For me a threshold question is how familiar people in general and well-informed people in particular are with the existence and approximate scale of the problem.
I came of age during the Vietnam era, when it was hard to miss. Since then, I've become aware of how much of this went on in previous wars, and appears to be inherent in the situations soldiers are put in. I'd say I've thoroughly assimilated that knowledge, without becoming a pacifist or someone hostile to the use of force by our country per se, or hostile to our armed forces.
But the inevitability of this sort of thing, on a scale that makes it more than isolated or anomalous, has been part of what I consider when the question of wars with land fighting comes up. I thought about it wrt Afghanistan and Iraq, and wherever else, because it is hard to see an obvious end to those conflicts.
How general is that? Is what I know common knowledge or not?
How general is that? Is what I know common knowledge or not?
I have the same view as you. However, both of us have experience with the military that is now unusual. But knowing about the brutality of war is something that is accessible to everyone in history books.
I have the same view as expressed by you two, without having served in the military.
5 -- but don't you see how that makes your opinion less valid?
1 -- speaking of hating America, here is a readable post.
Is what I know common knowledge or not?
It should be, but it's not. People either seem to think that atrocities aren't committed by Americans, or, if they are, then it's the work of a few bad apples and not a nearly inevitable result of the stresses of combat.
While I'm glad we have old-guy consensus so far, I'm actually more curious about how this stuff fits in the world view of other kinds of people. Any takers?
Cross-posted with Cala. Is this an inescapable part of what wars with land fighting are like in your mind? Do you remember discovering that or did it simply grow like other forms of adult knowledge?
IDP, I'm only 33! That hardly qualifies as old guy, does it?
Cala's got it. There's no reason everyone shouldn't know that this sort of thing happens, and that it's a part of what we're signing up for when we start a war ("Sign here to acknowledge that, regardless of the justice or success of the war you advocate, during the course of that war a certain number of American soldiers will inexcusably kill, rape, or otherwise abuse civilians or prisoners without any military justification.") But I don't think people generally do recognize it or admit it.
Not that a hell of a lot people who don't mostly agree with me about these things read this blog, but that's why I linked the post. This sort of thing can't get swept under the rug.
IDP, I'm only 33! That hardly qualifies as old guy, does it?
I remember thinking so at the time.
I'm 27, which in Unfogged terms means I'm 12.
IDP, I don't know. It certainly wasn't part of learning about wars in school; the only atrocity we touched on was My Lai. I think it's more just the sense anyone should get from watching the news critically. After the nineteeth thing you hear about, you stop suspecting it's just one or two guys screwing up and start to think that it's part and parcel of running a land invasion (and therefore part of the necessary moral calculus ahead of time.)
I am marginally an old guy -- I too think that part of the deal of going to war is expecting that your country's army is going to commit atrocities.
I should point out for clarification that expecting that atrocities happen doesn't entail that I'm postulating a Sekrit Torture and Rape Camp for .5% of Evil Troops.
I disagree that atrocities are a necessary part of a land invasion, and think they are correlated with a more specific kind of military action, namely, occupation. Particularly where the occupied and occupiers don't share much by way of cultural background.
I doubt it required atrocities for the allied forces to take Normandy, but they may have been inevitable in this war and in Vietnam. I think that says something particularly bad about this war and Vietnam. Shrugging this off as indemic to all wars is, I think, grossly irresponsible.
But then I never served and can't claim to understand the history of warfare on that narrow basis.
It certainly wasn't part of learning about wars in school; the only atrocity we touched on was My Lai
I don't mean to put the onus on school; I've never done most of my learning there and always underperform in an academic setting, at any level. But, did anyone learn anything, in school, about: Cowpens, Washita, Fort Pillow, Andersonville, Mindanao, in no particular order?
Shrugging this off as endemic to all wars is, I think, grossly irresponsible.
No one's shrugging it off. I do think you're right though that it's more a consequence of occupation than the initial 'war' part of it, but I'm not sure it has to do much with cultural differences.
I doubt it required atrocities for the allied forces to take Normandy
My recollection is that there actually were some fairly horrible things done by the good guys during WWII, and against Germany. (My further recollection is that there were stories of Germans racing to surrender to the Americans and Brits, in order to avoid get caught by the Russians.) I think Gary's mentioned something about this before, on this blog.
