Revenge, hypocrisy and the death penalty

Rick Perry has some catching up to do.

Earlier this week the Iraqi government announced that it had executed 21 prisoners convicted of terrorism, including three women. Last Sunday The Gambia executed nine prisoners, including one woman, by firing squad who had been part of the prior regime before the 1994 coup.

Iraq has now murdered 91 prisoners in 2012 - including mass executions on at least three occasions. President Yahya Jammah of The Gambia has announced he plans to empty the nation's death row by executing the remaining 47 prisoners by mid-September.

We have what we like to think is the best judicial system in the world and yet there are men and women freed from prison every year who were exonerated. If we make mistakes like that with our system, what are the chances the judicial systems in Iraq and The Gambia didn't make mistakes, too?

And what about our protections against coerced confessions? Such protections don't exist in Iraq or in The Gambia. Right to counsel? Right to confrontation? Who knows.

This is the gang the United States likes to run around with. Sure, we dress up nice and pal around with England and the Europeans when everyone's looking - but once the lights go out it's off to hang out with our real pals.

The ones we like to criticize for chopping off a convicted thief's hand. How barbaric we say, wringing our hands, when we're in public. But when that door's closed, we have no problem implementing our own version of an eye for an eye.

Our judicial system isn't perfect. No one's is. That's why, even with the number of safeguards that exist, people are wrongfully convicted. Thankfully our system has a means of escape. Even then, however, men and women sit in prison and miss family milestones like birthdays, holidays, graduations and funerals, waiting for the truth to set them free.

What safeguards exist in the Iraqi judicial system? How about the system in The Gambia? Is there any means in those nations to obtain post-conviction relief?

Anders Breivik murdered 77 people, including more than 60 teenagers, in Norway. He was convicted and sentenced to between 10 to 21 years in prison (though Norwegian law allows the state to hold him indefinitely). There will be no hanging. No firing squad. No electric chair. No lethal injection.

The death penalty is, or at least should be, an anachronism for an advanced society. It serves no purpose other than to allow us to experience the thrill of revenge vicariously. Isn't it time we moved beyond that?

Book review: American Sniper

Let it not be said that I won't read something with which I disagree. American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History was written by Navy SEAL Chris Kyle and details his account of his time in Iraq during the second Iraq War.

The book, co-authored by Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice, is just about as hackneyed and cliched as it can be. If you've ever read Lance Armstrong's first book It's Not About the Bike, you're familiar with the author recounting in infinite detail just how good he was at everything he did. Mr. Kyle shines the light firmly on himself.

If you've ever seen Full Metal Jacket or The Boys from Company C then you can already guess the manner in which Mr. Kyle covers his basic training for the Navy at for the SEALS. He then spends an inordinate amount of time throughout the book regaling us of stories of bar fights and brutal hazing rituals. In Mr. Kyle's world, a SEAL is but a drunk sailor with a temper. No fight is ever the fault of Mr. Kyle or his fellow SEALS - but neither do Mr. Kyle nor his mates seem to understand how to walk away from a barfight.

He then takes us into Iraq and the world of the sniper. Mr. Kyle fought in Baghdad, Fallujah, Ramadi and Sadr City and he paints a visceral picture of what that world looked like to him. Of course he never questions the mission. His job, as he defines it, was to kill the savages that opposed the U.S. Those he killed weren't human - they were animals. There is no concern about their families or the war-ravaged land in which they lived. On the other hand, there is tragedy any time an American is killed or wounded.

The killing didn't seem to bother Mr. Kyle - except for the teenager he shot to death who was carrying an AK-47. The emotional effects of that killing led him to an early exit from Iraq due to health concerns. But his conflict about the shooting seemed to be more about his reaction to killing a teenager than the fact that a child was killed in a senseless war.

As the Marines came in, a teenager, I'd guess about fifteen, sixteen, appeared on the street and squared up with an AK-47 to fire at them. 

I dropped him. 

A minute or two later, an Iraqi woman came running up, saw him on the ground, and tore off her clothes. She was obviously his mother. 

I'd see the families of the insurgents display their grief, tear off clothes, even rub the blood on themselves. if you loved them, I thought, you should have kept them away from the war.

