In the video below (a CBS report from 2007), you'll see how sniper teams leave bomb-making material and ammos on the side of a road for Iraqis to pick them up, and as soon as they do, the snipers shoot them dead. If this tactic of baiting the enemy is used on a regular basis in Iraq, and in a different number of ways, then is it not unjustified murder? By doing this, the US military is creating more casualties than there needs to be. Also, who in their right mind would want to supply the enemy with a weapon? One of the traditional objectives of war is supposed to be to disarm your enemy, so he can't cause anymore harm to you or other civilians in the area. This insane tactic illustrates in an undeniable way that the US policy isn't designed to achieve victory in Iraq, instead, the objective is to prolong the war, and cause terrorism, in order to extend war profits and to kill as many Iraqis as Americans can get away with. It is so outrageous and criminal. I can't believe CBS actually televised the story.
I’m so sick of arming the world and then sending troops over to destroy the fucking arms, you know what I mean? We keep arming these little countries then we go and blow the shit out of em. We’re like the bullies of the world, you know. We’re like Jack Palance in the movie Shane… Throwing the pistol at the sheep herder’s feet: “Pick it up.” “I don’t wanna pick it up mister, you’ll shoot me.” “Pick up the gun”. “Mister, I don’t want no trouble huh. I just came down town here to get some hard rock candy for my kids, some gingham for my wife. I don’t even know what gingham is, but she goes through about 10 rolls a week of that stuff. I ain’t looking for no trouble mister.” “Pick up the gun.” Boom bom “You all saw him. He had a gun.” - Bill Hicks
US Snipers use "Baiting" techniques to kill innocent Iraqis
Bill Hicks - Iraqi Weapons
Bill Hicks - First Gulf War
George Carlin - We Like War
Charlies Daivs: That anti-patriotic feeling
Many opponents of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have over the years declared that, while they may have objected to the invasions and continue to abhor the ongoing occupations, they nevertheless support the troops fighting on the ground, an assertion considered necessary to insulate antiwar folks from claims of insufficient patriotism. But while I understand why people utter the cliche, and sympathize with what it is I think most are trying to say -- that the politicians who start the wars are more to blame for the ensuing catastrophes than the 18 year old grunts sent to fight them -- I also think assertions about supporting those who physically carry out the war crimes reflect a very confused, fatally flawed conception of morality, whereby those who order murder are rightly and unsparingly condemned but those who actually do the killing are absolved of all responsibility, as if by joining the military one also abandons all capacity for judging right from wrong.
Granted, military training does consist of dehumanizing brainwashing, with soldiers taught to have no mercy for The Enemy and that, if the life of an American is perceived to be in danger, to shoot first and cover up later. But then those who join the military know this. It's no great mystery what joining the armed forces what it entails: it means killing people whenever one's commanding officer says so. Sure, ads might depict military life as little more than one big American Gladiator episode, but I think most who join are aware they may be asked to murder on behalf of their government in a war, even if they're blinded by a naive, superficial notion of patriotism. And since no conflict the U.S. has fought over the last half a century could reasonably be construed as one of last resort in strict self-defense, the overwhelming odds are those who sign up for the military will be killing people in unjust, illegal wars -- wars that, as John Caruso ably demonstrates, entail daily atrocities like those depicted in the WikiLeaks video making the rounds.
Continued. . .
IOZ: The Western Canons
While it is surely tragic that poor young people devoid of other opportunities for economic self-sufficiency are press-ganged by circumstance into the service of America's death factories, please, save me the histrionic lionization. The tragedy is not that their heroism is underappreciated but rather that their sacrifices are vain and futile at best, evil at worst, since they are in the service of an evil enterprise, even if they, themselves, are fine and upstanding men and women. Their sacrifices are devoid of honor. Honor has been denied to them. They have been dishonored by the project in which they participated. That is what we ought to be lamenting--that thousands of our poor are being sullied forever by their participation in these vicious and aggressive wars.
