I see that things are also going swimmingly in Iraq.
Reactions?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
What the fuck else would you expect? Sounds like this group is just standing around wanting the U.S. military to wipe their asses for them, while they sneak out the back door to consort with some basement militia. If this doesn’t convince people that it’s time for us to leave, I don’t know what will. I can understand where this Army guy is coming from, having served in the military myself for 23 years.
Interesting that you would take it that way. Oddly, it sounds to me like just another American a**** with an imperialist mentality reading out the wogs for not doing his imperialist dirty work for him.
And it’s beyond hilarious when he asks them if they are loyal to their country. The irony is so thick and dense you couldn’t cut it with a giant diamond saw.
And I’ll bet they were just EVER so much more willing to cooperate after that, too!
I suspect he wasn’t that way in the beginning. Getting shot at by the people you are training might make you a little annoyed, too. This is but one reason why we need to leave — then they can fight amongst themselves…
One other point: what I saw on the video is essentially the nature of recruit-level military training; it is intended to prepare soldiers/police for difficult combat-like duty, and it’s not intended to be a self-esteem building “love-fest.” I went through basically the same thing in Navy basic, which I’m told pales in comparison to Army/Marine boot camp in the level of “intensity” for lack of a better term.
Well, that sort of thing might be a great motivator in the U.S. military when American officers are talking that way to American enlisted. Now, try to imagine that your country has been brutally invaded and as brutally occupied by the military of a foreign country that has brought little but death, destruction, economic ruin, and misery to your country, not to mention the displacement of 5-6 million people; tried to dominate your country politically, economically, as well as militarily; built tens of military bases in your territory, many of them clearly intended to be permanent; and built what is obviously the 21st century equivalent of an imperial citadel in the middle of your capital. Got that? Now try to imagine that this brutal occupying military is using the military and the police of your country to do the work of fighting the forces opposed to their presence, and imagine that you are standing there being yelled and cursed at in the most vulgar way by one of them who accuses you, among other things, of not being nationalist enough to fight and kill your fellow Iraqis on their behalf. Do you think that would be an effective way of inspiring loyalty, or even “preparing you for difficult combat-like duty”?
Cultural insensitivity doesn’t even begin to describe it. Neither does utter stupidity.
I’m afraid your righteous indignation is misdirected at a soldier who has been trained to fight and win wars, and is now tasked with training these individuals. Unfortunately, this is what happens when our armed forces are tasked with a nation-building exercise such as this. Hopefully, this fiasco will serve as a warning to any elected official that tries this again anytime soon. Like it or not, this is how military personnel are trained, and our soldiers were never meant to build and train armies of different nations. Maybe it’s easy for you to sit in the comfort of your computer screen and criticize this man with high-minded intellectual analysis of cultural sensitivity when it’s not you and your fellow soldiers and friends that are being shot at and roadside bombed, but maybe you could at least attempt to respect this soldier’s position and place yourself in his shoes. He has been given a virtually impossible task of training these people, and many of them have decided to sneak out the back door and try to kill the very same people that are trying to train them to defend their own country. Again, let me suggest that you, too, might be a little annoyed at being treated like this. Whether you realize it or not, these Iraqi men VOLUNTEERED for this service. Seems to me that if they have an ax to grind with the U.S. presence, then they would not have VOLUNTARILY subjected themselves to the rigors of police/military service and training. I also wonder where the Iraqi “superiors” are hiding out during this process. I want us out of Iraq, too, but it’s our elected officials that need to be held accountable and not this soldier — he is very likely doing the best he can with the tools he has available to him.
Oh, puleeeze! Give me a break. I have exactly zero sympathy for people like that under any circumstances, but I’ll tell you what. If you’ll try to place yourself in Iraqis’ shoes, maybe I’ll try to imagine how I’d feel if I were part of an occupying force trying to train people to kill their fellow nationals on behalf of my country. The notion that he is trying to train the Iraqis to defend their country is hilarious! Defend their country against whom? The next U.S. invasion?