That is the callousness that seeing death on a daily basis brings about. This is what we create when we send our young people around the world to carry guns and kill people with whom we disagree. War should not be looked at as an admirable thing. War should be looked at as our failure to act in a responsible manner. Sending our youth to face death and the mind-altering effects of war is despicable.

Mr. Kyle sums up his attitude toward the mission as such:

But I didn't risk my life to bring democracy to Iraq. I risked my life for my buddies, to protect my friends and fellow countrymen. I went to war for my country, not Iraq. My country sent me out there so that bullshit wouldn't make its way back to our shores. 

I never once fought for the Iraqis. I could give a flying fuck about them.

Looking at the aftermath of most places the U.S. has gotten involved in since World War II, that seems to be the attitude of the people in charge as well.

See also:

"The pseudo-courage of Chris Kyle," Pro Liberate (2/5/2012)

(Special H/T. to Mark Bennett for the link)

How much is a life worth?

On November 19, 2005, in the Iraqi city of Haditha, a bomb went off and killed an American soldier, Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas. In the aftermath of the explosion, an Iraqi cabdriver and four teenagers were shot and killed by US troops under orders of Sgt. Frank Wuterich.

Upon arriving at the scene, Lt. William T. Kallop ordered the troops to seize a house from which he believed shots were being fired. The marines stormed the house and killed 19 unarmed civilians, including seven women and children, through the use of rifles and grenades.



The original story was that the dead were part of a group of Iraqis who opened fire on the Americans. But questions were asked when the dead were found wearing their nightclothes.

But when witnesses were asked to recount the events of that day, a startlingly different picture emerged. Tim McGirk of Time Magazine broke the story in March 2006. The account of 9-year-old Eman Waleed is harrowing:

 "We heard a big noise that woke us all up," she recalls two months later. "Then we did what we always do when there's an explosion: my father goes into his room with the Koran and prays that the family will be spared any harm." Eman says the rest of the family—her mother, grandfather, grandmother, two brothers, two aunts and two uncles—gathered in the living room. According to military officials familiar with the investigation, the Marines say they came under fire from the direction of the Waleed house immediately after being hit by the ied. A group of Marines headed toward the house. Eman says she "heard a lot of shooting, so none of us went outside. Besides, it was very early, and we were all wearing our nightclothes." When the Marines entered the house, they were shouting in English. "First, they went into my father's room, where he was reading the Koran," she claims, "and we heard shots." According to Eman, the Marines then entered the living room. "I couldn't see their faces very well—only their guns sticking into the doorway. I watched them shoot my grandfather, first in the chest and then in the head. Then they killed my granny." She claims the troops started firing toward the corner of the room where she and her younger brother Abdul Rahman, 8, were hiding; the other adults shielded the children from the bullets but died in the process. Eman says her leg was hit by a piece of metal and Abdul Rahman was shot near his shoulder. "We were lying there, bleeding, and it hurt so much. Afterward, some Iraqi soldiers came. They carried us in their arms. I was crying, shouting 'Why did you do this to our family?' And one Iraqi soldier tells me, 'We didn't do it. The Americans did.'"

Eight marines, including Sgt. Wuterich, were charged with murder and dereliction of duty. The cases almost immediately began to fall apart with military investigators recommending that charges against the soldiers be dismissed or reduced to just dereliction of duty. The investigation uncovered instances that the defendants had destroyed or withheld evidence.

Of the eight, one was acquitted and charges against six others were dismissed. In the last case, Sgt. Wuterich pled guilty to negligent dereliction of duty. The manslaughter and assault charges were dismissed. As punishment, Sgt. Wuterich was demoted to private.

And so the question remains, what's an Iraqi life worth? According to the military court, one American life was worth the lives of 24 Iraqis; but the lives of those Iraqis was only worth a loss of rank.

I do think Sgt. Wuterich was being made something of a scapegoat in this affair. He, after all, wasn't the one who ordered the marines to storm the houses. But no one ever went after Lt. Kallop. As a result we have 24 dead civilians who were killed as the result of a war without purpose entered into by President Bush.

War isn't about fighter jets and targeted bombs. It isn't about smart bombs and surgical strikes. War is about death and destruction. Collateral damage is just a sanitized why of saying "We fucked up."

For more background, see:

"Investigating the Haditha Killings," NPR