POPULAR PRISONER BEATING VIDEO NO LAUGHING MATTER
By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER
Got an email today from a popular military site. It sent me to those videos from our troops in Iraq, the ones we watch with such pride. This very recent video is from an MP unit showing a handcuffed prisoner being rifle butted in the head while being removed from a vehicle. I grew up on movie scenes like this. The MP’s were wearing German uniforms and the people being brutalized were usually French resistance fighters.
When the prisoners got into the buildings, they were tortured. People claimed you could hear the screams blocks away. When the German people were asked, after being defeated, if they knew of such things, Gestapo beatings, torture or death camps, they said they knew nothing. Now I am them. Do I say I know nothing?
Nazis taught their troops they were all powerful "war fighters" supporting a righteous cause against people of inferior race or religion. Nazi leaders bombarded the public with constant talk of supporting the troops with top party officials parading around Berlin in grotesque uniforms. As an American, I was taught that this kind of behavior was how we knew who our enemy was. They were arrogant, disrespectful of human rights and willing to justify any barbaric act in the name of patriotism.
Now I see American uniforms, MP’s, probably police when back home in America, brutalizing helpless captives openly on video seen around the world. Few treasons could harm America more. Few acts could do more to support terrorism. I wonder if our heroic war fighter was practicing up for when he might need to use similar skills back home, "on the job," perhaps beating a homeless veteran.
For years now, we have been bombarded with parades and photo opportunities, endlessly thanking troops for their sacrifice. Medals are given out in some services like candy, uniforms "dandified" to the point of the extreme with patches, dickeys, berets, pins and doo-dads of every kind.
No matter how we dress it, we have drizzled into a low level police action in Iraq and a losing war of insanity in the hell hole of Afghanistan. Every American generation knows war. Every American generation also knows the endless political blowhards, the Cheneys and such, that are the cheerleaders for war industry while kids die.
Is this war different? This video tells me so. I fought in Vietnam as a Marine. I know that prisoners we captured were tortured and killed by the Vietnamese. I knew this was wrong. I also knew that being captured was not an option. We were told we had to fight to the death, surrender was no option. War is not play, I know this well, up front and personal.
However, I made an effort to remember, every day, that I was a human being and the people we captured or killed were also human beings. I knew that if I forgot that I would no longer be an American. Professional soldiers and human beings can kill when they must but should need no training beyond having a decent upbringing that brutalizing a handcuffed prisoner is an act of cowardice.
Soldiers in Vietnam murdered civilians at My Lai. Vietnam has built a museum there and drags tourists to it from around the world to demonstrate the inferiority of America. Now we pepper the internet with films and photos of every kind of torture and humiliation, doing the work of a thousand terrorist recruiters.
When an American unit is attacked, combat troops in the heat of battle can lose control or, at times, rear eschelon "second guessers" will rush to judgement. This was not one of those times.
When an American military police officer operating in a foreign country under a Separation of Forces Agreement acts like a crooked cop shaking down hookers and drug dealers and then brazenly publishes video of their corrupt acts for worldwide distrubution and nothing is said, I feel more than ashamed.
Don’t tell me I don’t understand. I have " been there, done that" as have so many. War is war but, frankly, this war doesn’t look much like World War 2 or even Vietnam. Iraq is looking more and more like military occupation at the orders of a government disgraced and reviled in America and around the world. I am the last one to tell one of our troops to take fire and not fire back but story after story seems to go the other way.
Every time I hear a "hearts and minds" story, it has a Pentagon Pundit phony behind it. For years we have been getting little but tales of torture, prisoner abuse and a population of 2 billion Muslims looking at America increasingly as a threat to peace and freedom. This is insane. This is not America and if our troops, be they some or many, have become a mob of idiots then we need to reassert discipline, professionalism and American values.
That our own government seems to be the root of this mindset is, perhaps, the most disturbing fact of all.
Gordon Duff is a Marine Vietnam veteran and regular contributor on political and social issues.
Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.
Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.
Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.
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