The 17-minute Wikileaks video released this week has caused an amazing amount of controversy. The images themselves, even when stripped of the legal implications, were gruesome to watch because witnessing death, black and white or otherwise, would always be hallowing to the non-military, American public. Lesser attention was given, however, to the full 38-minute uncut version, which followed the events with another scene, where the American Apache gunship fired three missiles at a warehouse believed to be a hideout of the militants.
Context is always important. The year was July 2007 and it was a bloody one. At the time, the Bush Administration was in the middle of the so-called Surge strategy. Iraq, in its fourth war year, according to numerous observers, were on brink of a full-blown civil war. The country was dangerous. It looked as if everyone in the country were armed and engaged with each other in combat. News reports of American deaths came nearly daily. This context must be taken and understood as to why and how the American soldiers made their choices.
And yet I had a hard time watching the video without thinking something went awfully wrong. Even while imagining the world outside the gunner’s view was full of violence and danger, it was unfathomable to think that the men the gunner saw were immediate threats. What I found lacking among the instant analysis published following the video release was a sense of fairness not only toward the American soldiers but the unidentified civilians on the ground.
Fairness is impossible if the first impulse was to blame the civilians’ deaths for carrying weapons in the public space. If 2007 was as dangerous as the reports have described, it would be insane to walk in the public space without an AK-47, no matter who you are.
Fairness is impossible if the first assumption of those armed men to be enemy combatants, therefore were immediate threats, simply because they clustered into groups at a suspected area. War is war, true. But what shown on the video were no immediate threats. Those men on the ground did not ran for cover as they spotted the American helicopter. In fact, after the gunner got the request to fire at the civilians, the gunner waited as the helicopter circled the group for a better view.
Objectivity is hard for find when after the first round of fire, the gunner fired again at the downed men. If that fit the Rules of Engagement, the rules must be reviewed.
At what about the “black” van, which was not painted in black at all? That vehicle posed no harm. The men who came out of the truck posed no harm. And still the gunner fired on.
In the longer, 38-minute version of the video, three Hellfire missiles were launched into a building. That too, should be investigated by the military because it was perhaps the most indiscriminate action taken by the gunner.
What the military investigated, we were told, was based on a narrow scope. The report did not mention the children, nor the warehouse scene, nor the truck’s purpose. Fairness demands thoroughness. The U.S. military and its civilian counterpart must do this right. All eyes are one them now.