PBS Frontline Tackles Haditha -- and defends the Marines

[Pangloss]

The whole episode is available for online viewing at this URL:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/haditha/

 

I put off watching this for a couple of weeks because I assumed it would be pretty ugly and uncomplimentary of the Marines. Boy was I wrong. They completely destroyed Iraqi eyewitness testimony and in the end seemed to support the overall exoneration of the Marines, focusing instead on the complexities of ground combat. And John Murtha does not make out well in this at all.

 

I tell you what, anybody who believes in liberal bias in the media should watch this.

 

And of course anybody who thinks Haditha was a massacre should watch it as well. They will not be pleased.

[ecoli]

I'll try to watch it tomorrow, thanks for the find.

[iNow]

Yeah, I've got it queued up for after work and school tonight myself... Ditto on the thanks to Pangloss.

[CDarwin]

The whole episode is available for online viewing at this URL:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/haditha/

 

I put off watching this for a couple of weeks because I assumed it would be pretty ugly and uncomplimentary of the Marines. Boy was I wrong. They completely destroyed Iraqi eyewitness testimony and in the end seemed to support the overall exoneration of the Marines, focusing instead on the complexities of ground combat. And John Murtha does not make out well in this at all.

 

I tell you what, anybody who believes in liberal bias in the media should watch this.

 

And of course anybody who thinks Haditha was a massacre should watch it as well. They will not be pleased.

 

I would say that the conclusion was "Haditha was a bad thing to have happened but it's not the marines fault only the impossible situation they were put into by bad policy."

[iNow]

Yeah, I've got it queued up for after work and school tonight myself... Ditto on the thanks to Pangloss.

 

Okay... well, homework's done, work is... well, work is on hold until Monday (but, my boss did send a message to the leadership that my performance this week was invaluable, and I was called "a machine" by the director, which is good)... and I had a chance to sit down and watch the program shared above by Pangloss.

 

My first reaction is that I'm glad I'm a diabetic and I don't have to personally face such military challenges. Although these guys are there by choice, I think when they sign up they have next to zero concept of the challenges they will ultimately face as a human being.

 

Asking a soldier in a time of war to do what's right is akin to asking an ice cube submersed in volcanic magma to describe how comfortable they are and which area is safe to reside.

 

I'm not of the frame of mind that these guys did not do something wrong, as death to innocents is always by definition "wrong," however, I'm of the frame of mind that we would never have ask each other such morally and ethically complex questions if we could avoid such circumstances to begin with.

 

There is no black and white to a situation like this, and I think the Frontline program adequately showed this. Why, after all of these years of evolution and death to those who make poor choices do our choices still remain so poor?

 

An ounce of prevention is worth a metric assload of a lot of people's lives....

[Pangloss]

Nice post. I do think things get better, at least in terms of soldier training, but it often feels like a two-steps-forward-one-step-back deal. I thought that bit at the end about new training methods was an interesting example of that. I do think we have to be wary of "we can put a man on the moon, but..." reasoning -- would Iraq be a failure if one Iraqi citizen had died? But we can't ignore the cost either, it's a GOOD thing that we become generally more sensitive to it over time.