War sucks, and we're not so self-willed as we like to think. A certain number of people under constant stress will behave badly, and that number will creep up as the time under stress creeps up. If anything, I'd naively expect there to be fewer bad incidents when we are overwhelmingly powerful than when we're more closely matched. (Though perhaps set battles decrease the time under stress.) I'm sure that there are processes that minimize the incidents, and I feel pretty sure that the American military, at least until this war, does its best to implement such processes and to increase such protections over time.
re cultural differences:
I just mean a soldier can more easily dehumanize people who look different, or lump opposing armies and civilians into the same category more easily where the armies and civilians share a culture that the soldier does not share.
But there was plenty of awful stuff in the civil war where the cultures were relatively similar.
And I think saying "this is part of all wars" lends itself very easily to the conclusion "so deal with it."
19: I still don't know anything about the events you're referring to.
Sure, war is awful, and WWII was no different. But we're (or at least I am) talking about a very specific issue here, which is atrocities committed against civilians. In a non-occupational war, soldiers just don't have access to enemy civilians in the same sense, and they don't have as much down time, would be my guess.
Of course, bombing civilians from afar is equally bad, and WWII saw plenty of that.
I'd prefer to interpret "this is all part of wars" as "so, be very judicious about starting one."
bombing civilians from afar is equally bad, and WWII saw plenty of that.
Right. The firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo were atrocities by any measure.
I was able to come to the same conclusions as the old guy coalition through reading Kurt Vonnegut and Catch-22 in high school. That was helpful because they were describing atrocities in The Most Just War In The History of Man -- Vietnam one could've shrugged off as an anomaly.
And I think saying "this is part of all wars" lends itself very easily to the conclusion "so deal with it."
By that token, saying "this isn't a part of all wars" lends itself very easily to the conclusion, "so I'm sure it won't happen again now that we've court-martialled the bad apples."
Look, I've read Catch 22 and Slaughterhouse Five, I know all people are capable of doing horrible things when put under pressure, and that wars often offer up just that type of pressure. I don't need the history lesson, and I hope Gary Farber doesn't give me one.
But not all wars have equal moral weight, and not all wars deserved the particular moral disapprobation that this war deserves.
And I disagree with 30. I think the few bad apples argument applies equally well (or poorly) to the point of view that this sort of thing happens in all wars.
This sort of thing is not inevitable. It doesn't always happen. I didn't have to happen.
I would prefer a distinction between what a commander may order because of military necessity, however much that judgment may be questioned on any grounds, and what troops, usually low-ranking, do without being ordered. The commander remains responsible, of course, but the issue is dereliction of duty, a kind of negligence, in not foreseeing and preventing it.
I'm out of my depth here, but it seems to me the distinction is where a soldier could be disciplined for not doing the one, brutal but perhaps necessary thing under orders, but in the other case would not be disciplined for not doing it.
It didn't have to happen. I did have to happen.
But, did anyone learn anything, in school, about: Cowpens, Washita, Fort Pillow, Andersonville, Mindanao, in no particular order?
Now that I think of it, probably not in school, as such. But I grew up knowing about these events (courtesy of my father, ex-AF and an amateur historian) as well as visiting places like Cowpens and Andersonville, Gettysburg, etc. (Being dragged around Civil War battlefields all summer when the rest of your friends are at Disney World is so much cooler in retrospect.) Like the Coalition of the Codgers here, I understood that "War is Hell" from a pretty young age.
But But not all wars have equal moral weight, and not all wars deserved the particular moral disapprobation that this war deserves gets it exactly right.
But (atrocities that occur in all wars) deserve equal moral disapprobation. The horribleness of this war is that there's no upside; no good to come of the chaos and destruction. But Dresden is certainly as evil (on a per-person basis, i.e. tens of thousands of times more evil) as Mahmoudiya.
Glad to hear it! "On a per-person basis" s/probably/b "on something vaguely like a per-person basis".
I take your point about harm and moral disapprobation, but I still think the distinction between command decisions or policy on the one hand, and un-ordered acts which the commanders are responsible for failing to control on the other, is a useful one.
