I heard about a video (and the WikiLeaks website) on The Current on CBC radio yesterday. I wasn’t sure at the time if I would have the intestinal fortitude to watch it, but today I decided that I had to see it for myself and planted my mouse firmly over the pause button. It turned out to be less graphic than expected, but no less revolting.
The video was filmed in 2007 from an American Apache helicopter wherein a dozen or so Iraqi’s gathered on a street are massacred with 30mm cannon-fire. Two of the dead turned out later to be Reuters news photographers. The only two survivors were children — a girl and a boy — one of whom apparently now lives with a brain injury. The grainy black and white footage, the distance of the filming, and the huge clouds of dust kicked up by the cannonfire sanitize it quite a bit such that the visceral impact is greatly reduced from what it could or should have been.
What The Current broadcast was an interview with one of the soldiers who was directed to the site with his platoon to clean up after the helicopters had done their work. He was the one who pulled the wounded children out of a van that had pulled up to help a wounded man who had survived the initial onslaught — subsequently itself to be destroyed. It’s a fascinating conversation with a man with the military perspective on the ground, but of someone shaken to the core by the incident. He makes the interesting point that this was not a case of soldiers running amok. These were people who were doing their job, and doing it properly according to the rules of engagement. If we want to be angry at someone, we should be angry at the system that creates the soldiers and perpetuates the culture of war. He was a great believer in the system when he joined the army in 2002, but is now bitterly cynical about it and the real purpose behind what is going on in Iraq. Well worth the listen.