Seth Harp
Things are in flux now like never before. It’s hard to predict. In the first two years of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, one thing that became clear is that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) actually makes the US military look pretty good by comparison. And it’s not a neat comparison because, for example, the US killed hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq, possibly as many as a million, certainly more than have been killed in Gaza.
Nevertheless — and this is not meant, and no one who read my book would confuse this for an apology — the US military, in waging war in Iraq, did conduct itself by a certain type of legality. They were, by and large, following legal processes where the war had been authorized by Congress, signed off by the president. And then from there on down, you had enemy fighters that were designated combatants that could be legally killed. There were concerted efforts to train troops to minimize civilian casualties.
In the unit I served in, in Iraq, when a soldier killed civilians unjustifiably — which happened right in front of me — other soldiers in the unit reported that they were not happy about it, and, in fact, tried to get the soldier in trouble. He never was [held accountable], but it still speaks to a certain intention to abide by the laws of war.
The IDF doesn’t care about any of that. They’re just total murderers and terrorists who will kill anybody that moves: kill children, kill women, sport killings. We’ve seen the worst horrors that anyone’s ever seen in living memory, committed by the IDF. The question that I am most preoccupied by in this regard is whether the US will follow the Israelis down that path and act in the same way.
We’ve seen the worst horrors that anyone’s ever seen in living memory, committed by the IDF.
Certainly, the strike on a Venezuelan boat the other day suggests…
Auteur: Seth Harp
