The more things change...

To the roll of infamy that lists Jacob ‘Howling Jake’ Smith and William ‘Rusty’ Calley, we have a new addition: Frank Wuterich. And to miscarriages of justice of which the other two benefited, we have another. It remains to be seen how harshly those marines filmed urinating on dead Afghans are treated.

Brigadier-General Jacob H Smith had been tasked with counter-insurgency in the Philippines, then a US protectorate, in 1901 after more than 40 American soldiers were killed on the island of Samar in a surprise guerrilla attack. The Filipinos had not fought the Spanish so persistently only to have another overlord imposed on them. With the racist attitudes of the time, this incensed many Americans, who saw that they were delivering progress to a supposedly benighted populace, like the good imperialists they were. Brig-Gen Smith ordered at least one of his subordinates “I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn, the better it will please me.” He also insisted that any male who was ten or older was designated an enemy combatant. American troops marched across the island, razing villages and shooting people and farm animals alike. Although the majority of Smith’s subordinates were recognised as demonstrating restraint (by the Judge Advocate General of the US Army), estimates of how many died range from 2,500 (by outside sources) to 50,000 (Filipino historians).

One of Smith’s subordinates, Major Littleton Waller, was court-martialled for executing prisoners. Called as a witness for the prosecution, Smith perjured himself saying that he had not given any specific orders. Waller was acquitted on a majority verdict. Smith was tried, not for murder or war crimes, but “conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline.” More than a century later, Wuterich (pleading guilty) was convicted of “negligent dereliction of duty.” Smith was convicted, admonished and forced to retire. He never served any prison time.

In 1968, in Vietnam, American soldiers had gone on a bloody rampage at the hamlet of My Lai killing more than 500 villagers, men, women and children. They were under the command of Second Lieutenant William Caley, himself charged with murdering 109 Vietnamese civilians there. The events were covered up for more than a year before investigative reporter Seymour Hersh broke the story. Calley was convicted in 1971 of the premeditated murder of 22 civilians and sentenced to life imprisonment and hard labour. While many today would think that was the least he deserved, many Americans were furious. After the conviction, the White House received over 5000 telegrams; the ratio was 100 to 1 in favour of leniency. In a telephone survey of the American public, 79% disagreed with the verdict and 81% believed that the life sentence Calley had received was too stern. Even future Democratic president and peace activist Jimmy Carter, as governor of Georgia, instituted ‘American Fighting Man’s Day’ and asked Georgians to drive for a week with their lights on (yeah, because running down your car battery is an effective form of protest). This was one year after unarmed students were mown down by National Guardsmen at Kent State University and after the American public supported the reservists.

This was not the end though, even if Calley was the only one in the chain of command who was convicted. Only a day after sentencing, President Nixon ordered him transferred to house arrest and the appeal reduced the sentence to twenty years. A separate clemency action commuted that to ten years. In 1974, Calley petitioned a federal district court for habeas corpus at which the judge said that pre-trial publicity, the denial of subpoena for certain defence witnesses and inadequate notice of charges meant, after a few legal wrangles, that he could walk out a free man, after serving just three and a half years (along with a general court-martial and dismissal from the US Army). In 2009, at a servicemen’s club, he apparently expressed remorse, whilst insisting that he himself was given orders and he was merely following them, which on reflection, he claimed, he should not have done (how many Nazi concentration camp guards said the same). Anyone who wants to talk to him though has to produce a cheque detailing a hefty amount.

So we come to Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich (notice how as the years progress, the ranking officer convicted is lower and lower down the chain of command). After another cover-up over the massacre of 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq, including three women, seven children (the youngest a toddler of one) and a 76-year old man in a wheelchair, charges against seven of the eight marines were dropped and Wuterich was sentenced to only three months (suspended) for ‘negligence’. As with Smith and allegedly with Calley, the killing spree was cited as revenge for an attack on US soldiers (in this instance by an improvised explosive device that killed a lance corporal). Christopher Hitchens dismissal of the comparison with My Lai can itself be dismissed because he was a doctrinaire flag-waver for the invasion of Iraq and would excuse any action committed there (when does being a contrarian tip into being a hypocrite?). Sure, those who died at Haditha may have been 95% fewer than those who perished at My Lai, but a massacre is a massacre – were Nazi concentration camps insignificant because ‘only’ tens of thousands were murdered at them compared to the millions at the actual death camps? (I am aware of Godwin’s law but in the case of war crimes I don’t think references to the Nazis can be avoided).

In all three cases, justice in any meaningful sense of the word has not been seen to be done. People talk about the ‘hard sell’ of Wuterich’s conviction to the Iraqis as if it were no more than a PR operation rather than, as Nick Broomfield (director of the film The Battle for Haditha) rightly said, a miscarriage of justice. This will not be an open sore just in Haditha but across the whole Middle East.  All armed forces have their skeletons, the dark episodes that colour any bombastic military pride but many Americans think of themselves as the good guys, always and everywhere, sending forth munificence from their shining city on the hill. Last year, The New York Times found secret transcripts of military interviews from the investigation into the Haditha massacre. In these interviews Marines described killing civilians on a regular basis and one sergeant testified that he would order his men to shoot children in vehicles that failed to stop at military checkpoints. When Democratic Representative John Murtha, a retired Marine colonel, openly stated that Wuterich and his men killed innocent people in cold blood, he was roundly attacked by right-wingers, people of the same mindset as Rick Perry who did not want the incontinent marines in Afghanistan prosecuted. American society has come a long way since the 1960s/70s but not all have made the same journey that some of the ‘boys’ will disgrace the uniform if put in a war situation. That the acquisition of the Philippines and the wars in Vietnam and Iraq (second time around) were gratuitous just adds to the tragedy.