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During the Senate confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, President-elect Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, many points have been brought up to oppose his appointment, including his supposed defense of U.S. soldiers accused of war crimes in Iraq. Unfortunately, however, no one, including Hegseth, has brought up the biggest war crime of all — the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, a war in which Hegseth himself participated as a U.S. soldier. That is something that America — including, I suspect, Hegseth himself — has yet to confront.
Iraq never attacked the United States. It was the United States that attacked Iraq. In the war between the U.S. and Iraq, the U.S. was the aggressor nation and Iraq was the defending nation. The U.S. had no moral or legal authority to attack Iraq. Iraqis had the moral and legal right to defend themselves from the U.S. aggressors.
Pete Hegseth. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
That means that the U.S. government and its military-intelligence forces had no legitimate moral or legal authority to kill even one single Iraqi, much less capture, incarcerate, torture, or execute them. The U.S. army had no legitimate authority to even be in Iraq.
Every single Iraqi who they killed had a right to live. The U.S. government, operating through its armed forces, snuffed out that right with bullets, bombs, missiles, or other means.
The Iraqis who were tortured at Abu Ghraib prison had a right to live their lives free of that physical abuse.
Those Iraqis who were physically maimed had the right to live out their lives whole.
Those who lost their homes, businesses, livelihoods, or savings because of the poverty and mayhem produced by the U.S. invasion and occupation had their property taken from without any moral or legal justification.
It’s also worth pointing out that this U.S. war on Iraq did more than simply violate the principles against wars of aggression set forth at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. The war was also illegal under our form of government, given that it lacked the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war.
U.S. officials, especially in the Pentagon and the CIA, proclaimed the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq to be a grand and glorious part of their post-9/11 “war on terrorism.” They even called it Operation Iraqi Freedom, even though “freedom” was clearly not brought to those who were killed in the process. Medals were passed out to the troops. Hegspeth himself received the Bronze Star Medal for his “service” in Iraq. The American people were constantly exhorted to thank the troops for their “service.” The troops were honored at airports by letting them board before the civilians.
Thus, very few Americans — including, I suspect, Pete Hegseth himself — have ever confronted the fact that the U.S. war on Iraq was an illegitimate war of aggression, one in which the U.S. was the attacker and Iraq was simply defending itself from an illegitimate attacker. Most everyone has just gone with the flow, behaving as if the U.S. role as the aggressor simply doesn’t matter. What matters is the courage and heroism of the troops. Everyone thanks the troops, including Hegseth, for their “service,” which consisted of illegitimately killing, torturing, or executing people and wrongfully destroying their homes, businesses, livelihoods, and entire country.
Everyone thought that everything would be fine if everyone just kept avoiding the obvious: that it was the U.S. government, including the U.S. military, that was the wrongdoer — the big war criminal — in Iraq. But while people are able to fool themselves, their consciences are much more difficult to fool.
Consider the extremely high suicide rate among soldiers and veterans. Consider the bizarre acts of violence against others committed by soldiers and veterans, with the New Orleans killings and Las Vegas bombing the most recent examples. Consider the acts of physical abuse committed by soldiers and veterans against domestic partners, including quite possibly Hegseth himself, if his claim of innocence is false. Indeed, consider the alcohol problems experienced by many soldiers and veterans, including possibly Hegseth himself, according to news reports.
No, none of this aberrant behavior could have anything to do with the fact that U.S. soldiers killed, injured, maimed, tortured, or executed people in Iraq who they had no right to harm. It just couldn’t have anything to do with the operation of the human conscience. We just need to keep telling ourselves that. Everything will continue to be fine. The denial of reality doesn’t really produce psychosis or other psychological problems.
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