Yeah, those Iraqi men VOLUNTEERED. But do you know why they VOLUNTEERED? They VOLUNTEERED because the U.S. has destroyed the economy of the country to the point that for most of them this is the only means by which they can earn a paycheck to feed their families. They did not volunteer in order to be cursed out by some American asshole in the most vulgar terms for not killing enough of their fellow Iraqis to please him.
As for whether or not the soldier should be held accountable, I beg to differ. Everyone at every level, including the lowest-ranking soldier, is accountable for their part in this. I remind you of the song Universal Soldier, which is precisely about individual accountability for war:
Spirited debate…That’s why I come here!
Twice I have suggested that you try putting yourself in the place of the occupied instead of the occupier. Have you done so yet? Have you tried to imagine how you would think, feel, and behave if your country were brutally attacked, conquered, virtually destroyed, and occupied for nearly seven years resulting in a complete breakdown of society, the deaths of around 5% of the population and the displacement of around 20%, not to mention the collective punishment of entire neighborhoods, towns, and villages, the arbitrary house raids, the daily humiliation at the hands of ignorant foreigners, and the arbitrary sweeps resulting in the imprisonment, and torture, of hundreds of thousands of your fellow citizens? And have you thought about how you might react to some ignorant asshole foreigner insulting you in the most vulgar manner because you would not hunt down and kill your fellow citizens on his behalf?
My thought process would probably be “If the bombings/fightings stop, maybe they’ll go away. That’s what they say and fighting them ourselves has not made tem go away. So what’s the best way to get it to stop? They clearly don’t have a fucking clue. So I have to do it.”
Sorry, but if you believe that then you really don’t have a grasp on the situation as Iraqis have experienced it, or frankly on its reality.
And to put it in another context, history suggests that letting up the pressure on the colonial/imperial occupier does the exact opposite of getting them to leave. On the contrary, it provides them the leisure to dig their claws more deeply in, and establish the structures and institutions they need to remain as long as they like. If you want a contemporary example, study the results of Oslo in Palestine. The Israelis – that would be the “saintly” Yitzhak “break their bones” Rabin – took advantage of the negotiations to drastically accelerate their rate of colonization, and deepen and strengthen their hold on the West Bank, and East Jerusalem even as they were supposedly negotiating to release the Occupied Territories, and once the agreement was signed, they really went for it. In other words, while they were negotiating how the pizza would be divided, they were wolfing down as much of it as they could.
Further, it is utterly unrealistic to expect people who are under daily attack and threat of attack from an occupying power not to fight back. I would dearly love to see how Americans would behave under the same circumstances Iraqis have faced for the last seven years. I doubt they would chose to stop resisting under any circumstances. Ever heard of “give me liberty or give me death”? Those are words that all Americans are proud of, I believe?
If I’m an Iraqi whose life has been hell for over 7 years, what the hell do I know or care about the grand sweep of occupations? I care about what is happening in my situation. No Americans have come colonizing. It’s army troops, not settlers setting up homes and businesses, not even in the Green Zone where it’s rotating staff.
I never said I expected Iraqis not to fight back, but you asked how I would think. And I would think that fighting back has got us jack shit and a lot of deaths. It’s like if I got asked what I would do if Red Dawn happened. Learn to speak Russian.
If you were an Iraqi and thought the way you describe, you would be very atypical. Iraqis understand very, very well about the grand sweep of imperialist occupations. They’ve been through it all many times before, last century with the British, this century with the Americans. Polls have also shown that the great majority of Iraqis understand the “grand sweep” of this occupation. In every poll that has asked the question, the majority have answered that they do not believe the Americans intend to end the occupation. They believe that they are there to exploit Iraq’s resources and its strategic location. The Great American Citadel of Baghdad (aka the “embassy”) stands as a constant reminder of the U.S.’s long-term intentions.
