From time to time, my thoughts turn to the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan. As a World War II soldier, may you be assured that war is not a pleasant pastime. It is repugnant.
Combat soldiers see bodies blown apart and maimed. The soldier you were pals with yesterday, may be a maimed cripple today. Or, he may be dead. The people in the streets are not innocent civilians; they are the “enemy” as the American Army phrases it. No one seems to count civilian dead or civilian wounded. Somehow, they are overlooked and no one is in charge of counting the casualties.
In recent months, Iraqi opposition to American forces is met with violence. As Lt. Colonel Sassaman announced two to three weeks ago, he claimed to have the formula for success in the field. “With a heavy dose of fear and violence and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them.”
Our troops appear to be trigger happy. They are young and many of them are not professional soldiers at all. They are Reservists or National Guard troops who have been sent into combat situations without adequate training or without proper protective gear. So they often shoot first and investigate the situation later. For a young soldier in a foreign land with little or no understanding of the language or customs, it is understandable for them to have an itchy finger on the trigger of their weapons.
Aside from shooting up towns as Colonel Sassamann has done, the American Army has a series of efforts to subdue the Iraqi people. They are given trick names such as “Operation Sledgehammer” to tell the Iraqis that we intend to kill them if they resist. These operations literally take sledgehammers to knock locks off of doors. When they gain entrance in many cases, male members of the family found inside the house are forced to kneel in front of their homes while a bag is tied around the head. All of this takes place while the women and children see the absolute humiliation of the head of the family. This sort of conduct earns the American Army the undying hatred of the Iraqi people. And that hatred absolutely will last for generations.
If anyone doubts the long term existence of such hatred, let them look at the situation of the Irish nation. Ireland was under the dictatorial domination of the English for as much as 900 years. There was a showdown in Dublin in 1916 at the General Post Office. The men who led the revolt, known as the Easter Uprising, were executed by the British. In the case of James Connelly, a leader of the Uprising, who was wounded in the uprising and could no longer stand, the British executed him by gunfire as he sat in a chair. Some say he was executed while lying down. Ireland won its freedom in 1922 only six years after the uprising, but the hatred and distain for the British Crown and its Army persist to this day. This hatred for the occupation has become legendary in Ireland through its songs, so it will live forever. This is the legacy that we are leaving behind in Iraq.
Our military seems to regard the attacks by civilians as a personal affront to their authority. And in the unthinking way of military men who disdain intellect and thinking, the Army responds with force. In point of fact, the Iraqi reaction is to the occupation of their country and to the tactics employed by the Army. It is my belief that if the situations were reversed with an Arab country governing affairs here in the United States, it is most likely that American civilians would act to forcibly eject the occupiers. It is the reaction to the pre-emptive war and the occupation that underlies the violence visited upon American troops.
It is an inescapable fact that the Americans have adopted the practices of the Israeli government in its dealings with the Palestinians. The Israeli Army is bludgeoning the Palestinians and building a wall to separate the two people. To the extent that we make an out and out grant amounting to something like three billion dollars annually to the Israelis, the wall is being built with American funds. And in the end, the Palestinian people have come to hate Ariel Sharon and the Israelis and they have come to hate us. That is some payoff for the efforts of the citizens of Israel.
In this regard, there is a pointed philosophy coming out of the Middle East. It has been ascribed to an Israeli and to a Palestinian and to the Arabs, perhaps to an Iraqi. The thought holds that, “The only way to deal with a mortal enemy is to make a friend out of him”. That thought is worthy of thinking about. Is making a friend out of your enemy better than gunfire and bombs and most of all, hatred? There are no two ways about the superiority of the friend philosophy.
And to think that the thought about friendship came out of the conflicts in Israel and in Iraq. Clearly, it is worth a try, particularly to Ariel Sharon and George Bush. What is being done in Israel and in Iraq and Afghanistan is quite the opposite. It is nothing less than generating hatred. All of us can do better than that.
There is a verse from the Song of Solomon. In verse 18, we are all urged to, “Let us reason together.” Reason has not been given a try in Israel or in the American pre-emptive invasion of Iraq.
There also is another thought that comes from a minor Prophet who lived in the second half of the 8th Century B. C. His name is Micah. He was a contemporary of Isaiah and Hezekiah. In the book of the Bible attributed to Micah, it says, “What does the Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.” (see Micah, Chapter 6, verse 8)
There are a lot of red hot Christians in Washington who now guide the American efforts in Iraq. It might be wondered if those believing Christians have ever given thought to the Song of Solomon or to Micah. Micah’s words come to us after 2800 years. Surely, they are worth our attention. Perhaps the estimable Colonel Sassaman might think about those words, but in all likelihood his orders come from further up the chain of command, perhaps from Washington. Shoot everyone in sight to convince the Iraqis that if they resist the occupation, they will be killed.
