 100 villagers, and threatened them with an M203 Grenade launcher, ordering them to remove their clothes, allegedly to check for weapons. Fearing rape, the villagers refused again. All this time, Calley was negotiating. At this point, there was a meltdown. Assuming their (misintepreted) orders allowed them to attack civilians with impunity the segeant fired his M203, killing most of them. The situation quickly escalated and one of the soldiers aimed at Calley telling him to leave or die with the villagers. He ran, returning to find a burning village and gruesome scenes of raptorur
Sorry, pressed submit too early I will continue. How can you expect soldiers to treat everyone equally, both armed insurgent and unarmed civilian. The soldiers in the Helicopter had to make a hard choice, the lives of their comrades versus possibly hurting civilians; needing to be made in few seconds. So what if SEALs are assasins, they only assasinate terrorist who have caused death and sorrow. I suppose you feel they should have let the murderer of 3000 go free. Perhaps they should have tossed him a gun, so he could be shot as acombatant…also, the people in his house were armed and fired at the SEALs, far from defenceless.
I guess you sleep better at night, dreaming of a world where terrorist run free because they are unarmed.
I’m not saying there are no war crimes, I’m just saying there are differnces between organized ones and accidental ones, isolated ones and deliberate ones. I hope you take my advise to heart; but I have heard it’s pointless to talk to an unlistening person.
How about making intelligent choices like, not joining an organization that’s dedicated to killing people?
I mean, the reasons given for killing large numbers of people in countries which you don’t actually own are consistently far different from the demonstrated realities.
That would lead a sane person to believe that the people who want him to obey orders with no questions including orders to travel to exotic places, meet interesting people, and kill them… are quite probably LYING to him and when they also make a large pile of money from the deaths not only of your “enemies” but also your comrades, that would reinforce the notion that they’re LYING to you.
And when they, themselves, and the vast majority of their friends and family actively avoid going into armed conflict themselves, like Reagan, John Wayne, George Bush the Either, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, Bill Clinton, Rudi Giuliani, (m)Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Mit Romney, Huckabee, Paul Wolfowicz, you know the ChickenHawk Parade and amazingly, Anonymous, you’ve versed yourself very thoroughly in their philosophy, My God you sound so much like a Dittohead…
But given that they’ll send YOU to kill and die for their money but not THEMSELVES, that has a high probability of causing you to believe that they’re playing YOU for a fucking chump.
If you insist on parroting their bullshit to anybody who DOES question it, and give us stupid platitudes like the Largest Terrorist State in the world is somehow Fighting Terrorism I’ll start to believe you ARE a chump.
You could change that.
If Usama bin Laden was unarmed, was surrendering, LIKE THE NAVY SEALS LYNCH MOB SAY IN THEIR OWN REPORTS then perhaps you could have PROVEN Usama bin Laden to be the monster your Propaganda Corps keep saying he was, instead of dumping his body in the ocean and Simply Taking Your Word For Everything.
He could have been given a REAL trial instead of a Media Lynching.
So, Anonymous, who’s the one Not Listening?
What the Death Squids did, according to their own report, was murder a Prisoner of War in cold blood and then destroyed the physical evidence.
The SchutzStaffel did that at Malmedi in Belgium.
According to the ALLIED reports like the following…
Much like what happens NOW when say, the Death Squids do a lynching or the Chair Force does the same thing by remote control with a drone….
Here’s the important part, the Actual Reason That Military Tradition and Law Forbids Murdering Civilians and Prisoners of War…
See, Anonymous, I have family over in Afghanistan, one a Green Beret who is my sisters eldest son. What if HE gets into a situation where he gets captured?
I sure as fuck wouldn’t want him being summarily executed like Usama bin Laden was, even though he is a dumbass at times.
Apparently the Pentagon and CIA and other Government Little Brain Little Dicks who made the decision to LYNCH Usama don’t have any such sentiments for any of the Disposable Expendable Soldiers who they, for all practical purposes, OWN.
Body and soul. He bought into that ridiculous indoctrination that “we’re fighting for freedom” and other LIES the Corporate Whore/War-mongers use to convince stupid people to fight their wars of conquest for them. And they’ll throw away not only HIS life but anybody else as long as they get their profit margin.
Speaking of “stiffened resistance” do you…
heeheehee joke here “Remember” the Alamo?
And Goliad. One of the Hysterians supporting the same war, using the same arguments, that you just tried to pull…
Said that Colonel David Crockett actually did die like John Wayne portrayed it, in the face of evidence that he was taken captive and then shot.
Says this truly Racist line that since “our boys” are over there fighting the dark-skinned hordes they need to BELIEVE that the final act at the Alamo was David Crockett being shot down in combat.
Which wouldn’t have been a War Crime. Killing prisoners is.
Likewise killing prisoners of war at Goliad.
Likewise the same subset of “historians” who next week are going to be celebrating the outcome of War Crimes like killing civilians And Calling The American Indian Resistance To the Occupation and Conquest of Our Lands “TERRORISM” the same way YOU call the resistance in Afghanistan and Iraq at Territory Days.
You see, I’m not exactly judging a book by its cover. But I’m Judging YOU by the company you keep… and keep telling us the same bullshit they do, Mr or Mrs Anonymous.
The Massacres at Sand Creek and the Little Ouachita were repaid in the blood of soldiers some of whom were themselves children when those massacres took place.
I wonder how many of them tried to say what Mexican conscript soldiers did at San Jacinto when General Antonio Jose y Maria Lopez (de Santa Ana) was defeated.
“No matame! no kill me! Me No Alamo!”
Stiffened resistance, and reprisals. Play your propaganda games all you want, but Anonymous, count on people answering back.
Count on it.