After Haditha, How Can You Blame Iraqis For Supporting The "Insurgency"?
And if you cannot blame Iraqis for supporting the removal of these brutal, uncaring foreign soldiers, how can you possibly support the ongoing occupation of their country?
If the resistance is justified, then the occupation is not.
The Guardian argues that after Haditha, US denials can longer be taken at face value:
Some have tried to defend the killings by pointing to the stress that US soldiers - many of whom are on their second or third tour of duty - are under. But it is clear that there are other, deeper problems within the US military that point to a widespread failure of command.To quote one US veteran who witnessed US guards killing Iraqi prisoners for throwing stones:
At the heart of the issue is a culture of violence against Iraqi civilians that has been present in large measure since the moment US forces crossed the border into Iraq - an inability and unwillingness to distinguish between civilians and combatants that as three years have passed has been transformed, for some, into something more deliberate.
From the shootings of civilians in Nasiriya by marines during the US advance to similar shootings by the Third Infantry Division on the outskirts of Baghdad during the so-called 'Thunder Run' into the city, the same pattern has reasserted itself. Indeed, within weeks of the fall of Saddam's regime it expressed itself in the moment that many now see as the starting point of the insurgency: the firing by US paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division into a noisy demonstration in Falluja...
Until we recognise this as a pattern, not just a few individuals, then we are not going to the root of the problem.