One other case of unneeded, undying hatred comes to mind. It has to do with the treatment of the Italian populace by the Germans during the 1939 to 1945 period. Perhaps it would be better to say it was the German military mistreating the Italian rather than the whole German populace.
In the late 1930’s, Italy was run by dictator Benito Mussolini. Germany was under the control of Adolf Hitler. Mussolini pictured himself as a lion and in 1935, invaded Ethiopia. Eventually, the Ethiopians had to accept the invasion of their country after Ethiopian barefoot soldiers inflicted some humiliating defeats on the Italian invaders. Mussolini found a senior partner in Adolf Hitler in Germany. Before long, the two of them claimed the title of the “Axis Powers” to mark their formal alliance. Not long after 1939, it became fairly obvious that entering the “Festung Europa” might be accomplished through Italy. The German term was “Fortress Europe.” It was always a German creation and German troops gave it its muscle.
So Hitler had German troops occupy Italy shortly after 1939. While Mussolini and Hitler were pals, things proceeded without much organized resistance because any uprising against the German troops would quickly be dealt with by the Black Shirts of Mussolinis Facist party.
In 1942 and early 1943, Allied troops engaged the Germans in North Africa. In May 1943, German troops were decisively defeated largely through the efforts of General Omar Bradley of the U. S. Army. At Cape Bon in Tunisia, more than 200,000 German troops surrendered, thus ending the hopes of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps.
Hitler was right. The invasion of Italy came next. Increasingly, the Nazis tightened the screws on the Italians claiming that they were unworthy partners who did not warrant German trust.
The Allies conquered Sicily and advanced up the peninsula to a line from Naples in the West to locations near Foggia in the East. The Germans knew they had had a fight on their hands for some months and more was to come. Among other things, German military authorities began to crack down on any show of lack of enthusiasm by the Italians. The Germans were masters in the Italian households. To the extent that repression increased, the Italians fought back. The parallels with the situation in Italy are strikingly like the situation today in Iraq. It is natural to strike back at the occupier whether it was German in the Italian case or the Americans in Iraq.
The Italians had begun to move to the Allied side when the Sicilian invasion became known. It came to a head when Italy’s diminutive King, Victor Emmanuel ousted his premier, Mussolini, in the Summer of 1943. From there on out, the Germans regarded every Italian civilian as an enemy much the way the American Army troops regard Iraqi civilians in 2003.
Italian resistance grew everywhere, including in Rome, and with the Italian Partisans in Northern Italy. In Rome in March 1944, an event took place that turned the Italian people into long time haters of the German people.
In Rome, which was supposed to be an open city, it was none-the-less swarming with German troops. Of all the German troops, the most feared and hated were the SS troops. The SS included the Gestapo units that were responsible for hunting down and killing Jews. The SS were an elite section of the Nazi Party. There was one unit of the SS training in Rome at that time. They were the 11th Company Bozen SS troops. Each day they would end their training by marching through a residential section of Rome singing a military song called “Hupf, Mein Mädel”. It means, “Skip, my lassie”.
They sang this marching song while climbing a steep, narrow street in Rome called Via Rasella. On each side of Via Raselli are three story apartments in which dwelled middle class civilians. The marching German men were called Defense Corps. In the German language, that is Schultzstaffel which the Nazis shortened to SS.
Every day, the Bozen SS 11th Company marched up the hill on the Via Raselli. On this day, their commander called at the bottom of the hill, “Ein lied,” a song. As always, the SS troops sang, “Hupf, Mein Mädel.” What the Germans did not know was that the Italian Resistance organization had planned a trap for them with large garbage cans filled with explosives. The bombs went off and a total of 33 SS Bozen troops were killed.
When he heard of what had happened to his prized SS troops, the Commander of all German occupying forces in Italy, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, ordered retribution. He decreed that ten Italians must die for each German SS casualty. That meant 330 Italians must die.
The men in Rome who were to carry out the order hoped that there were many prisoners held by the Italians that were under the sentence of death. It turns out, only three such prisoners existed. The Germans then hoped that Jews could be caught for execution in a reprisal for the bombing on Via Rastelli. But due to a very short deadline, only a few Jews turned up. To make up the difference, petty criminals and people who had been informed on were included. When they needed more Italians, some civilians living on Via Rastelli were caught. One man was in bed in his pajamas, but he soon found himself among the condemned.
They were taken two miles south of Rome on the Via Ardeatina to the caves that gave that Via its name. There was a monstrous hill of industrial sand which had been mined by contractors in the past to produce the materials to make concrete. This mining operation had left large connecting caves in the hill. It was there in March 1944, that the German Military authorities executed, not 330 men, but due to a clerical error, 335 men were killed.
