by Dennis Rahkonen
www.dissidentvoice.org
June 3, 2006
The Pentagon and politicians who continue to back George Bush’s disastrously failed Iraq policy are falling all over themselves in their frantic attempt to portray the Haditha massacre as an “anomaly” perpetrated either by “a few bad apples” or otherwise exemplary Marines who “snapped” under extreme, battle-related stress.
What’s clear, they piously contend, is that such atrocious behavior is never sanctioned or condoned by the U.S. military.
But there are countless ghosts of 19th Century native Americans -- and up to 600,000 Filipinos who perished in a genocidal anti-insurrection conducted by our imperialist troops after Spain’s Pacific defeat -- who would beg to differ.
The dead from Hiroshima and Nagasaki wish to object, too.
It wasn’t individual soldiers, in abstract isolation, who murdered them. It was this nation’s racist propensity for genocide.
Ironically, as the Haditha story percolated to the top of our news, an atrocity account from more than fifty years ago was finally verified, pointing a bloody finger at the very military establishment that sanctimoniously professes its purity and innocence today.
What happened in Korea, back then, is absolutely chilling.
On July 26, 1950, the 7th U.S. Cavalry mowed down what survivors say were about 400 civilian refugees, mostly women and children, at No Gun Ri, a rural village southeast of Seoul. Hundreds more were shot in similar killings elsewhere, according to those who escaped the murderous volleys.
Much more here:
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/June06/Rahkonen03.htm