Scott Beauchamp (wikipedia) is a American Army Private in Iraq. For a while in 2007, he was submitting articles to The New Republic that talked about what his platoon was doing. Unfortunately, the things he described his platoon doing in those articles were terribly unflattering: Episodes of being cruel to Iraqis, killing dogs for fun, arrogance, callous disregard for human remains, and bullying were described.
Many people considered the articles as anti-American, mischievous screeds designed to weaken the U.S. military's position in Iraq.
Many people (notably Army personnel in Iraq, including members of Private Beauchamp's platoon) also leapt in to discredit Private Beauchamp, tearing apart things he described as factually inconsistent, unlikely, or even impossible... charges which The New Republic admitted it had no ability to refute [edit] even though 5 members of Private Beauchamp's platoon confirmed his claims [/edit]. No further articles from Private Beauchamp were published
Anyway, almost two years later, Private Beauchamp's platoon sergeant, as well as several members of his platoon, have just been convicted of war crimes, including the execution of four captive POWs.
I'll speculate that if someone higher up in the Army had pulled those soldiers aside way back when, and warned them that while there was no evidence that the content of Beauchamp's articles ever happened, it would lead to disciplinary action if such things ever did happen (instead of only spending time discrediting and disproving those things), perhaps those soldiers might not have possessed a sense of immunity that endowed them with the capability to engage in murder.
All in all, a sad thing to hear about.
6 comments:
Beauchamp never recanted. TNR spoke to 5 soldiers in his unit who corroborated his stories.
You are correct that Beauchamp never recanted. I mis-read the wikipedia article and have made corrections to the blog post. However, in December of 2007, TNR did state (from wikipedia article):
"When I last spoke with Beauchamp in early November, he continued to stand by his stories. Unfortunately, the standards of this magazine require more than that. And, in light of the evidence available to us, after months of intensive re-reporting, we cannot be confident that the events in his pieces occurred in exactly the manner that he described them. Without that essential confidence, we cannot stand by these stories."
Hi,
My wife is from around CDO and I enjoy reading your BLOGG. I have been here in Iraq for about 10 months and want to assure you and your readers that there is zero tolerance for the mistreatment of Iraqi civillians and their property. Although Im plugged in to the Matrix, Im about as liberal as a guy with 15 years in the Army can be. In fact Im rocking a tie dye right now LOL. So please dont think Im singing the party line. The private in the story is no doubt a hero for coming forward. Dam I shold have taken the red pill. LOL
Aaron,
I absoultely agree with your sentiments. My personal opinion is that people these days are intelligent enough not to apply their opinion of aberrant behavior and the people who commit that behavior to the general population from which those people come.
In other words, I never bother to put in the "few bad apples" disclaimer when I talk about things like this because people are intelligent enough to know it is a given.
While I'm happy to hear you assure us that such behavior as Private Beauchamp described is not tolerated, I'll stand by my(obviously unprovable) assumption that these convicted soldiers never experienced any repercussions or even warnings because of what Beauchamp described.
"people are intelligent enough to know it is a given."
Bro,
Your giving the Human Race way to much credit. LOL Every Soldier is briefed the Rules of engagement when we hit Kuwait. Those few dumbasses that ignore them, do so knowing the consequenses if they get caught. The problem is no criminal ever thinks they will ever get caught. But they all do, and when they do they pay for it. This is my first tour and lucky for me stability is good. If one shot is fired by an American there is an investigation. Im not so naive as to believe that the good old boy cover up system doesnt exist. Im sorounded by the Republican thought Police. But we all know the rules of engagement from the first day we arrive. Please forgive my almost zero use of punctuation, giant run on sentences and misspelled words as I am a sasd product of the Virginia public education system LOL
Aaron:
Nope. It's my policy to believe all people have the same common sense that I possess, and then let those individuals who lack it prove their condition before I change their status to "doofus."
Note though that I count three separate features in human thought: Wisdom, intelligence, and common sense.
Common sense is the ability to see and understand what is obvious. Like I said, by default, I believe every person possesses common sense when I write. (Yes... I used "intelligence" above when I should have used "common sense". I didn't plan on getting into the nitty-gritty in my next comment.)
Wisdom is the ability to deduce what is not obvious. I believe that everybody has this, but very few people use this to the best of their ability. A lot of this blog is my attempt to exercise my own wisdom skills and communicate the things I deduce to others.
Intelligence is a person's possession and collection of facts and knowledge. This of course is where everyone is different, and my policy is to treat everyone as lacking facts and knowledge until they have proven otherwise. (That's not to say that I think everyone is stupid; just that I write my blog with the assumption that people don't know the things I know until I tell them what I know.)
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