Now, it is interesting to me to see that Abu Ghraib, for instance, is believed by many people including me to be an example of the former, but is being investigated and prosecuted as if it were an example of the latter.
Sure, absolutely -- I would sign on to a statement that "war crimes committed by members of the US armed forces at the direction of their superiors are a worse evil than war crimes committed by members of the US armed forces acting contrary to orders or without orders."
(I think the former sort of war crime also stands a good chance of affecting orders of magnitude more people than the latter sort.)
I did have to happen.
text, somehow I knew that you were a manifestation of the Weltgeist.
Not in any way to minimize the atrocities of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- horrific applications of terror -- or romanticize the so-called Greatest Generation, but consider what the allies had achieved in three and a half years: they'd rolled back two incredibly powerful, tyrannical regimes and promoted an ethic of shared sacrifice as a means to that end. What do we have to show for the same time period in the current war? A failed state in place of a tyrannical regime, legions of actual terrorists in place of straw men, and mountains of corpses (not to mention a home front still drifting toward a Gilded Age class system).
Absent anything that can remotely be called progress, war crimes are less like footnotes and more part of the main text.
Then again, I neglected to mention the freshly-painted schools. Forget I said anything.
(comparative terms like "worse" in 40 should be understood to be modified by "all other things being equal".)
38-40: From a legal standpoint, the distinction is useful. To the majority of Iraqis, I suspect, not so much.
Better-and-worse is not really my point; different is.
The examples Gary cited from Vietnam are mostly the latter kind of atrocity, in that they served no military purpose and are contrary to law, and ought to have been investigated and prosecuted. What we haven't discussed is why they weren't, and what forces might be causing them to be less-than-zealously prosecuted now. Both LB and Gary raised this point, at least by implication.
text is teh axiomatic necessary truth!
The reasons I want to hold that it is inevitable that atrocities will occur: a) I can't think of a war where it hasn't happened yet b) I want to ensure that we take the occurrence of such atrocities into account when we deliberate about going to war. Deciding to go to war includes accepting that you cannot perfectly control the behavior of all your soldiers under all circumstances, and given that rapes/murders/etc are going to happen, you'd best be damned sure your cause is worth that price.
This doesn't apply to Abu Ghraib; that was systematic, and not the actions of a few bad Pfcs. And it's not saying that we have no responsibility to address the reasons atrocities happen or take steps to eliminate them. It's just saying that if you have to lay money on it, bet that there will be a few Hadithas per war and maybe don't go to war as often given those conditions.
Well see, I think 40 gets at how the distinction could be important to the victims of the crimes -- like let's say the Bush white house puts out a memo directing the military to use torture-esque methods when interrogating prisoners. And say that subsequently, large numbers of Iraqi prisoners are torture-esqued at military prisons. In the alternate reality where the white house had not put out any such memo, say some loose cannons at Abu Ghraib beat up, threatened to kill, and/or killed a couple of prisoners. It wouldn't matter to the people in the second scenario who got hurt, that they were in the second scenario; but it would make a difference for the lot of people in the second scenario who escaped harm.
(Similarly loose cannons in the USAF could not have orchestrated the firebombing of Dresden absent orders from their superiors.)
Point taken. Very different in the formulation of policy (and therefore the spread of its effects), but not so much in its aftermath.
46: Sure, but it's also significant what is done about the crimes committed in the second scenario. "Deterrence" "Sends a message" "Military Justice." But this is also a political issue, because it involves judgments about conditions on the ground. When John Murtha makes his statement about Haditha, and then is attacked for doing so, the politics of military justice are evident.
Incidently, I think the hostile reaction to news of atrocity stories is an indication of the brittleness of support, at least in their own minds. Given the inevitability we concede to atrocities, military prosecutions might very well be defended as evidence that the system is working and that the military is following its own rules. And I'm sure some war-supporters look at it that way. But it's clear some war-supporters find these revelations threatening.
To what?
