From last night's NewsHour, here's syndicated columnist Mark Shields - a former Marine and good friend of former Marine Jim Webb - on the Haditha incident:
...it seems to be headed, Jim, towards serious charges being leveled, and the consequences and the fallout are just enormous.I mean, first of all, just in the United States, if these charges are made and confirmed and they're -- the sense of the United States, we've always felt that our purposes are noble, our ideals are high. This just goes right to the self-image of the country.
It makes us, in a sense, at moral parity with those that we're fighting. It undermines, obviously, the relations with Iraq itself and its government. You can see its government asserting itself.
And this:
I could not disagree more strenuously with David [Brooks]. Jim, there is no code, Marine Corps code, American code, international code, that says the murder of civilians -- if we have a nine-year-old child testifying that he saw his grandmother and grandfather killed by Marines in a cold-blooded way, that is -- I can't tell you how devastating that is.
As if all that's not bad enough, how about this:
And the cover-up, I mean, let's be very blunt about this. We've had criticism of the American press for not telling the good stories and the positive stories. But for the lonely courageous reporting of Time magazine, we wouldn't know about this.
Is Haditha today's My Lai? What will the repercussions be to this (alleged) massacre of civilians and the subsequent coverup? Will we ever get to the bottom of this? For the sake of America's values, image, and self-respect, I certainly hope so.
Those of us who served in the Marines (and my service was limited, other than training, to band and data processing), are imbued with a code, a standard of conduct. One part of conduct is that a leader takes responsibility.
I cannot stand Oliver North, and when he testified before Congress in uniform I felt he was besmirching that proud green. But there is one part of his career which is owed respect -- he at his own expense flew across the Pacific to help defend a former subordinate he felt was being unfairly charged (he was at the time I believe a 1st Lieutenant), and went on tv on the man's behalf. That is the kind of stand-up reponsibility we expect.
I have commented recently that the most beloved Marines are those who first take care of their enlisted men. I heard a tale of Chesty Puller (which perhaps someone can confirm) about what he did when he took command of a division in CA as a 3 star. He ordered the entire division to make a 20 mile march through the desert with full field pack. That fied pack should include an extra pair of boots and socks. Puller had apparently heard that some officers and NCOs were padding their packs with cardboard during these training marches, and not carrying the extras to avoid shlepping the few extra pounds. When the march got 10 miles out, everyone was ordered to take off their boots and socks, tag them (tags were provided) and put them on board the trucks before them, replace them with the extras in their pack and march back to base.
Almost all the regular enlisted and junior NCos ahd their extras. Many of the more senior NCos and some officers did not. They did 10 miles back barefoot. This in theory caused complaint to Hdqtrs USMC and Puller was forced into retirement. Or so the story goes.
The story may not be literally true. But it contains turth, that is, is illustrates exactly how Puller operated you do not ask of the enlisted man what you are not willing to do yourself.
Puller is probably the most honored Marine - he never won a Medal of Honor, but he won five Navy Crosses, the next highest medal, and - counting foreign decorations, something along the n umber of 52 total. He dropped out of VMI to enlist as a private in the Marines during WWI. He was promoted to 1st LT in 1919, but then placed on inactive status. The same year he reenlisted, despite having previously briefly been an officer.
He earned two Navy Crosses in Nicaragua in the interbellum period. He won his 3rd Cross at the Battle off Henderson Field during the fight over Guadalcanal, and his fourth for a series of actions in Cape Gloucester.
His fifth Navy Cross was for frozen Chosin. The Marines got trapped in bitter cold (nighttime temperatures dropped to 30 below). Some of the Marines trapped early in the battle escaped by walking across the frozen Chosin reservoir, which for some reason the Chinese left unguarded. At one point during the extended conflict the press approached Puller, who responsed "We've been looking for the enemy for several days now. We finally found them. We're surrounded. That simplifies our problem of finding these people and killing them."
Puller retired for "ill health" in 1955, but tried to re-up for Vietnam in 1966 when he was 68 years old. He wanted to be with his Marines (who landed in 'Nam at Danang in March of 1965).
This history is a part of what it is supposed to mean to be a Marine. You learn this in boot camp. You learn about Smedley Butler, an officer who won two medals of honor, and Sgt Dan Dailey, who also won two. You learn that the red stripe on the trousers of dress blues is for the Battle of Chapaultapec in the Mexican war, where officers and NCos took heavy casualties. Anyone who ever served knows that the Copr was established November 10, 1775 when Captain Robert Mullen signed up volunteers in Tun Tavern, Philadelphia.
You are inculcated with the history fo a reason -- honor, discipline. If there is the kind of breakdown that occurred at Haditha, something has gone horribly wrong, it means an essential part of what it means to be a Marine has along the way been lost. Had these been marine reservists with little appropriate training that might explain it. But it was not. While I in no way condone what the particular unit did, I know the problem must exist at some higher level.
In WWII we established what is known as the Yamashita Standard. We executed Japanes General Tomoyuki Yamashita for atrocities committed by troops under his command during the battle of Manila. In at least one case the unit doing the atrocities had disobeyed his direct order to retreat and instead had stayed and committed the crimes, and he promptly executed the officer responsible. Command and control had broken down. In a case that was appealed all the way to the US Supreme Court (which affirmed the conviction by a 7-2 vote), Yamashita was found guilty on the grounds of command responsibility, that even lacking communication with his soldiers he had the responsibility to have properly trained themm so that such violations of the proper conduct of warfare did not occur.
Most Americans do not know this. On this basis My La should not have stopped with William Calley or even hjis immediate superior Capt Eernest Medina, but should have gone to at least the level of field grade (major and Lt Colonel) officers. Similarly, the principle should applied to situations like Abu Ghraib, Haditha, and any other such situations that may be coming to light. If we do not apply that standard to ourselves, then mostof the world will come to the conclusion that the reason the Bush administration was so insistent on Americans not being subject to the new international criminal court is because these actions are a matter of policy. And the implications of this for any Americans -- civilian or military - are horrible to contemplate.
Sorry -- this comment has really wandered. As a former Marine, my heart is broken that it waws Marines involved at Haditha, and I have tried to explain why.
This is the very reason we need people like Webb in charge right now. That isn't politicking, it's just a fact because our problems are only going to become worse.
And while I'm thinking of it, this failure of leadership is spreading like a disease. We have to turn that around.
There was a very informative blog at DK on Haditha today.