"Those are just kills"

June 1, 2018 4:15 AM

“This wasn’t about justice,” Maloney told Epstein. “This was about politics. The world knew something horrible happened, and there had to be an answer for it. It can be us as a Marine Corps. It can be a unit, or it can be a squad, or it can be a platoon, or it can be one man. And one man became the politically expedient answer.”

How the US Marine Corps (deliberately?) blew the war crimes trial for the massacre in Haditha. Previously: the massacre, its consequences (2006) and the trial (2007).
posted by MartinWisse (12 comments total)

Mega heavy read and heartbreaking and disturbing pictures of the aftermath of a horrific massacre.
posted by nikaspark at 5:45 AM on June 1, 2018

Could someone explain what the verb 'blow' means here, as in "blow the biggest war crimes case"? They messed it up / fouled it up?

It reads strangely to me because a war crimes case isn't a typical thing one would take on the perspective of someone trying to carry it out the related action and make it proceed along as usual. I.e., you wouldn't say 'blew the biggest murder opportunity in a long time' in a headline. Even with the word 'case' it sounds grossly insensitive like you condone the thing. Is it sarcastic or is there some alternate meaning to this I'm not seeing?

I am only a small ways through the article.
posted by GladysKnight at 6:49 AM on June 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

GladysKnight, my take:

They took a case involving several men with varying amounts of actual blood on their hands, with metaphorical bloody hands going pretty far up the Marine Corps food chain, displaying a profound need for a thorough rethinking of how Marines are trained and what they were doing in Haditha in the first place.

And it appears that, in lieu of that, there was substantial pressure from elements in the Corps to identify one man, make it All His Fault, offer immunity to others to get them to testify that it was All His Fault, pressure investigators and prosecutors to go along with that, and sweep any notions of Corps procedure and training needing substantial overhaul under the rug. As if the massacre was an embarrassment needing to be shuffled aside in order to continue business as usual, a complete aberration rather than an underlying concern that could easily happen again elsewhere.
posted by delfin at 7:09 AM on June 1, 2018 [9 favorites]

This article is kind of - there’s a lot of things I want to say about it and will probably return to do so, but also one thing that seems really, really weird to me is it doesn’t discuss the charges on the senior leadership or why it went awry. They received a secretarial censure, which is career-ending, but it seems to be for failure to launch an investigation, not for command climate, which is the first thing I would be looking at for officers whose soldiers committed something like that.
posted by corb at 7:14 AM on June 1, 2018 [4 favorites]

Well, the article does point out the peculiar involvement of James Mattis, aka the current Secretary of Defense:

Lt. Gen. Jim Mattis presided over the initial phase of the Haditha case while also serving as the commander of the I Marine Expeditionary Force. As convening authority, he dismissed both Sharratt and Dela Cruz’s charges, and also immunized them, Mendoza, and Kallop.

When Mattis handed over command of I MEF to Lt. Gen. Sam Helland, in November 2007, only Tatum and Wuterich were still facing charges. Mattis had ordered both Marines to court-martial. However, by that point, Ware had already determined that the case was virtually dead in the water. “The evidence is contradictory, the forensic analysis is limited and almost all witnesses have an obvious bias or prejudice,” the investigating officer wrote in his final report. But many of these challenges were the direct result of decisions Mattis had made.

This follows a description of Justin Sharratt's dismissal-of-charges letter, apparently written and personally signed by Mattis, that's full of mere-civilians-will-never-understand-us stuff.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:53 AM on June 1, 2018 [8 favorites]

Well, the article does point out the peculiar involvement of James Mattis

War criminals gonna war crim.
posted by zombieflanders at 8:11 AM on June 1, 2018 [3 favorites]

James Mattis, aka the current Secretary of Defense:
James Mattis, aka the current Secretary of War:
Fixed that for you.

Refusal to call it The War Department, which is of course its real name, and going instead with "The Department of Defense" it's just comical, though not at all funny. It's one of my very favorite pieces of doublespeak we've got going now.

If there is any sort of afterlife, Orwell is spending all day every day alternating howling, knee-slapping laughter and projectile vomiting.

