SPEAKING
FREELY On
war crimes, the buck stops
here By Dallas Darling
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
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Harkening back to
former United States Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld, and then back further to Heinrich
Himmler - the ruthless practitioner of the Nazi's
Schutzstaffel (SS) that terrorized much of Europe
during World War II, Defense Secretary Leon
Panetta told thousands of sometimes cheering,
sometimes solemn troops that they needed to
"tighten up discipline" and "display integrity".
His announcement at Fort Benning, Georgia was just
one of many to mass media outlets around the
world. They followed a number of repeated public
relations disasters
regarding US-led
military conflicts around the world, ones that
Panetta claimed could play into the hands of
America's enemies.
Trying to control the
damage due to US troops posting pictures of them
urinating on Taliban corpses, posing with dead
body parts, the burning of Korans, including
several recent sport-killings and massacres and
rapes of Afghan civilians, Panetta claimed that
such misconduct relates only to a small percentage
of US forces which were merely magnified by
digital technologies. Concerned over these "war
crime" images posing a greater threat to US-led
military campaigns, he also said, "I need everyone
of you, everyone of you to always display the
strongest character, the greatest discipline, and
the utmost integrity in everything you do."
Standing before thousands of SS troops, elite
and professional forces of the Nazi Party used to
exterminated enemy combatants and eliminate anyone
considered to be racially degenerate, Himmler, who
had the outward appearance of a meek, gentle man
who would not harm a fly, who was slender, pale
and almost girlishly soft hands covered with blue
veins, [1] also declared that they must always
maintain their "integrity" amidst the "bombing
raids, the hardships, and the deprivations of
war." He affirmed that SS troops should never give
in to "human weakness" but instead, they had a
"moral right and duty" to "carry the heaviest of
tasks in waging war with a spirit of love for our
people." [2]
Rumsfeld denounced such acts
a "terrible" and inconsistent with the values of
our nation. He was responding to hundreds of cases
of abuse, torture, and homicide uncovered since
the Abu Graib war crimes scandal uncovered in 2006
in Iraq. Images of US troops posing with tortured
and abused and naked Iraqi prisoners, some beaten
and applied with electrical shock, were also
posted via electronic media. Rumsfeld, of course,
was quick to redefine that nature of these acts as
"abuse" and not torture. And like Panetta and
Himmler, he promised that "Any wrongdoers need to
be punished, procedures evaluated, and problems
corrects." [3]
Whether it be mass
extermination policies or posing and grinning with
corpses and their grim remains-like legs, arms,
heads, and a dead man's hand with the middle
finger raised and a sign reading "Zombie Hunters,"
war-like pathologies begin with bureaucrats in
power. And whether it be the desire to create
"living space" or American Exceptionalism and
global Manifest Destiny - leading to lengthy
military campaigns and occupations that result in
hundreds indiscriminate night time raids,
massacres, and rapes, armed and aggressive
criminology starts with those who espouse
doctrines of superiority, that a nation and its
leaders can raise themselves up from the
contingent world and rule over it.
A lack
of judgment and professionalism started long
before US troops posed with Nazi SS flags in
Afghanistan while committing hundreds of crimes
against peace and humanity. Protracted ground
wars, ones that produce mental and emotional
health problems and that increase suicides among
troops, are a sign of moral failure and
bureaucratic war crimes. Lengthy military
campaigns which lead to an increase in substance
abuse, divorce, joblessness, and homelessness
among soldiers, reveal a need for moral leadership
and honorable discipline at the highest levels of
government. First came Himmler, and then came
Rumsfeld and Panetta, along with their
collaborators.
George Santayana wrote:
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned
to repeat it. " At the same time, "Those who
cannot remember doomed principles of the past are
condemned to repeat them." This is especially true
for bureaucratic war criminals and their war
crimes.
Notes 1. Snyder,
Dr Louis L, Encyclopedia Of The Third
Reich. New York, New York: McGraw-Hill Inc,
1976, p 147. 2. Reilly, Kevin, Worlds Of
History: A Comparative Reader. New York, New
York: Bedford/St Martin's Press, 2009, pp 931,
932. 3. Zimbardo, Philip. The Lucifer
Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn
Evil. New York, New York: Random House
Publishing Group, 2007, pp 236, 237.
Dallas Darling is the author of
Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious
Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above
God: 52 Weekly Reflections on Modern-Day
Imperialism, Militarism, and Consumerism in the
Context of John's Apocalyptic Vision, and
The Other Side of Christianity: Reflections on
Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace.
He is a correspondent for www.worldnews.com.
You can read more of Dallas' writings atwww.beverlydarling.com.)
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their
say.Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing. Articles submitted for this section
allow our readers to express their opinions and do
not necessarily meet the same editorial standards
of Asia Times Online's regular contributors.
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