Tornado Alley (PROG)

[F6]

Black Hearts: One Platoon's Descent into Madness in Iraq's Triangle of Death by Jim Frederick



Vietnam veteran and novelist Edward Wilson finds chilling echoes of that war in a US platoon's Iraq killing spree

Edward Wilson
The Guardian, Saturday 21 August 2010

This isn't a book for armchair war junkies. It's about what Wilfred Owen called "the pity of war". The centre and the pity of Jim Frederick's account is the murder of the Janabis, an Iraqi family, and the rape of their 14-year-old daughter by four US soldiers. The most chilling aspect of the crime was the casual manner in which it was carried out. It was almost a jape – something to break the boredom of endless hours at a checkpoint. The soldiers did it because they had the power to do it; they didn't need a reason why – almost the invasion of Iraq in microcosm.

The rapists were from an infantry platoon in the US army's most elite division, the 101st Airborne, which provided "the Band of Brothers". It was the division sent by Eisenhower to enforce civil rights legislation and ensure that nine African-American children could attend Little Rock Central High School. It is associated with honour, not atrocity. It was only natural that it would be tasked with the most dangerous area of operations in the Iraq of 2005-06: the "Triangle of Death".

There are three basic things to avoid in war: getting killed, being convicted of war crimes and having a commanding officer who thinks you are useless. B Company's ill-fated 1st Platoon avoided none of these. By the end of their deployment, 11 of 1st Platoon's 33 members were dead or in jail for murder. Why? According to their commander, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Kunk, it was all their fault: "You 1st Platoon are fucked up. Fucked up! Every single one of you!" Colonel Kunk was straight out of Catch-22. His officers referred to his control-freak outbursts as "getting Kunked" or being under the "Kunk gun". He seemed to have had every tact and empathy instinct removed: 1st Platoon's seven killed in action "were dead because of their failings", and the survivors were "quitters, crybabies and complainers". Such leadership is not unknown in the US military. Sometimes it works, but when it doesn't, the results can be bloody.

Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The platoon's best leaders were killed early on, and the remaining soldiers were a mixture of seething resentment, indiscipline and combat exhaustion. Young soldiers on a battlefield packed with civilians need constant and close supervision. This didn't happen.

The best of 1st Platoon's lost leaders was Sergeant Kenith Casica. A photo shows James Barker, one of the rapists, with his arms around gentle giant Casica. The expression on Barker's face as he hugs Casica is pure bliss. Barker has found a replacement for the father who died when he was 15, but soon afterwards the surrogate father is dead as well. Casica was openly friendly to the Iraqis. When he was teased as a "hadji hugger" he reminded his men that they were there to help the Iraqis. If Casica had lived, Abeer Janabi and her family would also be alive today.

The most toxic of 1st Platoon's leaderless soldiers was Steven Green. His psychosis seemed obvious to all except the army's mental health professionals. On a combat stress report, Green's statement of "interests" as "none other than killing Iraqis" was dismissed as "normal". The alarm bells began to ring only when he killed a puppy by throwing it off a roof. At every step the army failed to protect the Iraqis from Green and Green from himself. His discharge papers, citing a pre-existing personality disorder marked by "indifference to the suffering of others", came too late. He had already committed rape and quadruple homicide.

In retrospect, it was obvious that Green was a troubled youngster whom the army couldn't redeem. There was something that went beyond drug offences, ADHD diagnosis and his mother kicking him out of the house at 14. Before dropping out of high school, Green entertained classmates at lunchtimes by smashing drinks cans on his forehead. After the murder-rape it was reported that: "Green was jumping up and down on a cot and they all agreed that that was awesome, that was cool."

Frederick acknowledges the adrenaline buzz of battle but does not attempt to gloss over war's inherently brutal and dehumanising nature. He is also a master at describing the psychological effects. The most feared weapon of today's wars is the ubiquitous IED (improvised explosive device). "There is nothing you can do . . . no release for the anger and adrenaline." The IED saps morale and spawns hate for the population: "How could you not want to kill them, too, for protecting the person who just tried to kill you?"

Inevitably, there are echoes of Vietnam, the most chilling of which comes from a 1st Platoon soldier: "You can't think of these people as people." The same dehumanisation that led to My Lai led to the murder of the Janabis. And in both wars, the soldiers who refused to tolerate dehumanisation were the real heroes. To his credit, Colonel Kunk, unlike his Vietnam predecessors, acted quickly and decisively. He may not have handled the matter tactfully – he immediately revealed the names of the whistleblowers, Justin Watt and John Diem, who risked retribution and scorn by reporting the murders – but he did the right thing.

Black Hearts is the best book by far about the Iraq war – a rare combination of cold truth and warm compassion.

• Edward Wilson is a veteran of the Vietnam war. His latest novel, The Darkling Spy, is published by Arcadia.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/21/black-hearts-jim-frederick [with comments]

---

and see (items linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=54119408 (and preceding and any future following)