Taking responsibility in Haditha

Cover-up is a dirty thing. But that has been the Bush administration’s MO for much of its tenure in executive branch.

In any case, we shouldn’t be surprised that it’s come to this, given that those of us who opposed this war from the beginning questioned the wisdom of our acting as an occupying force. But that is where we are now and that, at base, is the genesis of the Haditha killings.

As The New York Times writes:

Now that we have reached the one place we most wanted to avoid, it will not do to focus blame narrowly on the Marine unit suspected of carrying out these killings and ignore the administration officials, from President Bush on down, who made the chances of this sort of disaster so much greater by deliberately blurring the rules governing the conduct of American soldiers in the field. The inquiry also needs to critically examine the behavior of top commanders responsible for ensuring lawful and professional conduct and of midlevel officers who apparently covered up the Haditha incident for months until journalists’ inquiries forced a more honest review.

The president now promises transparency and accountability, but there is no doubt that when the smoke clears the people who led us into this war and created a culture in which international norms could easily be flouted will remain in their posts.

And, as the Times writes:

It should not surprise anyone that this war — launched on the basis of false intelligence analysis, managed by a Pentagon exempted from normal standards of command responsibility and still far from achieving minimally acceptable results — is increasingly unpopular with the American people. At the very least, the public is now entitled to straight answers on what went wrong at Haditha and who, besides those at the bottom of the chain of command, will be required to take responsibility for it.

The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet