The empire tries its hand at asymmetrical warfare

Those who support a continuing U.S. presence in Iraq claim that General Petraeus' counter-insurgency doctrine is winning hearts and minds by respecting the rights of civilians and fighting only against the insurgents, not the Iraqi people. For example, Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute argues in today's New York Times that "the most surprising phenomenon of the war has been the transformation of the United States military into the most discriminate and effective counterinsurgency force the world has ever seen, skillfully blending the most advanced technology with human interactions between soldiers and the Iraqi people.... Our forces went from imminent defeat to creating the prospect of success, using a great deal of firepower, killing and capturing many enemies, but binding the local population to us at the same time."

However, four days of testimony offered by Iraq war veterans in Washington, D.C. this weekend suggests that this is a fanciful view. Rather, it makes it clear clear that the U.S. military is having an extremely difficult time breaking from its institutionalized culture of racism and brutality despite five years of experience in Iraq and six in Afghanistan.

Held in Washington, D.C. over the past four days by the Iraq Veterans Against the War, the Winter Soldier hearings presented first-person testimony by dozens of veterans to the racism, disrespect, and brutality of the U.S. occupation in Iraq. I attended an event in Cambridge, MA at which an anti-war crowd of about 100 watched a live video stream of the event. The video archives are available for download and I encourge you to look at them.

I was struck by how young the panelists are. Most are barely out of their teens. Whether they joined through youthful idealism or because of economic necessity, few were prepared for the stark reality of what they encountered in Iraq, but all were thoughtful and had made a personal journey to participation in the antiwar movement. Following were some of the stories they told.

One soldier's unit ransacked hundreds of homes, never finding any weapons but alienating many people.

One vet remembered the military rampaging through the ruins of Babylon early in the occupation, with no respect for their cultural value.

U.S. Army medical doctors systematically refused to provide medical care to Iraqi civilians, including those wounded by American fire.

A sergeant used to shoot dogs for fun - pets of families living in a residential area. When his commander asked one day why he was firing, the sergeant explained he was just shooting dogs. His commander merely said to tell him ahead of time.

One vet said that he himself had inflicted murder and mayhem on Iraqi civilians although he knew it was wrong, and that his mind in some cases blanked out the details of what he had done.

An ex-Marine reported that the officers' watchword was "Kill babies", to desensitize the troops.

Hajis became a term of disrespect in the military, including generals, for all Iraqis, a slang which shows extreme disrespect for Islam -- a Haji is a person who deserves respect because he has made the pilgrimmage to Mecca.

The current U.S. strategy in Iraq focuses on an effort to split the Sunni community, paying off tens of thousands of Sunni men $300 a month apiece to join the "Awakening movement". However, the U.S. cannot afford to really tamp down the sectarian divide. If it did that, the Iraqi unity that resulted might well move in a nationalist direction. On the other hand, it appears from the Winter Soldier testimony that the U.S. military is much too blunt an instrument to enable the occupation planners to build a unified Iraqi state under their thumb, as Kagan and others still imagine. Not being able to go either forward or backward in Iraq, the U.S. is digging in to exploit the oil and divide the region over the long haul, while still trying to minimize the negative political consequences. Both the U.S. antiwar movement and the Iraqi resistance have a long road ahead of them.