And colonial/imperial occupation is not about building colonies and moving Americans into them, although certainly the Green Zone, and even more the Great American Citadel of Baghdad are certainly a kind of colony, aren’t they?
As for fighting back, would you say that in the 1700’s all it got the American nationalists was jack shit and a lot of deaths? It certainly got them a lot of deaths, and would have gotten them many times more deaths had the weapons technology been more advanced at the time, but I wouldn’t say it got them jack shit. Would you? Well, among the things it has gotten the Iraqis is that it has completely hampered the Americans’ plans to transform Iraq into a compliant client state, and forced them into making a withdrawal plan. Had the Iraqis not resisted the situation would be far, far different.
Actually, without the intervention of the French, the American colonials would have ended up with much less than jack shit – the Iraqis would need to convince the Chinese or Russians to intervene in order to achieve a similar result.
Beside the point. And it seems the Iraqi nationalists are much better at this resistance thing than the American nationalists were, since without any assistance at all from the Chinese or Russia they have successfully disrupted the empire’s plans for their country, and made conquest so expensive that the empire has agreed to withdraw.
Okay now you have crossed a line. I don’t care if you denigrate Americans but you need to get your facts right. It’s a lot easier to sustain an insurgency now than the 1700s. Why? Well one reason is because weapons are easier to fire and more deadly compared to un-rifled flintlocks. A straight comparison between the ARW and the Iraqi insurgency is factually ridiculous.
I admit that I don’t know the history, but if the “insurgents” had only flintlocks, wouldn’t the occupiers also have less “deadly” means of of controlling them? I don’t understand how that types of weaponry would change things for one side and not equally for the other.
The difference between being the attacker and the attacked ultimately comes down to this: To truly triumph, an attacker must fully vanquish his foe – which is something the attacked can deny him merely by surviving.
That doesn’t change, no matter the weapons. And it is why history is mostly “lies written by the ‘winner'”, because in the end he has to declare “victory” to mask his defeat.
Please tell me you are joking. Please tell me you are not seriously offended because I suggested that the Iraqis must be better than the American nationalists were at the resistance thing because they managed to defeat the U.S. occupation without assistance from an outside power. National pride is one thing, but that is just plain silly.
PS Insurgency is not the correct term in the case of Iraq. An insurgency is a rebellion against an existing government. Resistance against occupation is not insurgency. What happened internally in Iraq just after the 1991 war was an insurgency. What has happened in Iraq since 2003 is resistance against foreign occupation, which is a very different thing.
Did you even bother to read my post? I am pissed off because of the factual misconceptions.
Yes, I read your comment before I replied. You need to chill out, stop taking everything so seriously, and stop being so defensive.
And by the way I cannot imagine where you got the idea that it was more difficult to mount an effective resistance (or in that case insurgency) in the 1700’s. That appears ludicrous on its face given the war technology at the disposal of the United States today, and you’re going to have to provide a lot more than just your indignant word for it.
Fascinating question, indeed. What is the moral responsibility of the American soldier for the tragedy of Iraq? I mean this particular American soldier who is trying to motivate the Iraqi police recruits to be more militant is in a cultural and ethical vacuum. We invaded their country for what amounts to a lie: Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and no ties with Al Qaida. The USA is the clear cut aggressor.
The real pussies are these same American soldiers who fail to identify that they have committed a grievous moral wrong against an innocent people. If they had any moral courage, these American troops would resign their commissions as soon as possible and remove themselves from Iraq. By staying and performing their duties, these soldiers commit themselves to the ongoing crimes of an imperialistic empire, which empire could not expand without their unfailing efforts. What a horrific karma this civilization is putting together.
What if they gave a war and no one showed up? :o}
PS In a more general sense, that kind of “recruit-level military training” looks more like ridiculously adolescent-male-level trash talking. All that would do for any sane, sensible person is cause them to lose all respect for the person ranting at them in such a childish way, and for the institution that employs that kind of rant as a training tool.
“You’re trying to kill your fellow fucking Iraqis!”