Those marines carried out their orders. They performed exactly as they were trained to perform. The real murderers were and are in Washington DC, and of course all of the war profiteers -- what a wonderful time it was for Halliburton, and all of the other scumbag war contractors. "Hi GE -- how are you today? Are you bringing good things to life?'

The son of a friend of mine spent some time on an aircraft carrier, all day every day and all night every night jets were landing, getting refueled, getting more bombs loaded, and taking off again, another bombing run. Really heart-warming.

The entire war under false pretense, a grab for oil, and of course a nice position on the chess board.

My country tis of thee
Sweet land of liberty
Of thee I sing
posted by dancestoblue at 8:52 AM on June 1, 2018 [4 favorites]

James Mattis, aka the current Secretary of Defense:
James Mattis, aka the current Secretary of War:
Fixed that for you.

Refusal to call it The War Department, which is of course its real name, and going instead with "The Department of Defense" it's just comical, though not at all funny. It's one of my very favorite pieces of doublespeak we've got going now.

Well, yes and no. The Department of War (one of the first cabinet offices) ran the Army. The Department of the Navy didn't get founded until 1798 (and the Navy itself had several periods of not really existing during the early republic).

Up until 1947, there was SecWar in charge of the Army and SecNav in charge of the Navy. With the creation of the Air Force, there was a desire to create a new, superceding cabinet office that would oversee all of the US military. It was first called the National Military Establishment (NME) but then changed its name to the Department of Defense. Thus, it's erroneous to say the Department of Defense used to be the Department of War.

However, I understand your sentiments about unambiguous language pertaining to militaries. While "Defense" might not be the most accurate explanation of what the US Military does, neither does "War," as it is often not used in what some would call wars. For example, peace-keeping, search and rescue, disaster relief, freedom of the seas patrols, and supply convoys are all military operations without always being part of war operations. Then again, as you said, the're not always defense operations either.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 9:38 AM on June 1, 2018 [4 favorites]

I was very surprised to see that I was reading an article on Task and Purpose. I didn't know they did long form articles like that.

Of course, the comments on their Facebook page are calling them lefties for posting something like this. Solid.
posted by A Bad Catholic at 9:40 AM on June 1, 2018

From the comments on Task and Purpose:

"I remember when this went down. I had just finished my first tour, a year in Ramadi. At the time I didn't think my time in combat was any different from anyone else's, but it didn't take long to realize that the Anbar was a much different war than the rest of Iraq. There was literally nobody in my platoon with previous combat experience before that deployment, and we were in some really fucked situations the whole year. We sometimes pushed the ROE to the absolute limit, and I'll admit we did get creative with some situations. But none of the men under my direct command or in my entire platoon ever had a "bad kill."

Even in the middle of a super-fucked ambush and gun-fight we are held to a standard. You kill the bad guys. Nobody else. What these fuckers did in Haditha pissed me off. We never killed a kid, we didn't kill innocents, and we got the job done without a fucking massacre even though none of us had any combat experience prior to being dropped in the Anbari shit-pit. So fuck anyone who tries to justify what these dickheads did."
posted by atchafalaya at 11:33 AM on June 1, 2018 [15 favorites]

That was a compelling read. The thing that struck me is how the sense of “brotherhood” that the military fosters in order to promote cohesion and a common sense of purpose in soldiers from disparate backgrounds can easily twist into justifying horrific actions against anyone painted as “the enemy”. Those soldiers prioritized their empathy for their “brothers” in arms over empathy for fucking children.

A good soldier holds their brothers to account when they cross the line because if they don’t, their brotherhood is one of murder, not defense of liberty. There are examples of soldiers who exemplify the highest ideals of military service in this story, but they were up against virtually the entire military establishment.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 1:36 PM on June 1, 2018 [5 favorites]

I don't believe one bit that this event was as much of an outlier as it has been painted. If it were, the perpetrators would have been swiftly identified and the case would have gone smoothly. It looks to me as if the trial was supposed to be a failure, so that there would no coherent narrative tying the Marines to a massacre. The prosecution played their part, because they knew how these things are done.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:40 AM on June 2, 2018 [1 favorite]