Collateral Murder

http://www.collateralmurder.com

The news break of the day is the video released by Wikileaks of U.S. army Apache helicopters gunning down what they believed to be insurgents in Iraq. (See link above.) Two Reuters reporters were killed in the incident, and 2 Iraqi civilian children were seriously wounded.

I've watched the video. I've also read some of the media reports of the video and the accompanying outraged comments. I think my reaction is somewhere in between the moral outrage of some and the cavalier "it's war; shit happens" attitude of others.

While I lament the loss of human life (particularly some that were clearly innocent civilians), I don't fault the army guys for firing on the group. It's clear from the video that although the individuals were not taking hostile positions, at least some were carrying weapons. And while the helicopter gunner mistakes the Reuters reporters' wide-angle camera for an RPG, it's easy to see why he did in the video. Taken in the context of the Iraq War in '07, I don't view this as a crime.

And I do hesitate to call the aftermath a cover-up. The military claimed that the helicopters had been actively engaged with hostile insurgents. That's not quite what the video shows. But it's not a complete lie either, given the context.

What I'm most disturbed by, I suppose, is the dialogue from the guys in the helicopter. They may not have violated the rules of engagement or the laws of war, but their attitude toward human life was ... disgusting. It's the kind of stuff people sometimes shout at the screen when shooting down aliens in a computer game.

When the helicopter gunners realized they had injured 2 children in the van, they said something along the lines of, well it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle. When the tank that came to the scene afterwards rolled over something, one of the gunners said, haha, did they just roll over a dead body? Haha!

I suppose we need to demonize the enemy in order to kill them, in order to wage war. But... something about it is just very sad. And disturbing. A reminder of human nature, perhaps?