British soldier criticizes US tactics in Iraq
Ben Griffin was a British paratrooper who served with distinction in Northern Ireland, Macedonia, and Afghanistan. In early 2004, he joined the SAS, Britain’s elite special services, and was deployed in Baghdad alongside America’s Delta Force. In March 2005, after 3 months in Iraq, he quit the British Army, citing disgust at the legality of the war in general and American forces’ “illegal” tactics in particular.
A year later, he gave an interview to The Telegraph. He does not paint a flattering picture of his American colleagues.
As far as the Americans were concerned, the Iraqi people were sub-human, untermenschen. You could almost split the Americans into two groups: ones who were complete crusaders, intent on killing Iraqis, and the others who were in Iraq because the Army was going to pay their college fees. They had no understanding or interest in the Arab culture. The Americans would talk to the Iraqis as if they were stupid and these weren’t isolated cases, this was from the top down. There might be one or two enlightened officers who understood the situation a bit better but on the whole that was their general attitude. Their attitude fuelled the insurgency. I think the Iraqis detested them.
On detaining insurgent fighters:
If we were on a joint counter-terrorist operation, for example, we would radio back to our headquarters that we were not going to detain certain people because, as far as we were concerned, they were not a threat because they were old men or obviously farmers, but the Americans would say ‘no, bring them back’.
The Americans had this catch-all approach to lifting suspects. The tactics were draconian and completely ineffective. The Americans were doing things like chucking farmers into Abu Ghraib or handing them over to the Iraqi authorities, knowing full well they were going to be tortured.
[…]
I can remember coming in off one operation which took place outside Baghdad, where we had detained some civilians who were clearly not insurgents, they were innocent people. I couldn’t understand why we had done this, so I said to my troop commander ‘would we have behaved in the same way in the Balkans or Northern Ireland?’ He shrugged his shoulders and said ‘this is Iraq’, and I thought ‘and that makes it all right?’
[…]
After you have been on a few operations, experience tells you when you are dealing with insurgents or just civilians and we knew the people we had detained were not a threat.One of them was a disabled man who had a leg missing but the Americans still ordered us to load them on the helicopters and bring them back to their base. A few hours later we were told to return half of them and fly back to the farm in daylight. It was a ridiculous order and we ran the risk of being shot down or ambushed, but we still had to do it. The Americans were risking our lives because they refused to listen to our advice the night before. It was typical of their behaviour.
On light trigger fingers:
The Americans had a well-deserved reputation for being trigger happy. In the three months that I was in Iraq, the soldiers I served with never shot anybody. When you asked the Americans why they killed people, they would say ‘we were up against the tough foreign fighters’. I didn’t see any foreign fighters in the time I was over there.
A commanding officer described Ben Griffen as a “balanced and honest soldier who possesses the strength and character to genuinely have the courage of his convictions.” He is not a random nutjob, and his words ought to be taken seriously.
As a general commentary, I have the distinct impression that US police are absolutely paranoid about their own personal safety. They often interpret innocent actions (e.g. reaching for the glovebox in a car) as immediate threats to their life. If similar attitudes also hold in the US military, they are horrendously counterproductive. A soldier who shoots a “potentially threatening” Iraqi might think his actions are making him marginally safer; instead, he is encouraging a dozen people to join the insurgents’ ranks.