I was going to make much the same point text did in 18, though not so much occupation, but more counter-insurgency; the two aren't the same thing; by 1947, we were still occupying Germany and Japan, but while there was some occasional raping and theft and a very occasional murder, they weren't, to my knowledge, at all of the nature of the sort of atrocities seen in Vietnam.
But armies are also prone to this sort of thing when they're infantry, and been fighting for a while, and are tired and frustrated. Thus such events by American infantry during WWII at times.
Any large body of people armed with weapons and in a position of authority over others is going to be slightly more prone to the usual crimes of theft, rape, murder, than a normal civilian population, but not remotely so prone as when faced with actively fighting an amorphous and largely hostile population in which it is utterly unclear who is and is not the active enemy. Thus both Vietnam and Iraq.
On the other hand, 1991 consisted of fast-moving armor, and air power, facing pretty much only other soldiers, so there wasn't much opportunity or "reason" to engage in atrocities.
The Japanese during WWII, from the beginning of their invasion of China, on the other hand, routinely engaged in atrocities, abuse, and mass murder, due to the nature of their beliefs regarding surrender, finding it incomprehensible and dishonorable, and that any soldier doing it didn't deserve to live. And they often had orders as to what to do. The same as regards their treatment of Chinese civilians, which was simply based on straightforward racism/nationalism, as well as a belief, similar to that of the Germans, that being as brutal and ruthless as possible would help cow the populace and limit resistance. (This being, of course, the sort of thing our crazed rightwing constantly demands we engage in: take the gloves off; stop fighting with one hand tied behind our back.)
19: "But, did anyone learn anything, in school, about: Cowpens, Washita, Fort Pillow, Andersonville, Mindanao, in no particular order?"
Andersonville, absolutely. As I've mentioned before, I had a most excellent high school AP Civil War History class. Not the others, though there's no suppression of information in American literature about, say, the Bataan Death March and similar events, to my observation; atrocities committed towards Americans has little taboo, just as is similar for most any culture, which tends, understandably, to nurse its own grievances and suppress memories and knowledge of its crimes. (Hello, Serbia.)
15: "I'm 27, which in Unfogged terms means I'm 12."
What does that make 47?
The same age as all the rest of us?
It's deja vu all over again. I remember hearing all of this back in Vietnam days -- "just a few bad apples", "reporters of atrocity are liars", yada yada yada. When in fact atrocities were widespread and often with implicit command chain support, at least to the point of looking the other way, as has been shown by the LA Times report on the military's own records that is linked at Gary Farber's site. What does it say, when the majority of the American people willingly and repeatedly would rather believe lies than the truth?
Perhaps the "America: Love it or Leave it" people have a point. Those few million of us who despair over a people that will willingly believe any lie as long as it removes all blame and culpability from their lazy television-watching fat behinds maybe should just go elsewhere and leave the slobs to their rightful demise. The problem is, these are vicious and violent slobs, and I'm not sure whether their demise will take out a substantial part of the world with it...
-- Badtux the Deja Vu Penguin
"Those few million of us who despair over a people that will willingly believe any lie as long as it removes all blame and culpability from their lazy television-watching fat behinds maybe should just go elsewhere and leave the slobs to their rightful demise."
I watch television.
Admittedly, since I only have broadcast tv these days, not that much beyond news, some PBS Frontline and Nova stuff, and Boston Legal and Smallville, at present, since the takeover of "reality" tv, but I'd watch more if I had cable, or if Alias, West Wing, and a few other shows I liked hadn't ended. (Also, the local Fox station stopped being receivable, or I'd likely still be watching 24 and both Stargates.)
Besides, my reading of history doesn't suggest that Americans, or any other people, were terribly more noble before the advent of tv, or radio, for that matter. Doesn't seem terribly relevant, really, as a factor, rather than as a focus of effortless lazy sneering at the hoi polloi.
"...their lazy television-watching fat behinds...."
Come to think of it, I'm lazy, and fat, too.
18:Wow, dude, that was a major theme of "Band of Brothers" which I have seen 177 times, and I am told is based on fact.
IIRC, a Corporal on D-Day or day after is given sole care of some surrendered Germans and shoots at least half a dozen. He gives some story, and there isn't time to worry much. But they worry that he is crazy, a loose cannon.
