Explosive Video
US Army Soldier: “It’s like mass genocide on us, you know. Our country has become terrorist. That’s why people hate us.”
by Kim Petersen
www.dissidentvoice.org
May 22, 2006
[Editors' Note: As of last night, we were able to access the Peace Films website, where the damning video in question was posted, without problem. As we go to press this Monday morning, the website is now inexplicably unavailable, with only the following error message to be found: "Site Temporarily Disabled, This site has been temporarily disabled. If you are the owner of the site, please contact customer care."]
“Our job was just kill, kill, kill.”
-- Iraqi veteran Jessie MacBeth
An extraordinarily candid video co-produced by Seattle’s Pepperspray Productions and Peacefilms Vancouver should chill the hearts of concerned Americans and peace-loving people everywhere. At one point in the video, we hear the shaken ex-army ranger and Iraq war veteran Jessie MacBeth admit to the Stygian depths of depravity and evil that US service personnel have sunk:
We were doing the night raids in houses, and uh, we would pull people out and we’d have them all, like ah, on the knees and zip-tied. And, ah, we’d ask the guy questions, the whole family, the, the man-of-the-house questions. And if he didn’t answer the way we liked, you know, we would shoot his youngest kid in the head. And we’d keep going; this was our interrogation. He could be innocent, you know. He could be just an average Joe trying to support his family. And if he didn't give us a satisfactory answer, we’d start killing off his family until he told us something. If he didn’t know anything, guess he was SOL, you know -- which sucked. I didn’t feel anything. I just wanted to do my job.
MacBeth, a slim man with a crew cut, served 16 months in Iraq before being wounded and discharged from the military. Now the disillusioned man speaks out for Iraq Veterans Against the War. If the video gets widespread exposure, it is unfathomable that support for a US troop presence in Iraq could be sustained, and surely Iran would fall off the chickenhawks’ table of targets. It is a video that should number the days of the Bush administration.
MacBeth says the message is not getting out and the corporate media is complicit.
A lot of people from the military that are over there fighting, they don’t want no more war. And all it takes is a few good men, to, to hold the rallying flag for them to rally behind and, and we’ll stop this shit. The thing is that the government is doing so much to not let us be heard. You know, the mainstream media won’t play a lot of stuff; I talk a lot; they don’t play a lot of the stuff that we talk about. They cut it out, and, and only play what the people, what they want people to hear.
According to Macbeth, there was complete disregard for the Geneva Conventions, which the army brass calls this “political crap.” In the US military, morality is damned. Macbeth, however, out of his great shame found the courage to speak out and confess to his atrocities and the atrocities committed by comrades in Iraq.
The atrocities were made easier by dehumanizing the Iraqis. Says Macbeth, “I felt disgusted, you know, with myself because I had to make myself hate them in order to do my job. I had to make myself, had to make myself not think of them as people.”
During their initial debriefing, the soldiers found out that their mission was not about liberating Iraqis. Recounts MacBeth, “Our job over there is strike fear in the hearts of Iraqis.” The soldiers were given carte blanche to carry out this mission. Macbeth calls it “Operation Iraqi Slaughter.”
Macbeth estimates that he killed about 200 people, many at close range, many in cold blood. He rues that he was sent to Iraq to go and fight kids, women, and innocent people.
The fear instilled into Iraqis was also instilled into the troops. Macbeth remained silent for fear of court martial. Now he is accused of being a traitor for what he is saying, and yes, he does feel like a traitor, but a traitor for following orders. “For not speaking out, I feel like I’m betraying my battle-buddies that died.”
The atrocities were not limited to invading the homes of Iraqis. Even places of worship were violated. Macbeth admits to “slaughtering” Muslims at prayer and hanging their burnt -- “just like they did to us” -- bodies from the rafters in the mosque. Then the soldiers would defile the mosque with graffiti. It not difficult to imagine the outrage if foreign invaders were defiling churches and family homes in the US.
