It was a telling moment. The US military minder of a BBC reporter who was visiting the wreckage of a café in Baghdad’s supposedly safe Green Zone admitted, as he viewed the devastation, that his overwhelming reaction was of “responsibility.” When asked to explain, he told the reporter that he believed the violence was happening because of the US military presence in Iraq. He then said that he could currently see no alternative to US support for the interim government of Premier Iyad Allawi.
The feelings of the US troops in Iraq are little reported. The Pentagon presents the US armed forces serving in Iraq as a highly trained and well-equipped machine that obeys orders without question. Such a picture approximates the truth when American soldiers are engaged in a conflict where issues are clear and well- understood, such as the war against Japan and Nazi Germany in the 1940s. It is less true today when US citizens who, when they are at home speak their minds, find themselves in harm’s way in a struggle which makes increasingly less sense to them.
Indiscipline occurs in every army. Most of the present Pentagon upper ranks were junior officers during the United States’ 11-year involvement in Vietnam. They saw how an unpopular war corroded the morale of their troops and led to widespread collapses in discipline, one of the most notorious examples of which was the 1968 My Lai massacre in which US soldiers slaughtered 300 Vietnamese villagers. US generals may now be asking themselves privately if their forces in Iraq are approaching the same kind of crisis of morale. The reported refusal this week of 19 US soldiers to undertake an important convoy mission to supply their comrades will surely deeply disturb both military and civilian leaders. No one has yet used the word “mutiny” but because the soldiers did not feel their vehicles were fit and because they felt their escort was inadequate, the soldiers refused to carry out an order. It should not be overlooked that convoy duty is the most dangerous job in Iraq since it offers the terrorists such an easy target. Unless each convoy is backed by troops able to pursue and cut off the attackers, firing rocket-propelled grenades at vehicles is a low-risk operation for the insurgents. Then there are also the roadside bombs and suicide car bombers against which no convoy has any real protection.
Whatever the arguments over Washington’s military presence in Iraq, it is imperative that the coalition forces maintain discipline. When they find that they Are in a war much different from the one they were promised, it is possible for the soldiers to perpetrate another My Lai. That was one of the explanations we heard for Abu Ghraib: The boys — and the girls — were depressed and were on the edge.
Any breakdown will play into the hands of those who want the bloodshed to continue. The blacker they can paint US troops, the wider their support will be and the greater the challenge for moderate Iraqis of every background to steer their country away from violence toward a just and lasting peace.
