"Stop or I'll Shoot! We're Here to Help You!"

[WilliamPitt]

"Stop or I'll Shoot! We're Here to Help You!"
By Christophe Boltanski
Libération

Wednesday 08 March 2006

Bitter or with no particular emotion, American soldiers returning from Iraq publish their first testimonial books.

At the end of the invasion of Iraq, Captain Nathaniel Fick <1> and his Marines enter Muwaffiqiya, a village south of Baghdad, without encountering any resistance. They advance slowly. They are nervous. They've just been warned by radio that fedayin are operating in the area and preparing suicide attacks. They establish a road block to allow the rest of the convoy to advance when a car comes up at an intersection. "Vehicle ahead. Blue car. Three or four passengers," shouts a soldier. "Roger. Ascending force. Don't let it pass!" cries an officer. They proceed to a warning round, then open fire. The car leaves the road, then stops. The driver lies across the steering wheel, his tunic stained with blood.

Every American soldier transformed into an author has his story of mortal blunder at a checkpoint. The victims are neither kamikazes nor combatants. They committed the mistake of not stopping in time or of having just popped up in the wrong place at the wrong time. "Everybody was scared shitless," relates Chief-Sergeant Jimmy Massey in "Kill! Kill! Kill!" <2>: "When the tractor truck turned up, one of his men raised his arm to signal the driver to stop. Without effect. We all opened fire. Without notice ... A man on fire, who is around sixty years old, jumped from the cabin and ran to the highway, trying to put out the flames."

Gore Fest

The first books follow the first discharges. Three years after the beginning of the hostilities, the testimonies of American veterans returning from the Middle East are multiplying. Every conflict generates its own literary genre: epic for the Second World War, tragedy for the Vietnam War. And "junk" for Operation Iraqi Freedom. The material is composed from blogs, personal letters, raw details furtively thrown on paper between two patrols. The combat scenes oscillate between video games and gore fests. Garrison life provides closed-door secrets worthy of a reality show. Question of the times, the culture, and also of the context. Iraq inspires its conquerors to disjointed tales with no message, no direction, no laurels, no praise, and no critique. No diatribe against the US Army or George W. Bush, but no great patriotic couplets either.

More: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030906G.shtml

[MadMaddie]

1. These soldiers lives...the Iraqi lives...all damaged or lost...

for what!!


Thanks for the links!

[Swamp Rat]

2. so sad

[RC]

3. bu$h and his hand picked administration need to

stand trial for their War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity.

[stellanoir]

4. the quintessence of pointlessness

and absolute depravity.

Timothy McVeigh was a disgruntled Desert Storm vet. John Allen Mohammed was a disgruntled Desert Storm vet. That conflict lasted for barely two months.

What have we wrought with this far more lengthy one?

[LibertyorDeath]

5. Does this sound fucking Depraved to anyone else

Which troops do I support the ones that killed indiscriminately or the ones that followed orders and tortured Iraqi prisoners.

How do you tell these "troops" from a Professional Soldier.

I come from 3 generations of Men & Women who laid their lives on the line
in Military service to their country they would all to a person be sickened by the actions of these "troops".

[Viva_La_Revolution]

6. They are rushing the training

and they don't have enough experienced CO's on the ground.

It's a fucking tragedy all the way around.

[Mr_Spock]

7. I'll never forget watching war coverage on CNN at 3AM one night...

I watched live as a car pulled up to a checkpoint that the US military put on a highway in the middle of nowhere. It was nighttime and the soldiers were yelling in english "STOP! STOP! DON'T COME ANY FARTHER" as if the Iraqis had the slightest idea what they were talking about. I watched as the car rolled slowly up to the soldiers at no more than 2 MPH. They appeared to be trying to pull up to ask what was going on and what should they do. They were, as we found out later, an Iraqi family that was trying to drive down the highway in their newly liberated country. I watched on the TV as the car ever so slowly pulled to within 15 feet of the soldiers - clearly they had no idea what the soldiers were yelling. BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! Several American soldiers opened fire on the car. I was shocked and I sat up in bed and stared - wondering if it was real. Did they actually just fire 100's of rounds of machine gun fire into a car that was rolling up to a road block at 2 MPH to ask a question? Other than a brief mention by the anchor later that it was a family - a dead family - in the car that they shot up, it was never mentioned on CNN again. In fact, in the days & months following this incident, the reporting got less and less "live action" and more and more "bullshitting" and supporting the Bushco line. I'll never forget that scene for as long as I live - I watched our soldiers murder a family in cold blood simply because they were scared and because the Iraqis didn't speak english. War is Hell.

[donheld]

8. Kick and Recommend

God help us.