Their executioners were inexpert and many of them were repelled by this task of shooting, hand cuffed men. As a result, the bullets of the executions did not always bring instant death. The Nazis piled one corpse on top of the others so many such wounded men died of being crushed and smothering.
When the Pope was told what had happened to his Romans, he had an editorial published in his Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, calling for greater cooperation and more compassion. The Germans were never mentioned. The Pope knew what was happening when people were being arrested, but his official pronouncements were bland and never accused the Germans of another atrocity.
While the Pope had virtually nothing to say about the Ardeantine Massacre, the Italian people were absolutely outraged. Their resistance efforts were multiplied many fold. And whether Kesselring realized it or not, the German occupation of Italy was ending. In May, 1944 the Allies captured Rome and the rout was on. Mussolini and Clara Petacchi, his mistress were caught by the Partisans and hung from poles. The Normandy landings took place in June, 1944 and after some heavy fighting, the Germans started to collapse. Hitler committed suicide and the unconditional surrender of Germany occurred at Rheims on May 7, 1945 in a school house. And so the occupation of Italy by German troops came to an end. But memories and hatreds live on.
In the late 1970’s, my longtime Roman friend Enzo Fratini, took me on a tour of Via Rastelli and a trip to the scene of the Ardeantine Massacre. Enzo as a young man had lived through the occupation. It was clear that more than 30 years after the war, he was in no mood to forgive the Germans.
There is one other thought here. Two men from Imperia in Northwestern Italy came to New Jersey at around age 20 after graduating from a cooking school. My belief is that they were born as early as 1965, which now makes them less then 40 years of age. Several years ago, they elected to gamble and to establish a new Italian restaurant in a building that had been occupied by a hardware store. The gamble has paid off handsomely. We are very pleased to be among their customers from the beginning. Even though the date of their births came long after the war had ended, they remember. They have read an essay or two about my being involved in the operations of the United States Army in Italy in 1943 and 1944.
For years, whenever we eat a meal at their restaurant, we always order dessert. When the waiter delivers the dessert order, there is always a third dessert that comes with “the compliments of the management.” Always an extra dessert. Not long ago, when we were in conversation with the owners, one of them, with no prodding from us, made it clear that he appreciated the effort of the Americans to “liberate” his Italian countrymen. And so young men remember also.
So the message must be clear for all to see. When a country is occupied against its will, longtime hatred will result. There is the Irish disdain for the British Crown. No love is lost between the Ethiopians and the Italians. The same must be said for Italian memories of the German occupation, which ended nearly 59 years ago. And the Chinese, remembering the Rape of Nanking in the late 1930’s, hate the Japanese to this day. And the Palestinians blow themselves up rather than to submit to the humiliations of the Israeli Army. And to the extent American forces terrorize the Iraqis by such devices as the Army’s Sledgehammer operation or by Colonel Sassaman’s thought about violence and fear, nothing other than long term hatred will result. We can do better and we should.
There is a curious turn of events in Iraq. For all these years, we have thought of the U. S. Marines as the tough guys. In Iraq, the Marines in their sector have put away their tanks, in one case, and are patrolling the streets on foot. The Marines are encouraged to learn the names of Iraqi citizens and to shake their hands and to pat their kids on the head. The Marines have the lowest casualty rate of all the American occupiers. The Marines have it right; the Army has it all wrong.
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Those are my current thoughts about war and the philosophy of generating hatred. Hatred lasts a long, long time. The American people are being disserved by what is taking place in their names in Iraq. We have quite enough hatred to deal with right now. When George Bush refers to Iran and Syria and Iraq as an “Axis of Evil,” do you ever think that he knows he is using a term first proposed in modern times by Adolf Hitler when he referred to Germany, Italy and Japan as the “Axis Powers”? Remember when he referred to the invasion of Afghanistan as a Crusade? Bush reads no history, so he probably does not know that past.
Hatred is self defeating and self destructive. We have to do better in Iraq and lift the oppressive forces of our occupation. If it continues, we will need to be counting the dead and wounded, Iraqi and American, for a long time just like the Palestinians and the Israelis. We have to do better. One of the ways to do better is to pay attention to the Mideast thought that the only way to deal with a mortal enemy is to make a friend out of him. My views are all in favor of friendship as opposed to humiliation and explosives. And what is wrong with the Song of Solomon’s thought, “Come, let us reason together.” And what about Micah who 2800 years ago urged us “to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly.”
E. E. CARR
December 31, 2003
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Aaaaaand now we’ve got ISIS. And when we bomb them sufficiently, we’ll presumably enter into a war with whoever comes after ISIS to fill the vaccuum. I’m not sure how this ends, but it isn’t happily.