Something truly tragic happened in Haditha on last Nov. 19. On the face of it, 16 more deaths — 15 of them Iraqi and one American — do not loom large in the scale of butchery and destruction that has followed the US-led invasion three years ago this week. But the killings in this western Iraqi town could very well be among the most significant in the whole wretched conflict. They could indeed mark the moment when Washington finally lost its battle for Iraqi hearts and minds.
The US military is now mounting a proper investigation into what happened but the evidence is already tragically clear. On that November night, after a roadside bomb killed one of their unit and injured two of their comrades, a dozen Marines went on a vengeful rampage. They burst into nearby houses and gunned down 15 people, including seven women and three children. They later reported these civilians were also victims of the roadside blast and claimed to have killed eight insurgents. However, video footage taken after the US Marines moved out seems to make it clear that most of the dead civilians were wearing night clothes.
There has been enough evidence of jumpy US soldiers wildly opening fire on targets, as in the Fallujah siege, the slaying of a pregnant woman as her husband rushed her to hospital or the killing of an Italian secret agent accompanying freed kidnapped journalist Giuliana Sgrena to Baghdad airport. But not until now have there been cogent allegations that US troops have run amok among civilians.
This apparent atrocity has grim echoes of the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam, when angry and scared US troops murdered over 300 civilians in cold blood. The death toll in Haditha was not as horrific but as happened with the Vietnamese, it may well be the moment when decent people, in Iraq, America or elsewhere, who tried to believe US promises about its mission to bring peace and democratic justice to Iraq, finally gave up.
It will of course be argued that US troops are under immense strain as they seek to confront the insurgents who wear no uniforms and who melt back into the civilian community after their attacks. This is, however, no excuse for the berserk retaliation against the nearest Iraqis. What is worse is that the men responsible for this vindictive bloodletting were Marines, one of the elite units in America’s armed forces.
The American military failed to build upon the early euphoria at Saddam’s overthrow. The grunts on the ground understood little about Iraq and most probably cared even less. They relied on their leaders, including their commander-in-chief in the White House to do what was best. In the event President Bush and his neocon advisers have invariably done exactly what was worst. Thus US soldiers have become marooned and easy targets. Angry and afraid, they have come to see all Iraqis as the enemy, just as in Vietnam every Vietnamese became a “gook.” Haditha may thus be the place where America finally surrendered its last patch of moral high ground.