You can’t make this stuff up.
I can’t blame Soldier for his words. Nothing worst than risking your life for a group of people who won’t do shit to protect themselves.
P.S. Notice the Interpreter is wearing some sort of “nylon” mask to disguise his face. Tells more about Iraq than anything said.
And what, exactly, is it you think that it tells you about Iraq? Maybe that they still understand, rightly, that the Americans are occupiers and not saviours, and maybe that they still don’t take any more kindly to collaborators than has any other population living under a military occupation?
I give no credence to your comment. For whatever reasons the Iraqis are in control of their own future. Honestly, I do agree with you on one point. Each and every American Soldier should leave Iraq as soon as possible.
Once their Civil War is over we will recognize whoever is left standing.
People living under foreign military rule are never in control of their own future. And when some American military idiot can stand in front of a group of Iraqis and curse them out in English for supposedly not being nationalist enough to follow the occupiers’ orders, then it should be absolutely clear who is in charge of both the present and the future.
Oh, and in case the full irony of that guys ugly little diatribe slipped past you, the Mahdi Army happens to be a nationalist militia. Of course, the Mawdi (sic) Army might be something else.
So you agree with me? America should withdraw each and ever soldier and let Iraq either fall into chaos or get their shit together and become a country.
I guess you don’t know me, do you? Since March, 2003 I have been calling for a full withdrawal not only of each and every soldier, but of every shred of official American presence anywhere in Iraq, and each and every “contractor”, the dismantling of each and every American military base, permanent and otherwise, and the conversion of the American Imperial Citadel (risibly called an embassy) in Baghdad to housing and other facilities for orphans and others permanently displaced by the American aggression against Iraq.
Iraqis know how to live together. The have done so for thousands of years. They know how to rebuild their own country and their own society, but they will never be able to get down to the business of rebuilding and healing their society as long as ignorant foreign assholes like that one are there urging them in the most vulgar terms to go out and kill each other.
Get out. Just get out and give Iraqis their country back.
PS An apology and reparations would be nice, but for now just leaving will do.
Yes, there IS something worse, and that is pretending you are risking your life for the sake of a bunch of ragheads who won’t do shit to make sure your little adventure in foreign conquest is successful.
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Doing a task in Iraq for our Commander In Chief. Must be an easy translation, every other word is ‘fucking’. Quite motivational or rather listening to these cursing words, I would indeed join the Mahdi army as I understand these men are Shia.
Mass Desertions Undermine Iraq Army – Fighting in Sadr City
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Don’t you mean the “Mawdi” (sic) army? :o}
And how telling that that American idiot either knows or assumes they are all Shi`a.
I think the soldier handled it well. I saw this a long time ago. You can’t blame him. Abandonment and turning on the police is a huge problem.
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Building trust in a different style: Dutch marines go out on missions with inexperienced Afghan National Army (ANA) men in training. They don’t have soldier’s boots, nor equipment like helmets. They buy these attributes in the local bazar out of their own pocket. Nevertheless the Dutch OMLT have done quite a job in training Afghan police and soldiers in the dangerous province of Uruzgan.
Dutch Military training the Afghan National Army and Police
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Translation: You’re all a bunch of Pussies.
What is the date of this video?
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This past week. I would estimate this confrontation is one or two years back.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Typical American imperialist attitude and behaviour.
Aside from the fact that the guy is yapping his head of with no clue, what a great way to motivate the wogs to do your imperial dirty work for you!
I wonder how many of those guys went and joined the Mawdi (sic) militia as soon as they got out of there.
Just remember everyone, the Empire is winning in Iraq and in a few decades we will be able to remove most of our troops. Yeah, sure. I wonder how many of the police candidates are actually members of the opposition. Imagine training the guys who someday will be shooting at you. No wonder the
RomanAmerican soldier seems so pissed off and considers his charges a bunch of fucking cowards.Sic transit gloria mundi. (So passes the glory of the world.)
