Psyche, Science, and Society

Pressure to increase body count produces civilian deaths

May 9th, 2008

Mark Benjamin and Christopher Weaver of Salon writes of how the military’s pressure of snipers to increase their body count led to the murder of civilians.

The snipers were told they could shoot if someone had “hostile intent”:

The snipers felt they were being pressured to interpret “hostile intent” loosely to justify kills. During testimony, sniper Spc. Joshua Michaud said that Lt. Col. Balcavage and Command Sgt. Maj. Knight “constantly pushed for ‘If you feel threatened, you know, obviously eliminate the threat.’ But they kind of said it in a manner in which a lot of us took it like, ‘Hey, you need to go out there and you guys gotta start getting kills.’”

Additionally, the rules explicitly allowed the killing of civilians:

At worst, the rules explicitly allowed the killing of unarmed Iraqis under certain circumstances, a particularly dicey concept given an enemy that does not wear a uniform and hides among civilians. Specifically, the snipers were allowed to shoot unarmed people running away from explosions or firefights. The chain of command was particularly frustrated by insurgents fleeing after attacks from roadside bombs, called improvised explosive devices. The notes from Army agents who later investigated the shootings said the battalion leaders, Balcavage and Knight, worried that the snipers had “let a lot of guys go after IED explosions.” The snipers called these fleeing, sometimes unarmed Iraqis “squirters.” Of course, it’s not unusual for innocent people to run from explosions.

One soldier involved in a killing got a 10-year sentence. As usual, the officers who created the conditions leading to the brutality were never even investigated:

Top battalion leaders, who had to sign off on the charges, have faced no serious questions about whether their demand for more bodies, their vague rules of engagement or the confusion sown by the secret program might have contributed to the events of spring 2007.

One of the soldiers involved explained succinctly the connection between the type of war and th brutality:

“If you have never been outside the wire, you really have no basis [to judge],” said Hand. “You’ve never been in a life-or-death situation where you have had to count on the guy to your left and right … You see stuff out there that no one back here is going to see.”

The answer is to end the war. Scapegoating a few soldiers will only increase the final death toll by helping to focus attention away from the brutality of occupation and onto the supposed depravity of a few, the perennial “bad apples” that seem to grow  whenever rotten trees are not recognized ad pruned.

Entry Filed under: Iraq, US Troops, War and Peace