Nobody should support this.
Also, imagine being a child with an Apache circling your town waiting to dispense this sort of justice. You'd probably become a terrorist, wouldn't you?
From their point of view they are in a helicopter, scared, and afraid that someone is going to shoot a RPG at them. You can't seriously expect them to notice the kids or the difference between a camera and a weapon.
Sure they jumped the gun, they killed innocent civilians, but it was a product of the environment and training they received. It happened because America made those kids soldiers and put them in that situation, with a deadly weapon to control. Don't blame them personally.
What does need to be blamed, on the other hand, is the fact that this video was kept secret and that the world was lied to.
That is disgusting.
That guy is a sadic. It's OK to be scared. It's OK to confuse a camera with a gun, and shoot before discovering that it really was a weapon the hard way. That shit happens at war.
But aiming a severely wounded guy, begging him to take a weapon so he can shoot without permission it's sadistic. That guy is a sadic. Now we can discuss if he was born sadic or just the result of careful training, but it's hard to deny, watching the video and hearing the conversations that he wanted to shoot, and was having fun, the kind of fun a hunter feels.
Of course the US Goverment, the Army, whoever, is to blame because covering the thing up. But that soldier is a murderer, no question about that.
What I hear in that movie is not the sound of someone having fun. I hear false bravado in response to the sickening situation. You can interpret the soldier's comments in different ways, but there isn't enough detail to say the soldier is a sadist, just as there wasn't enough detail to say the camera was an AK-47.
I realize Americans grow up late but there's also a big difference between being in your (mid?) twenties and being a kid, let alone a young one. How old do you need to be before you are responsible for your own actions and mistakes? I would hope it's before they put you in a helicopter armed to the teeth.
Theres plenty of blame to go around but some of it surely lies on the people lighting up a van recovering wounded people which was of no apparent treat. You can even hear him get stressed as the body they are carrying is getting closer to being loaded into the van, because hes about to miss his opportunity to shoot.
What's outrageous is the progressive infantilization of teenagers. 13 year olds can make moral decisions and take responsibility for their actions. They are not as fully developed in all cognitive areas as adults (including judgment), but they are starting on that road. That (actually, much earlier) is the time to make sure their development includes things like personal responsibility, ability to safely handle weapons, an approach to drugs and alcohol that includes moderation and adult supervision, and even the discipline imposed in working (part-time, of course, nobody wants the return of child labor sweatshops).
If someone's first experience with combining discipline, responsibility, and the freedom to act is when they join the military at 18, is it any wonder that judgment is impaired, excitement and fear dominates reason, and life begins to look like a trigger-happy first person shooter? Note that I'm saying video games aren't the problem here, infantilizing our youth is the problem.
Once you create a situation like this you own the pieces that you break.
Covering this up shows how high up this goes.
The US should be grateful to whoever leaked this, hopefully they'll tread more careful now. As long as the mental value of a civilian is deemed smaller than that of an American soldier this will continue.
Not that long ago there was a statistic posted here with how the number of US combat deaths was dropping steadily, but nobody thought of mentioning the number of civilians that get killed by soldiers in situations like these.
Er, they could have joined the Peace Corp, Red Cross, etc. They didn't accidentally wake up one day and kill someone, they made a series of choices and put themselves into a series of events where they got to use powerful weapons against people.
Think about how bad the friends and relatives of the innocent people they killed feel.
-- Good point. I'd add that in addition to the US soldiers who made a choice to serve their country, and who must take responsibility for those actions, I'd add that the terrorists/insurgents made similar choices. They chose to dick around with AK-47's in a war zone. They made a choice to allow kids to be around them, knowing they would become targets.
Similarly, the cameramen made a choice to hang around insurgents who were dicking around with AK-47's. And the people in the van chose to drive up into the middle of a battle, without red cross markings, to pick up wounded terrorists who were dicking around with AK-47's and RPGs.