How discouraging. Still, I see at least some basis here for cross-cultural understanding: both the soldier, and most of these policemen probably agree there’s better way to express your contempt and disgust for another man than to call him a woman.
I agree. I was taken aback by his verbal abuse towards both the trainees and the moment where he turned around and directed his anger at the Iraqis in charge of the group. Way to emasculate them. It’s fairly obvious that there is a lack of respect.
This treatment is similar to how most drill sergeants treat recruits in basic training and boot camps in the US military. The constant usage of expletives and insulting recruits by referring to them as “women” or “pussies” which is seen as weakness. He ignores cultural sensitivity and defaulted to American-style training. I’m sure frustration played a part.
I am sure that a sense of western superiority, conqueror’s power, and racism also played a part.
What’s most interesting is the level of command failure that created this charming scene. The amount of money the US military spends on psy-ops should get a result somewhat more sophisticated than ignorant yelling, you’d think. Only a totally dysfunctional general staff could allow such idiotic behavior and if they can’t organize a motivational script more sophisticated than a bellowing rendition of “fuck you fucking pussies”, one can only imagine how the logistics is organized or what sort of intelligence operation they run.
I think you already covered those in your first few posts. Please resist the urge to educate everyone on this board. You’re not the only with more than a superficial understanding of the region and ties to its people.
I apologize if you did not intend to come off as condescending.
I am merely expressing my viewpoint on something deeply important to me.
Yes, I realize that. I prefer to have such discussions offline as much as possible. One of the drawbacks of the internet age.
On that we do not agree. I prefer to discuss important matters like this publicly where many different viewpoints are available.
whatever else may be said, the iraqis are not pussies with no backbone.
Yes, and thanks for that!
it’s hard to be a pussy with no backbone when daily life means, literally, risking death.
you gotta have guts to deal with that.
That’s par for the course for the Marines – every third word is typically an F Bomb with them: “How you f’ing doing today?” “That’s some good f’ing chow!” “Imma take a f’ing dump.” It’s part of their vernacular, and Marines aren’t exactly trained to babysit countries – you send in the Marines when you want absolute destruction. Nation-building (and yes, occupation) is the work of the army.
A politically correct Marine is an oxymoron.
Obviously, we need to leave – we never needed to be there in the first place – but you can’t expect a Marine in a war zone to act like Mr. Rogers any more than you’d expect an elementary school teacher to act like a Marine in class.
More excuses. “Well, this is the way marines talk”? “Gosh, you can’t expect marines to act like Mr. Rogers”? Maybe not, but what you SHOULD be able to expect is that if you genuinely want to “win hearts and minds” (sickening phrase), motivate people and gain their cooperation in this type of a situation, this is exactly the wrong way to go about it. On the other hand, I have always said that there is no right way to do something that is 100% wrong at its core, but seriously. How is it that Americans have managed to do absolutely everything in Iraq just about as wrong as possible?
Oh, and when it comes to Iraq at least, the Army hasn’t been any better at it.
No excuses, I’m simply saying that you never send Marines to “win hearts and minds”, motivate people and gain their cooperation – you send Marines if your intention is to kill everyone and destroy everything. That’s what Marines do – it’s all that they do, and they do it well – they’re not a phalanx of philosophers…
OK, thanks for the clarification. :o}
Precisely! It’s also worth mentioning that professor drill instructor in the video above is probably a proponent of the “When you have someone by the balls, their hearts and minds will soon follow” axiom. A winning formula for success in this case? Probably not — but that is the reality of what this guy does for a living. Blaming him and PFC Grunt for everything that’s wrong and immoral in Iraq is, to say the least, misdirected.
Each of us is responsible for our own beliefs, behaviour, and actions. That includes professor drill instructor, and PFC Grunt.
Stunned but not surprised…he sounds like a DI, with recruits, but my reaction is that he will not make them love him or fight with him based on the way he is speaking.
