This morning my radio woke me up with a story about this video. If you are my daughter, don't click that link. In fact, if you're my daughter, stop here.
It's a link to a video titled "Collateral Murder" released by an organization called Wiki Leak, an anonymous whistle-blower shelter.
The video is from an Apache helicopter flying over Baghdad in 2007. I don't know proper military jargon, but what I see is that the guys in the helicopter find a group of guys on the ground. The guys on the ground have things in their hands and slung over their shoulders. The helicopter guys, according to the Pentagon, had received reports of insurgent activity in the area. The provided audio suggests that the guys in the helicopter believed that the guys on the ground had weapons, and so they fired on them.
Two of the guys on the ground were Reuters reporters, and the things in their hands and slung over their shoulders were cameras.
It is terrible, terrible that anyone should be killed in war. Journalists risk their lives when they cover war, and I am sure that these two knew what they were getting into, I am sure they were aware that their lives were at risk just by being where they were when thy were there. It is unfortunate that they dies but almost understandable.
Except.
One of the Reuters guys didn't die right away, and the guys in the helicopter could see him trying to crawl to safety. They wanted very badly for him to make a move as if he were drawing a weapon so that they could justify another shot. You can hear that. He did not make such a move, but a van pulled up to help the man. Two adult men got out of the van and took the photographer by his wrists and ankles and tried to load him into the van. According to the Pentagon, insurgents will try to collect the wounded, so the helicopter guys opened fire on the van. Which contained 3 more adults and two children.
When ground troops arrived, two soldiers grabbed the wounded children and asked for them to be evacuatued to a US hospital, but those requests were denied. The children were turned over to the Iraqi police for transport to an Iraqi hospital, where the standard of care, according to the video, is lower. A US soldier is heard saying "It's their own faulkt for bringing their kids into battle."
Also one of our tanks runs over a dead Iraqi. And some soldiers laugh about it.
So that's all pretty disgusting, but I guess that's what happens in war and why I should be thankful that I am shielded from it. After watching 17 minutes of video, I almost don't blame our soldiers for their cavalier attitude about what they do; I think that they must have that kind of attitude to cope. How else could they do the things they are asked to do?
But here is what pisses me off: We have the technology to kill people from far, far away. I noticed in the video that the people on the ground weren't bothered at all by the helicopter overhead, and the helicopter wasn't making any wind. I know from experience that it is very windy when a helicopter is overhead, even pretty far up. So I wondered how high up this helicopter was flying.
So I googled it.
That's a pretty high-tech helicopter.
Why don't we have the technology to tell the difference between a camera and a machine gun?
I won't click the link - I have a very vivid imagination, and I don't imagine that that film would show me anything new. I wish all our soldiers and journalists would come home safely and never have to go to war again.
ReplyDeleteThere I said it - I am a pacifist.
This was a fantastic post. Every point is spot on.
ReplyDeleteThis is why you should never watch Sh*t like that, and why I never do.
This is the only way for soldiers, law enforcement, fire and emergency medical personnel to cope with what they do.
Like everything else in the world, the blame lies in human greed and the compulsion for power over others.