So yes my friend, we all make choices. Sometimes they turn out to be dumb ones, or will at least seem like dumb ones when someone like you is watching them on video, and doesn't understand their context, 4 years after they are made.
Cheers.
They felt like this for quite some time now.
You always have the choice to disobey illegal and or immoral orders. It may limit your career options, but, then, who would really like a career that involves covering up what could be, at the very best, considered manslaughter.
> You can't seriously expect them to notice the kids or the difference between a camera and a weapon
I always was under the impression military pilot training went beyond manoeuvring your chopper or firing its gun.
While all of them have the excuse of being in the middle of a war and having received orders they are trained to obey, there are lines you don't cross.
However, if you are looking for your escaped pet black snake you are more likely to assume it's a snake. If you are a zoo keeper who was just told a black mamba you are going to assume it's a snake and try to kill it / run really quickly.
Now let's say you received a lot of military training and are in the middle of a war zone and you see someone holding a dark blob at their midsection. How likely are you to think camera vs. AK-47 relative to someone sitting at home that knows innocent people are about to be shot?
Even if they are not charged with "reckless shooting of civilians", the civilians killed in this incident deserve an inquiry and changes in the procedures and rules that allowed it to happen so that it doesn't happen again.
Because if it does, and, I would risk it did happen many times - they just did not kill Reuters employees, those civilians died in vain.
And, of all regrettable incidents that day, this would be the least acceptable of them all.
However, two points I disagree entirely with:
"From their point of view they are in a helicopter, scared, and afraid that someone is going to shoot a RPG at them."
Guys in chopper: Wrapped in bulletproof glass and several inches of heavy armour, with enough firepower under their thumb to reduce a battalion of tanks to scrap metal (remember attack gunships like the Apache were designed to repel Soviet tank formations from coming over the Rhine during the cold war).
Iraqi guys on street: wrapped in cheap cotton shirt, with a 70 year old assault rifle under his arm. Completely oblivious to the angel of death hovering above (the chopper was circling for quite some time at the very start of the video; no-one, least of all the RPG gunner, seemed to notice).
"Think about how bad they must feel knowing that they killed innocent people when they thought they were killing the enemy."
Think about how bad the poor Iraqi mothers must've felt during the closed-casket funeral. Or how they feel now, seeing their husbands/sons/brothers being gunned down all over YouTube. I hope none of them have internet connections for their sake.
An RPG can take out an Apache. If you hit the main and tail rotors you have a good chance of causing the helo to crash.
EDIT: If you continue reading below, some guys worked out that the chopper was about a mile away from the targets, based on muzzle velocity of the Apache's chaingun and the delay of the bullets reaching the target. Some chance of an RPG hitting that.
When you have a deadly weapon in your hand, and you are scared and trained to see weapons, not cameras, then what you see is an enemy target with a weapon.
Similar mechanism at work.
I agree about the system put them into the situation and hid this video being disgusting.
Yes fortunately there isn't too much of that in this particular thread. But if you look at other online discussions going on right now, you'll see plenty of hateful comments of all sorts.
As for the itching part, I felt at first he was threatened, and I could sense a bit of fear in his voice that the RPG was going to be aimed at him (not sure what the chances are of that hitting the copter though), and I felt like I could understand that reaction were I in a similar position...but then it was pretty clear he just wanted to light it up.
I guess my take on all of this is that these kids are over there in a war zone. Their friends die. The enemy is real and they have been ordered to kill him. You can't blame the kids, but it's so hard to hear their voices knowing they were once living a life like you are, away from danger and war. To most of us, this is just a capture of a video game. It's crazy shit.
A childhood friend of mine just returned from Afghanistan missing an arm and leg from an IED. He understands why they use those tactics given the firepower mismatch.
I would also like to add to your point that there is no duality between supporting the troops and being against events like this. You can do both.
Your analysis strikes me as a bit glib.
