As hundreds of protesters picketed outside Camp Pendleton on Saturday in support of seven Marines and a Navy corpsman charged with murder in the death of an Iraqi man, defense attorneys began preparing for a long legal battle.
Waving American flags and holding signs saying "God Bless Our Heroes" and "Liberate the Pendleton 8," demonstrators shouted and whistled as Marines entered and left the base. Many of the Marines honked their car horns in apparent appreciation.
"I think they should all be freed - it's unjust what's happening to them," said Jani Tubis, 46, a real estate agent from San Diego. "They were just doing their job."
Marie Grischuk, 72, of Oceanside, the widow of a Marine, said she joined the protest "because it's just not right that they're in the brig. They were protecting our country against terrorists."
On the home page of the Times, they had a photo of one of the demonstrators carrying a sign saying, "Prisoners of Political Correctness".
I realize people who will go out in public and demonstrate in favor of war crimes are beyond reason, as well as beyond shame and a few other things.
These eight defendants are accused of involvement in "premeditated murder, kidnapping, conspiracy and related offenses". If someone can show me some reason to think right now that they are being railroaded, I'll be happy to take their side. But think about about what it means for this guy to say, "They were just doing their job."
If murder of innocent civilians is just part of "doing their job", what does that say about the soldiers who serve in the same hell-hole and don't murder civilians? Anybody who wants to equate war crimes like kidnapping and premeditated murder with "supporting the troops" has an definite agenda. And it ain't pretty, and it ain't about "honoring the soldiers".
And what happened in the specific offense alleged? Perry explains:
The Marines were allegedly on "ambush duty" outside the Iraqi village of Hamandiya on April 26 waiting to catch insurgents burying roadside bombs when they pushed their way into the home of a disabled 52-year-old Iraqi named Ashim Ibrahim Awad and dragged him outside.
Awad was allegedly pushed to the ground and then bound at his feet and hands. Five of the Marines allegedly shot Awad with their M-16 and M-249 rifles. An AK-47 and a shovel were left near the body to make it appear Awad was an insurgent caught digging a hole to plant a roadside bomb, military investigators said.
Hutchins, the squad leader, then allegedly called in a phony story to Marines at the base camp and told his squad to lie about what happened.
After Awad's family protested to Marine authorities, the military launched an investigation. The Marines and the corpsman are now charged with lying to Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents by insisting that Awad was killed during a firefight.
And there are protesters out there with signs saying, "God Bless Our Heroes"? It makes me want to puke.
Reading this story makes me wonder if the reporters isn't being taken for a ride here. This is really pretty extreme. What kind of people want to go out in public and identify themselves to a newspaper as being a supporter and advocate of a premeditated murder like the one being charged?
I just have to wonder that if a reporter were to dig a bit if they wouldn't find some very ideological militia or Christian extremist groups behind this. I just can't imagine anyone organizing and participating in a protest like this without having a conscious agenda of trying to normalize the practice of murdering enemy noncombatants.
He mentions three Web sites that are supposedly run by families of the accused: www.innocentmarine.com; www.fightingfortyler.com; and www.patriotdefensefund.com. But this smells like something more to me than family members trying to make sure the accused have a zealous and adequate defense.
I know if I had a close relative in that situation, I would want to see that they were adequately represented and that their presumption of innocence and right to a fair trial were protected.
But I wouldn't write something like this (from the fightingfortyler page):
How many other sons, daughters, husbands, and fathers could be killed because now they might hesitate to perform their duties for fear of being prosecuted? Are these types of false accusations an insurgent tactic to disrupt and demoralize the troops and divide the American public? Is anything being done to prove this "information"? How does democracy survive when we imprison those that do their duty to protect it. Has the Marine Corps done an about face and marched away from their men for their own political purposes?
As a general rule, I wouldn't try to defend somebody on a murder charge by arguing that, hell, the authorities should just ignore because it was just some foreigner that got killed, who cares? Not even to raise defense fund money. Because that line of argument makes them sound guilty as sin.
The innocentmarine site argues that "the US Marine Corps leadership has turned its back on my son and his squadmates in a Quixote-like search for political correctness". None of the three sites address the formal charges.
The bottom line for me on that protest is that, if these soldiers did what they are accused of and they are being celebrated as heroes for doing it, that is the worst kind of insult on the many thousands of soldiers who served in Iraq without committing premeditated murder.
It is frustrating to me to see how little general public awareness there seems to of the most basic concepts of laws of war. Telford Taylor, who was chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, wrote in his 1970 book Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy:
War does not confer a license to kill for personal reasons - to gratify perverse impulses, or to put out of the way anyone who appears obnoxious, or to whose welfare the soldier is indifferent. War is not a license at all, but an obligation to kill for reasons of state; it does not countenance the infliction of suffering for its own sake or for revenge.
Unless troops are trained and required to draw the distinction between military and nonmilitary killings, and to retain such respect for the value of life that unnecessary death and destruction will continue to repel them, they may lose the sense for that distinction for the rest of their lives. (my emphasis)
And some people that prefer to blur that distinction will be happy to hide their vicious agendas behind flag-waving and a show of patriotism.
