Seymour Hersh on the Afghan atrocities: It’s the smile.

March 22, 2011
The “Kill Team” Photographs
Posted by Seymour M. Hersh
................................


It’s the smile. In photographs released by the German weekly Der Spiegel, an American soldier is looking directly at the camera with a wide grin. His hand is on the body of an Afghan whom he and his fellow soldiers appear to have just killed, allegedly for sport. In a sense, we’ve seen that smile before: on the faces of the American men and women who piled naked Iraqi prisoners on top of each other, eight years ago, and posed for photographs and videos at the Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad.

It’s also the cameras. Der Spiegel reported this week that it had obtained four thousand photographs and videos taken by American soldiers who referred to themselves as a “kill team.” (Der Spiegel chose to publish only three of the photographs.) The images are in the hands of military prosecutors. Five soldiers, including Jeremy Morlock, the smiling man in the picture, who is twenty-two years old, are awaiting courts martial for the murder of three Afghan civilians; seven other soldiers had lesser, related charges filed against them, including drug use. On Tuesday, Morlock’s lawyer said that he would plead guilty.

We saw photographs, too, at My Lai 4, where a few dozen American soldiers slaughtered at least five hundred South Vietnamese mothers, children, and old men and women in a long morning of unforgettable carnage more than four decades ago. Ronald Haeberle, an Army photographer, was there that day with two cameras. He directed the lens of his official one, with black-and-white film in it, away from the worst sights; there is a shot of soldiers with faint smiles on their faces, leaning back in relaxed poses, and no sign of the massacre that has taken place. But the color photos that Haeberle took on his personal camera, for his own use, were far more explicit—they show the shot-up bodies of toddlers, and became some of the most unforgettable images of that wasteful war. In most of these cases, when we later meet these soldiers, in interviews or during court proceedings, they come across as American kids—articulate, personable, and likable.

Why photograph atrocities? And why pass them around to buddies back home or fellow soldiers in other units? How could the soldiers’ sense of what is unacceptable be so lost? No outsider can have a complete answer to such a question. As someone who has been writing about war crimes since My Lai, though, I have come to have a personal belief: these soldiers had come to accept the killing of civilians—recklessly, as payback, or just at random—as a facet of modern unconventional warfare. In other words, killing itself, whether in a firefight with the Taliban or in sport with innocent bystanders in a strange land with a strange language and strange customs, has become ordinary. In long, unsuccessful wars, in which the enemy—the people trying to kill you—do not wear uniforms and are seldom seen, soldiers can lose their bearings, moral and otherwise. The consequences of that lost bearing can be hideous. This is part of the toll wars take on the young people we send to fight them for us. The G.I.s in Afghanistan were responsible for their actions, of course. But it must be said that, in some cases, surely, as in Vietnam, the soldiers can also be victims.

...........................

MORE:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/03/the-kill-team-photographs.html#

Hersch needs to get with the program.

And we have only killed about 10,000 men, women and children, and torture is not against the Geneva Conventions when you really analyze how WE do it. It's different, less painful.

Shooting Afghan protesters is not the same as when it's done by people we don't like.

Atrocities committed by our troops are 'aberrations', not our fault. Atrocities committed by the troops or supporters of our enemies, demonstrate how depraved they are.

Dead children blown apart by drones, are collateral damage when we do it, and anyhow, we are doing it for a good cause.

What's wrong with Hersch anyhow? He belongs under the bus with Cindy Sheehan and everyone else who doesn't understand that we are now the 'good guys'. It was okay for him to say these things before we got rid of Bush!

Edited to say that as always, Hersch does a fantastic job of bringing attention to the all the real costs of these wars, not the least of which is the loss of our humanity.

"I've got no use for Cindy Sheehan," was how I remember one DUer put it.

This is a good war. Afghanistan had it coming. So did Libya. They're friends with Saddam Hussein and the terrawritz. Nothing Richard Perle's version of the Carlyle Group won't fix.

who loves the idea of getting free weapons and getting paid to kill brown people who speak "furriner"..

I realize that not ALL soldiers are this way, but it only takes a few wackos who like to have their photos taken with their "kill", to send a message.

I like to point out from time-to-time what Seymour Hersh's remarkable background is. His reporting of the My Lai massacre in Viet Nam, which was covered-up for months, blew the lid off the Viet Nam war. Hersh's reporting on Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison atrocities blew the lid off of the Bu$h war against Iraq.

For those interested in what happened at My Lai-4 on March 16, 1968, read My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath by Seymour Hersh and Four Hours in My Lai by Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim.

Where are the latter-day Hugh Thompsons?


RIP, good man.

Heroes of My Lai:

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/Myl_hero.html