I don’t have a lot to add to Hurria’s excellent critiques above, except to note that this is hardly an isolated incident. As a couple of commenters have noted above, this is exactly how an American would train other Americans. In Afghanistan, this excellent piece by Ann Jones describes American soldiers trying earnestly to train the Afghan Army to be Americans — ignoring both the physical reality of Afghan recruits who’ve lived in a country at war their entire lives (i.e., they’re impoverished, small, malnourished, and not able to carry the American standard-issue 50 pounds of gear) and the physical attributes the Taliban rely on but the Americans ignore (e.g., they can run through mountains all day and night).
The cultural obliviousness Hurria has dissected so well is only part of the story. The Americans, in Afghanistan and Iraq for going on a decade now, and getting their asses kicked in both, still haven’t figured out the basic skills, needs, and sensibilities of the people supposedly meant to replace them. Even if most of the recruits are only there for economic reasons, it doesn’t justify or excuse the American approach. Gosh, you’d almost think the Americans aren’t interested in having them “stand up” because we have no interest in “standing down.”
“you’d almost think the Americans aren’t interested in having them “stand up” because we have no interest in “standing down.” “
Gee, ya THINK?!
For me the most galling, appalling, and infuriating aspect of this is the ongoing deception that the military gives a crap about protecting Iraqis, and that this is the purpose of what they are doing with the Iraqi military and police there. It has always been and still is mainly about using the Iraqi military and police as proxy occupation forces, and the Iraqis know this only too well. That, and not cowardice, is why Iraqi units refused to take part in the Falluja massacres, and why they have so often “run away” from fights, and simply disappeared in droves. They are simply not happy to be used by the imperial occupiers against their fellow Iraqis.
It is also why some of them have “moonlighted” as part of a nationalist militia or other resistance group. So, for this guy to suggest that they don’t care enough about their country to go out and kill their fellow citizens for the sake of the occupation is simply outrageous in its utter cluelessness, as is all that bullshit about the Mawdi (sic) Army. Even most Sunnis by and large have a more nuanced understanding of Muqtada Sadr and the Mahdi Army than do those who are guiding U.S. policy in Iraq.
Iraqis are not some stone age tribe that was recently discovered living in the jungle along the banks of the Amazon or the Congo. They are not on the whole a naive people. On the contrary, most Iraqis are a good deal more politically sophisticated, and worlds tougher and more resilient than most Americans. They have had to be in order to survive. They know what is going on, and for these ignorant yahoos to treat them as if they did not is beyond insulting.
What if you threw a war and only the other side showed up?
If you think our own men and women don’t get an earful like this during basic or if they aren’t getting their jobs done, yer wrong.
The idea of breaking down recruits is time tested, lame to watch, but in use all over the world – one assumes it is effective. Remember, he is not talking to press or civilians, these are men who’s lives will be at risk if their comrades aren’t all on the same page and this guy doesn’t get his point across. I personally loath all of this military dominance/submission crap, but it’s not irrational or distinctly American or even imperials.
Not to say the speaker isn’t being a huge prick (and on purpose). He is not a policy maker, he’s just doing his job trying to keep these guys from killing themselves. If there were no Americans around, and an Iraqi was giving the talk to recruits peppered with militia men, it would likely be quite similar in tone and probably with much more creative insults. These aren’t nursery school teachers being trained to follow their orders. This is how you go from 99% percent of your forces not firing at the enemy to the oft repeated average of only 15-20%. It’s a lot harder than TV or Prez Bush thought to make people kill others, even in their own self-defense.
Pull our guys out or let them do their jobs. There is no lameness-free way to do the latter, and unfortunately, no humane way to do the latter if you believe that more violence and death occur as a result, which is a reasonable position.
It’s no one in the video’s fault that these men are together in this crap situation.