There are two critical pieces to this issue and I think it is important we distinguish between the two. The first part (which is what you are trying to get at) is that the prospect of warfare being conducted through a video-game like interface is scary and feels wrong. I agree and I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach just thinking about it. Imagine soldiers driving to work in the morning from their homes in the suburbs, putting in a 9-5 day piloting a drone killing insurgents, and then going home to their families in time for dinner. Very scary.
However, the second part is what you miss. These military personnel are kids. Kids that we ask to conduct a large scale invasion and then engage in the near-impossible task of nation building. As Thomas Barnett says, the same 19 year old just can't do it all. These kids should have been out of Iraq after we captured Saddam. They aren't psychologically equipped to deal with a country post-invasion. This video is a perfect example of that. Notice how the kid mistakes a camera for a weapon and is extremely jumpy when he is trying to figure out whether he is being shot at. He's never been trained to deal with this kind of situation (urban warfare, enemies without uniforms, civilians intermixed with soldiers) and it's criminal we force teenagers make these kinds of decisions every day.
All of that said, clearly bad decisions were made in this video. I'm not disputing that. But there are two crimes in this video.
There's a good chance the pilots at least are older than most of the people reading this forum.
Do you have a basis for your opinion, or are you just making things up?
Actually, I already know the answer to that question. The average age of all active duty military is 28. 37% of the Marine Corps is between the ages of 17 and 21 [1]. And when you remove all the higher ranking officers (who are not very likely to be gunning for an Apache), the average age gets even lower.
Based on this poll [2], it appears the average age of HN is between 21 and 35. The data from the HN survey appears to have been taken down; that would give a much better answer. Regardless, your wrong in saying the average reader of this forum is probably younger than the military personal flying the helicopter. At best you can say it's unclear.
[1] http://www.slideshare.net/pastinson/us-military-active-duty-...
[2] http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=800158
EDIT: For the record, the parent post contains 100% factually incorrect information and this post contains a refutation with cited facts. Currently the voting split is 9/-1. This is an emotional issue, but let's try and not be so reactionary.
EDIT2: The parent is factually correct because waterlesscloud is referring to the age of the pilot, whereas I thought we were talking about the gunner (the person whose actions are in question). I also assumed the marines were involved, which is also incorrect. Sorry for the false accusation.
Helicopter pilots in general trend older than ground grunts, due to training requirements and so on. And many of the Apache pilots in Iraq were/are reservists, so they trend older as well.
The first female Apache pilot already had 20 years of service when she was assigned to an Apache. The oldest British Apache pilot is 54.
It's not something some kid does right out of highschool. There are no teenagers flying Apaches.
I don't know, which is why I said "a good chance", but my estimate would be that the average Apache pilot is in their 30s.
You have to be under 33 to get into flight school, usually: http://usmilitary.about.com/od/armytrng/ss/rotarypilot_2.htm
Once you've graduated flight school you'll continue serving as an aviator for some number of years. Unlike enlisted, officers are given a perpetual commission which may have a service obligation attached (if you're an ROTC or Academy graduate, for instance) or not. Also, I gather that a lot of Apache pilots are warrant officers. Warrant officers are generally previous enlisted with a LOT of experience--these guys are generally in their 30's or so.
I'd put their ages no younger than 23 on the low end. More typically mid to late 20s with a few in their 30s (usually Warrant Officers).
I mean, the only experience I have that comes close to whats on that video is from playing Call of Duty 4 (which has sequences that look almost exactly like the footage).
So when I see that video, I think, wow that looks a lot like a video game I've played, and when we hear how they talk in the video, it sounds a lot like how people talk when they're playing the video game. So we make that association because it's most accurate association we can make, based on the fact that we've never actually been in combat. On top of that, the video games are designed to make us feel like we are in that position, so it makes sense that people playing those games might talk like people who actually are in that position.
I'm not sure that someone who has been in combat would make the same association. They could very well say "He's talking like a soldier in that video."
http://www.pyrosoft.co.uk/blog/2007/11/04/army-fly-uav-spy-p...
I bet the guys at Microsoft never thought their controllers would some day be used to scout/kill for real