Everyday Atrocities

Warblogging is running transcripts and video stills of a U.S. Marine kiling an wounded insurgent in cold blood, in front of reporters no less. As George Paine of Warblogging writes, "I don't feel the need to point out that this is, of course, a war crime."

Update: Kevin Sites is the reporter in MSNBC reporter in the story. He has a blog and is telling his story

This week I've even been shocked to see myself painted as some kind of anti-war activist. Anyone who has seen my reporting on television or has read the dispatches on this website is fully aware of the lengths I've gone to play it straight down the middle -- not to become a tool of propaganda for the left or the right.

But I find myself a lightning rod for controversy in reporting what I saw occur in front of me, camera rolling.

It's time you to have the facts from me, in my own words, about what I saw -- without imposing on that Marine -- guilt or innocence or anything in between. I want you to read my account and make up your own minds about whether you think what I did was right or wrong. All the other armchair analysts don't mean a damn to me.

Unfortunately the details of the full story doesn't explain why American soldiers would defy the Geneva Convention and basic human decency to kill unarmed prisoners in cold blood.

Scarier are all the soldiers quoted afterwards who justify the killing. This is just an on-the-ground example of the Geneva Convention being ignored by the U.S. military. These soldiers know their disregard for human rights in war time is shared by the President, Secretary of Defense and the nominated Attorney General. We Americans might want to think of ourselves as the shining beacon of liberty in the world but our actions show us to be capable of very human atrocities. The justifications always boil down to that familiar schoolyard refrain: "they started it!" Of course, we've all started it. A real shining beacon works to end it. A real modern professional army doesn't explain away its breaking of international law. This is not the moral high ground.

There's a lively thread on this incident on the Nonviolence discussion board

Meanwhile, in today's New York Times, Former G.I.'s, Ordered to War, Fight Not to Go:

The Army has encountered resistance from more than 2,000 former soldiers it has ordered back to military work, complicating its efforts to fill gaps in the regular troops.

The U.S. military is looking ever further afield for troops to call back up, now tapping ex-soldiers who thought their service was long at and end. These are patriots who don't want to fight anymore, who want the kind of simple, deceent life that everyone should enjoy.