Sorry, but no. This technique may or may not “work” in some bizarre way on recruits in a national military force being “trained” by their own officers who are part of that same national military force (though one does have to wonder how much of the belief that it works is superstition based on long practice). These are people being ranted at by a representative of a despised country that has committed a clearly criminal act of aggression against their country in which they destroyed its physical and civil infrastructure, killed and/or displaced millions of its citizens, including many of their own loved ones, abused human rights on a level of scope and magnitude that the hated dictator never even dreamed of, and made any semblance of normal life a distant dream.
He is also a representative of a country that caused unimaginable suffering and death over a thirteen year period beginning in 1990 before destroying what little was left of the country starting in 1993. Iraqi recruits will never feel anything but resentment and rage over being spoken to in this manner by an American. If it inspires or motivates them to do anything, it will not be to cooperate with the occupiers and to fight against their fellow Iraqis for their sakes.
Iraqis are first of all not good at submitting to dominance from foreigners. They are even less good at accepting insults from those who have committed crimes against them. And they have no illusions regarding the Americans’ intentions, going back decades. They do not respect the American troops at all. That does not add up to an environment in which this kind of “training technique” is likely to produce the desired results.
Do you think the vulnerable of Iraqi society would be better off with police without training or discipline? I think you’d better stick to strategy. You yell and harass recruits for many good reasons, but first and foremost is so that they learn to take orders from their command structure and that they get used to maintaining discipline highly stressful situations. Do you want the police taking orders from people outside of command structure? Do you want them running at the first sign of danger? Would that help the Iraqis?
Don’t take some basic shit-talk as more than what it is. Sure it may be methaphorical for the imperialist, but it is just a few greenhorns getting chewed out.
Which other police force should they join in order to protect the innocent?
Look, I am assuming nothing these are things that are done and proven, not some wishful thinking based on my personally ideology. Take 30 seconds and do some research. These people would be more likely to die if they try to do their jobs, and so would their charges, if they can’t keep a cool head under even much more stress. There are more important issues to be right about. Obedience in a war zone saves lives, sorry. Do you think for a second that modern militaries and police forces haven’t explored this even a little? You want them putting flowers in their guns?
Move on and back to the larger strategy where your impulses are correct.
If this man was speaking to a crowd of civilians (which, thanks to the video he probably was), this should end his career possibilities. But since he was trying to help these guys be able to do their jobs, let’s not make it what it isn’t.
I think your points are excellent ones and I’d add this corollary to your observations.
The kind of verbal abuse shown in the video is out of place for all the reasons you’ve mentioned as well as this one:
It’s one thing to practice this sort of harangue during basic training of one’s own forces, done in settings which are not in the midst of the combat zones themselves, and something else to adopt those same and apply them to people (whether they’re “volunteers” or not) under military occupation. The same CO’s who might have mercilessly berated and humiliated their raw recruits during basic training while States-side, wouldn’t, I daresay continue those habits once deployed in the combat-zones, by which time, if a powerful “esprit de corps” and sense of self-sacrifice for one’s fellow soldiers isn’t already established, it amounts to a morale disaster and a very dangerous situation.
If the American in this video isn’t a prime candidate for being “fragged” in some convenient fire-fight, I’d be very surprised. What I’d expect his harangue to elicit is nothing short of murderous contempt on the part of some of those “listening”.
PS In reference to your opening question, I cannot help but point out that before the Americans so kindly came to help Iraqis learn how to police their society Iraq’s cities were, for all the troubles of the country, among the safest in the world with some of the lowest crime rates in the world – far lower than for most American cities. Violent crime in particular was very rare, as it is in most cities in Arab or Muslim countries. One could leave one’s house any time of the day or night, alone or with company, driving or on foot, with great certainty that one would return home safe and sound, and in possession of all the personal property one left the house with. Once could send one’s children to school, or to the neighbors’, or to the corner store, or to play on the streets confident that they would return home for dinner.
All that changed for the worse as soon as the Americans arrived. The rate of violent crime soared, and no one felt safe from criminals in any place at any time. So, I don’t know why any American would think they have the key to keeping the “vulnerable Iraqi society” safe, let alone that this key consists of Americans verbally abusing Iraqis in very vulgarly sexual ways.
