We must listen to the truth when we hear it from the soldiers themselves, says matthew carr |
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Governments always wax sentimental about the soldiers they send to kill and die on their behalf. American and British politicians have consistently hailed their armed forces in Iraq as 'our finest men and women', despite a consistent flow of evidence to the contrary.
There is Haditha and Abu Ghraib. There is the YouTube video showing British soldiers gleefully beating up Iraqi prisoners. There are the photographs of hideously destroyed Iraqi corpses posted by US soldiers on a porn site, accompanied by joking comments. There are testimonies from US veterans describing how military patrols routinely carry 'throwaway' AK47s and shovels to plant on unarmed civilians they shoot.
This week, the American journal The Nation publishes the most comprehensive series of interviews with US Iraq war veterans carried out to date. Conducted by war correspondent
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| War veterans describe the routine killing and terrorising of Iraqi civilians |
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Chris Hedges and Palestinian-American journalist Laila al-Arian, the interviews are full of dark insights into the attitudes and behaviour of the US military in Iraq.
These veterans describe the routine killing and terrorising of Iraqi civilians. They tell of futile nocturnal weapons searches, convoys running over children, trigger-happy soldiers blasting entire families to pieces at checkpoints, the desecration of Iraqi corpses.
The war that emerges from these interviews is a brutal and dehumanising neo-colonial occupation, characterised by fear, confusion and a callous indifference towards Iraqi civilians regarded only as 'hajis', 'camel jockeys' and 'Jihad Johnnies'.
The interviews are not celebratory. Some veterans are clearly appalled by the behaviour of their former comrades and angry at the disparity between the presentation of the war and its brutal reality.
Such disparity is not new. During the 1954-62 Algerian war, the French government described its military as a civilised army fighting a uniquely barbaric and savage 
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