Macbeth doesn’t even fault the Iraqi resistance. Says he:
If some people came, came, came into my, came, came into America, a huge foreign army doing the crap that we did to them, I’d just like them to do the same thing back. Cause people have the right to fight for their families and their country, and especially if we are terror, terrorizing someone’s country; they have the right to fight back. And I don’t blame them. I would do the same thing.
The moist-eyed former army ranger is repentant. He finds it “sickening to think that ... that I took part in this … that, that my, my country turned me into the very same thing that we are trying to fight against.”
He knows now that his government deceived him about 9-11 having a connection to the 9-11 attacks. The conclusion is inescapable: “Now that I look back at it, we are the terrorists.”
“I feel that the deaths of all the soldiers over there was for crap. It was for lies.”
The question is: are Americans going to allow more soldiers to be killed for crap in Iraq? Or will the crap continue, crap like shooting at unarmed protestors (now we get an idea of events that led to the massacre at Fallujah; the uproar began when US soldiers killed protesting Iraqis) based on lies from commanding officers, taking out rock-throwing children on orders from commanding officers.
What about the Nuremberg demand? Shouldn’t all US service personnel know about this? It states:
Individuals have international duties that transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore [individuals] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.
Macbeth gives first-hand, on-the-ground credence to the study published in The Lancet in 2004 that estimates approximately 100,000 Iraqis killed. [1] Macbeth asks, “You know the death toll of Eye-raqis? It’s not what they say on the news. It’s like hundreds of thousands of people. I didn’t know that many people could die and be hidden from, from the world.”
The professed patriot expresses disappointment in his country. “I’m ashamed to actually have served in Iraq. . . . I’m ashamed of ever having, ever having to hurt innocent people. I’m ashamed in tak-, taking part in one of the hugest, most scandalous things, you know, … our government has done.”
But US government insouciance is not just reserved for Iraqis; it extends also to US troops, according to Macbeth. And it is not just the government that is indifferent. Says Macbeth:
The majority of Americans doesn’t care because there’s homeless Iraq veterans out there, there’s homeless Vietnam veterans out there, there’s homeless Desert Storm veterans out there. If people really cared as much as they think they did, you know, they said they did, they’d get on the ball and, and make a difference. They would stop the killing.
Macbeth does not mince words. The attack on Iraq is criminal. Macbeth despises the self-declared war president, who taunted Iraqis -- “Bring ’em on!” -- to attack US troops.
It’s like mass genocide on us, you know. Our country has become terrorist. That’s why people hate us. And I love my country, man. I would die for my country any day, you know. But I won’t die for my president, for our president, I won’t die for our government. If I had to fight again, man, it would be to take that asshole out of office.
Macbeth has advice for those thinking of joining the military: “Don’t do it, you know, if you have dreams of serving your country, then, um, you can do it in other ways. You can do it by stopping war.”
“The military,” he warns, “they lie to you. They manipulate you. Basically, they can do whatever they want to you.
“Look at Eye-raq. We are terrorizing that nation. And we are getting away with it.”
Macbeth is not deluded about the reasons for the blood spilling: it is about war, money, and conquest.
The situation is serious. Macbeth is desperate for the public to rally around a few good people. Offers Macbeth, “If it takes me holding up a flag and getting killed, you know, for this shit to stop, I’ll do it, man, because this needs to stop, for my family’s sake and for the rest of the world’s sake.”
Macbeth comes across as very human. With wide eyes he confesses to his own war crimes, and this gives his words the ring of genuine honesty. The video closes with his poignant plea on behalf of his fellow soldiers: “Bring us home, man; bring us home.”
American soldiers are killing and being killed for lies. Do enough Americans really care? Will Americans rise to Macbeth’s challenge to bring the troops home?
Kim Petersen, Co-Editor of Dissident Voice, lives in the traditional Mi'kmaq homeland colonially designated Nova Scotia, Canada. He can be reached at: kim@dissidentvoice.org.
ENDNOTE
[1] Les Roberts, Riyadh Lafta, Richard Garfield, Jamal Khudhairi, Gilbert Burnham, “Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey, The Lancet, 29 October 2004.
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