I’ll warm up the time machine. In the mean time with scores of people dying in the streets, the country needs a competent police force ASAP.
Or we could airlift Quaker pamphlets and leave tomorrow. Think for 1 seconds and you’ll get there is a practical problem with anti-Imperialist jibberjabber at this point. The country is FUBAR and we are trying to build a police force and get the hell out. I suppose you are a fan of open civil war and it’s effects on local populations.
Give me one remotely coherent scenario where more people aren’t killed that includes an immediate diengagement by the US.
So, while we are waiting for that, how about we harden some policemen for some of the scariest beats in all the world?
I think the macabre circus of whats going on “on the ground” continues to serve as a distraction for the trillion of dollars moving from public coffers to private companies behind the scenes.
The Powers That Be were/are very aware that putting “average Joe” militarily trained soldiers and mercenaries on the ground makes a situation unresolvable in any real sense. That’s why we sent them in. And it’s why we’ll keep them there until this cash cow has been milked to death.
It’s also why Osama bin Forgotten. If we had caught him in Afghanistan we would have lost our mandate for staying there. And invading Iraq would have been impossible without shifting focus from the still “at large” bin Laden to the sitting duck Hussein. Anyone who thinks this mess isn’t orchestrated precisely to be the mess that it is is not paying attention.
BINGO. Boring old appropriations graft and the open palm of the MI complex has to be addressed and cleaned up of corrupt interests or cut off in order for the American establishment’s will for endless war to end as they are forced to look for easy money elsewhere.
They’ve reneged on the New Deal’s bargain as far as Labors’ rights go, so why should the people keep paying up the vig?
Since we all missed the chance to prevent the Wars from happening, we’ve broken and bought a lot of Pottery Barn crap. Then we can stop doing stupid shit just to extend this war, offer the region a Marshall Plan to build hospitals, school buildings and infrastructure and not just where we’ve blown stuff up, but where we have actively supported oppressive regimes in exchange for privileged access to resources. Investment could produce a pretty solid relationship from a near total disaster (see Eastern Europe). Had we the balls to skip the War part, it would have been much easier, be the Time Machine is still broken so we gotta play the hand we got.
Why do the Iraqi recruits put up with such disgusting treatment from an invader? Because some of these same troops will use their new skills against that invader. Perhaps, the anger of the American officer reflects an understanding of the craziness of the basic situation. As mentioned above, just another way to keep the ongoing mess ongoing. It’s only business you know but it’s so god damn profitable making and selling the tools of war.
Or maybe they just really, really need a job to keep from starving. KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid – otherwise known as the “simplest” answer is usually the right one.)
Along that line of thinking, how many people here have gone for long periods of their life without enough to eat. Hands up. I have. I’ve slept on friends couches or in my car because I had no money for rent, stolen food, and lots of other fun things that I’d rather not talk about. When you are hungry, as in one meal of plain rice a day hungry, it’s hard to think of much beyond that. If you have an out, no matter how unpleasant, you’ll usually take it.
I think it is a bit of both factors on the part of the Iraqis and on the part of the Americans, it’s simply good old greed. You know, once addicted to money, there are simply not enough dollars to go around. The rich must get theirs over and over again. That’s why money is the worst drug of all.
Hurria’s impassioned commentary forces me to think of this again in the way that I have tried to avoid for the past few years. I was so pissed when we invaded Iraq and reminders of the terribly tragic and misguided actions we have taken against them since then, as demonstrated in this video, only brings back that anger. I hope in the next few years that enough will come out about the false invasion (courtesy of the British courts going after Blair) that Bush and Cheney will be brought to justice by Holder. Perhaps not a cell phone video of a hanging but anything close to it would work for me.
As Hurria stated, Iraqis are both educated and street smart and all but those who are profiting from the war are counting the days until we get our butts out of their country.