Somewhere around episode 4, he is again made responsible for ten prisoners, and the Captain gives him only one rifle round, and says:"Be careful"
At the end of series, after a long character development like the rest, he is the only survivor of D-Day that remains with the unit, makes a career out of the military, and becomes the Commander.
Every land war doesn't have to have atrocities, but they happen, and I am not even willing to call every one of the perps "bad apples." BoB should a lot of soldiers cracking in a variety of ways, they instantly forgave the sergeant who succumbed too depression or the alcoholic. A dozen Germans died o D-Day in a non-approved manner; a good guy had a bad day in a hard place.
Or maybe he should have been hung.
My dad told me he shot prisoners in New Guinea.
shot prisoners in New Guinea
Trying to think of when the US had military entanglements in New Guinea -- was this during WWII.
Was a rather important part of the WWII Pacific operations.
"Trying to think of when the US had military entanglements in New Guinea -- was this during WWII."
Quite. Very nasty conditions. Very nasty fighting.
I'd much rather have a nice clean desert than a jungle, myself. Better sand in the pants than jungle rot.
I guess you're too young to remember Baa Baa Black Sheep, speaking of tv. :-)
As the cite gswift aptly gave states:
During attrition warfare characteristic of eastern New Guinea ground operations through the seizure of the Saidor in January 1944, the Allies suffered more than 24,000 battle casualties; about 70 percent (17,107) were Australians. All this to advance the front line 300 miles in 20 months. But following the decisive Hollandia, Netherlands New Guinea, envelopment in April 1944, losses were 9,500 battle casualties, mainly American, to leap 1,300 miles in just 100 days and complete the reconquest of the great island.A lot of casualties on both sides were to disease. The Japanese also had a certain amount of starvation.
Several points:
A. War itself is the atrocity. We've had centuries and centuries of literature making this point. An angry, armed 18 year old man getting shot or stabbed by his counterpart under a different flag is bad enough, the inevitable harm that comes to the passive, the very old and the very young is just more proof of war's essential injustice.
B. Let's not forget that even when the great powers are not technically "at war" there are a lot of atrocities and war crimes going on against guerilla forces or civillian populations or whathaveyou. The 1980s were, from my youthful perspective, one long US-supported atrocityfest in South and Central America.
C. It's easy to talk big here on the interweb, but when's the last time you mentioned war crimes to a coworker, a fellow bus rider or someone at a party? As I've said before, I don't think people in the U.S. (mountains of anecdotal evidence to the contrary) are quite as apathetic or ignorant as they are often portrayed to be. Of course, the cavalling corporate media is structured so that consumers without a nuanced ideological stance are offered up binaries like "Supporting the troops vs. protesting Abu Ghraib". After years of indoctrination in schools and workplaces, which way do you think most people are going to fall on that question?
D. I'm 31, and in school I learned some about Andersonville, a tiny bit about the Phillipines, nothing about Fort Pillow or Cowpens, but a fair amount about Wounded Knee and a little about Dresden and Tokyo. Of course, extracurricular readings about the Phoenix Program and My Lai probably had more resonance than classwork.
E. It's precisely subjects like this, especially in the context of online discussion, that challenge us to think most critically. It's important to be able to make the case that ALL war is atrocious, AND that wars conducted under certain conditions are likely to be disproportionately brutal, AND that individuals and groups committing specific war crimes should be held responsible, AND that we can place current events in a historical and political context, the better to learn from them and perhaps change things for the better.
minneapolitan, you make good points and your handle sounds like a refreshing cocktail.
What would be in a minneapolitan? I'm not sure but we can garnish it with a loon.
"What would be in a minneapolitan?"
Whatever it is, it should be Nice.
I agree that minneapolitan has written well and testified that the kind of familiarity I was asking for can be at least encountered in school.
I chose the examples I asked after to try to be non-controversial, and long ago: only one, barely, was even in the twentieth century.
What concerns me is the possibility that broad historical knowledge of entire topics will become the province of people holding particular points of view. That the discussion, if we even have one, will not be about the interpretation or meaning of the national past, but what we even acknowledge happened in it.
Gary's example of Serbia shows the direction, alltogether too plausible, this leads toward.