Our View: Staining our image
Idaho soldier Evan Vela’s testimony in Baghdad this week was disturbingly reminiscent of another military controversy in another war.
Sgt. Vela, one of three Army snipers facing murder charges in the deaths of Iraqis last spring, testified in a fellow soldier’s court-martial of being ordered to execute an unarmed prisoner.
“I heard the word ‘shoot.’ I don’t remember pulling the trigger. I just came to and the guy was dead.”
That kind of thing happened over and over in Vietnam’s Central Highlands during a seven-month span in 1967. But while Vela and others are being called to account now, even as the conflict in Iraq continues around them, the notorious Tiger Force that prowled the Song Ve Valley and the region around Chu Lai escaped public notice for 36 years, and its members walked away.
It’s not that none of the 40-plus Tiger Force members had the courage or conscience to blow the whistle. Some tried, but higher authorities conspired to hush it up. After the war, the Pentagon finally conducted an investigation, concluding that numerous war crimes had been committed but dredging them up at that point would do no good.
Not until 2003 did the public at large find out, thanks to a Pulitzer Prize-winning expose by the Toledo Blade.
Tiger Force was an elite reconnaissance platoon within the fabled 101st Airborne Division – the proud unit that President Eisenhower sent to Little Rock, Ark., half a century ago to enforce racial integration. But in Vietnam, Tiger Force acted more like the mob its predecessors had kept at bay at Central High School. It operated largely on its own, torching villages, mowing down elderly peasants, farmers and children. Sometimes, calloused superiors ordered tentative soldiers to kill captive civilians, even as they pleaded for their lives.
Some members of the rogue unit collected ears and scalps as souvenirs, and one decapitated an infant.
That’s far beyond what’s happened in Iraq, but Abu Ghraib, Haditha and other episodes – including the questionable conduct of the Blackwater private security contractor – have nevertheless left their stains on America’s image. The testimony of Vela and others has revealed that American snipers in Iraq use “drop items” such as bullets and explosives as bait. Iraqis who pick them up are deemed insurgents and shot.
To cleanse our reputation, it is essential that the military justice system investigate suspected wrongdoing vigorously and, when called for, prosecute. That seems to be happening, whether out of genuine conviction or political necessity.
But it isn’t enough to punish atrocities, we have to prevent them. It is up to President Bush as commander in chief and to the policymakers in Congress to demand that America’s traditional ideals be preserved. We can’t have it both ways; we can’t claim moral authority while using battlefield stress to rationalize the abuse of the human rights we claim to defend.
Our civilian leaders must proclaim their expectations through words and actions. And American military commanders have a duty to incorporate them in the disciplinary structure that makes the chain of command work.