Michael Yon writes one of the most powerful pieces I have yet read on the war and Haditha. This is a must read.
In the matter of Haditha, what we do know is that an investigation is underway. The results of that investigation have not been issued publicly and it is uncertain whether those results will include criminal charges. Because we have one of the only militaries on earth that actually investigates its own troops so openly, at the end of the day, we can and do hold our people to very high standards. Granted, in this case, apparently it took a media pry-bar to crack the lid, but we also have one of the only militaries in the world where a writer — even one who is flagrantly anti-military — can embed with combat troops.
Foreign journalists often contact me for advice on how to get in with troops other than Americans in Iraq. American forces are easy to go out with. A journalist need only contact the Combined Press Information Center in Baghdad, and he or she can be getting shot at while dodging roadside bombs as early as next week. But it can be extremely difficult, unless the journalist in question is a known sympathizer, to go out with militaries of other nations.
In the absence of clear facts, most people know that a rush to judgment serves no one. What word, then, properly characterizes the recent media coverage of Haditha, when analysis stretches beyond shotgun conclusions to actually attributing motive and assigning blame? No rational process supports a statement like: “We don’t know what happened, but we know why it happened and whose fault it is.”
While rushing into judgment is a fast trip to nowhere, delay tactics and cover-ups will only make a bigger mess that is harder to clean up.
I think that's exactly right. We must investigate and we must get to the bottom of it. But we also cannot and should not rush to judgement and ascribe blame and motivation. Context is also important.
It is hard to define the context in a place where the enemy regularly tortures and beheads people, and murders children on a daily basis, and this seems to raise scant ire. They can kill a dozen kids, or come to a classroom and murder a teacher in front of young students, and still be called “rebels,” or “freedom fighters.” I call them terrorists. A smart Australian recently told me during an interview that “terrorist” is not a subjective term; after all, terror is their principle weapon, and so the term is accurate.
Accuracy is important to defining context, but so is proportion. When a few of our rogue elements ran wild, creating the Abu Ghraib debacle that we cannot seem to outrun, the story, which is a horrible black mark on our military and our nation, seems to have been put on a permanent loop, albeit one that leaves out most of what might in fact be the most important news of all.
LTC Rodney Morris took me to a detention facility his soldiers operated in Tikrit. Prison and jail guards have told me many times there is one certainty with prisoners: they always complain. In fact, before going to Iraq, I met with a very experienced corrections chief in Massachusetts, Sheriff Thomas Hodgson, and asked him what to look for when snooping out signs of prison abuse or mismanagement. What are the signs? Sheriff Hodgson gave me a long list, and when I visited the detainees in Tikrit, nothing tripped my alarms.
When the prisoners saw my camera (photography was forbidden in the facility), they wanted my undivided attention. And so, in front of American soldiers, those prisoners gave me an earful. Said they didn’t have enough blankets, were cold at night, and did not get enough food. Several of the men who complained about the food were fat. But what those prisoners really told me, indirectly, was that they saw journalists as potential liberators, and even more importantly, that they were not afraid to complain about the soldiers in front of the soldiers. The prisoners knew when I left they would not be taken out and shot. I was there for as long as I wished to stay, asking an interpreter to translate graffiti written on some cell walls. The prisoners had time and possibly even opportunity to slip me a note. None did. But they all complained, complained, complained.
The Abu Ghraib travesty was an example of a journalist picking up the scent trail and following it. It took moral courage to break that story, and yet that writer knew our military would not hunt him down afterwards. The incident was investigated, and perpetrators were charged, tried and punished for their actions. Conditions in the prison greatly improved and methods of training and supervising soldiers who guard detainees were revamped to preclude future incidents. Somehow those parts seem to get left out of most sentences that mention Abu Ghraib. Today, terrorists view Abu Ghraib as an R&R and training destination. Combined with the catch and release policy, the net result is increased danger for our soldiers and Iraqis. I saw a commander get shot down in front of me by a terrorist who had just been released from Abu Ghraib.
The investigation has to go forward properly and we all - every one of us - have to remain neutral until we know the facts. We do NOT know them from what the media has published to date.
Every one of these Marines has families back home whose lives will be impacted by this investigation. Eventually we will learn the truth, but until that time, justice is threatened by speculation. The media spotlight that will inevitably descend on this group of Marines and the November incident will be intense. The results of the investigation should be on the front page of every American newspaper no matter what the facts are, good or bad. Americans holding themselves accountable demands the attention of all citizens.
Yet, what the newspapers print, where it is placed and the length of days it runs as the lead story will be like that those signs in Al Ain. To get the true context of how fairly any newspaper or media outlet is treating the military in general, and this war in particular, news consumers should consider how long it had been since that same source focused the same energy on the war. For some outlets, the last time the war really splashed was with Abu Ghraib. But if the reality of the war or the true nature of our military men and women were to be accurately represented in column inches, newspapers would be filled with the stories of Ben Morton, Walt Gaya, Brandon Huff, Sgt Mesa, Mary Prophit, Tim Boggs, Mark Bieger, and Colonel Robert Brown, whose soldiers fought like hell for Mosul, and won. Amidst that kind of coverage, the Haditha story would find its true context.
Until the facts are released by the investigating authorities, we might benefit from a new sign:
WARNING
Speculating is Strictly Forbidden —
Violators Will be Fined
I think that's right.
