The Wedding Day Massacre

It sounds like a horror movie doesn't it, "The Wedding Day Massacre". It's the kind of shlocky story you'd only get in a cheap American B-movie. The real horror is that this particular massacre is no movie, but it is definitely a Made in America atrocity.

I am, of course, referring to the American military bombing and raid on an Iraqi wedding party in the village of Mukaradeeb near the Syrian border. Here is a quote from a Guardian article on the massacre by Rory McCarthy:

It was 10.30pm in the remote village of Mukaradeeb by the Syrian border and the guests hurried back to their homes as the party ended. As sister-in-law of the groom, Mrs Shihab, 30, was to sleep with her husband and children in the house of the wedding party, the Rakat family villa. She was one of the few in the house who survived the night.

"The bombing started at 3am," she said yesterday from her bed in the emergency ward at Ramadi general hospital, 60 miles west of Baghdad. "We went out of the house and the American soldiers started to shoot us. They were shooting low on the ground and targeting us one by one," she said. She ran with her youngest child in her arms and her two young boys, Ali and Hamza, close behind. As she crossed the fields a shell exploded close to her, fracturing her legs and knocking her to the ground.

She lay there and a second round hit her on the right arm. By then her two boys lay dead. "I left them because they were dead," she said. One, she saw, had been decapitated by a shell. (for the full article click here)

I have written both here on my blog, and in commentary on other political blogs, that atrocities in Iraq, like this massacre, and like Abu Ghraib, will not only continue, but they will continue to get worse.

The problem is not some flaw in Americans as a whole. The problem isn't even a flaw in the American military. The problem is in the leadership, or more accurately the lack of it. Until and unless the American leadership is willing to thoroughly police its military forces, until the message gets out to the troops and the commanders at all levels that unreasonable uses of force will be punished heavily, killing, particularly the killing of unarmed civilians will become routine.

Eventually, if it hasn't already, the current tacit acceptance of atrocity will affect the American military at all levels. The only time there will be punishment is when the evidence is irrefutable. So instead of behaving better, troops will simply do a better job at hiding the evidence. They will take no prisoners, they will try to leave no one behind alive to tell their tale. But despite those efforts some of the stories will get out, and they will only further deepen the growing Iraqi resistance against the American occupation.

What not enough Americans, particularly those in power, realize, is that this entrenchment of brutality will not only traumatize Iraqis, it will cause harm to all Americans. The rest of the world, and even Americans themselves, will see a change in how they are viewed, and eventually, even who they are. You cannot continue to do monstrous deeds without eventually becoming a monster.