The Meaning of Haditha

Exception or Rule?

As I go through a list of New York Times articles on the Haditha massacre, in which Marines murdered 24 Iraqi civilians, the following phrases keep popping up: "unprovoked attack," "unprovoked murder," "unprovoked killings." (...) The problem with the term "unprovoked attack" is that it deliberately obscures the larger picture--that the entire U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq itself is an unprovoked attack by a foreign army on the Iraqi people. All U.S. armed action in Iraq is provocative in this sense; all Iraqi reactions to it are provoked by the occupation. It is shameful that we should even have to explain this, so numbed are many people in this country to the idea that the U.S. is perfectly within its rights to operate hundreds of military bases around the world and invade any country at will, and that it isn't legitimate for anyone to resist it...

continua / continued