When I heard the news that Trump had pardoned the perpetrators of the 2007 Nisour Square massacre in Iraq, my first reaction was much the same as when I learned of Chelsea Manning’s conviction: If we’re waiting for justice to prevail with regard to our illegal invasion and wanton destruction of Iraq, we will be waiting a very long time. Of course, this is not the first time Trump has freed mass murderers from accountability. For someone who claims to have opposed the Iraq war (even though he really didn’t back in 2002-03), he never seems to extend that sentiment to entail sympathy for the victims of the invasion. He is, of course, a wannabe autocrat, so any display of weakness is to be avoided. Trump likes a “tough” guy, though how machine-gunning unarmed Iraqi motorists, including a young boy, or stabbing to death a prisoner of war in custody amounts to “toughness” I will never understand. More like cowardice. A lot more.
I, like many, was appalled by the actions of these Blackwater mercenary thugs on that fateful day in Baghdad in September of 2007. And I don’t want to minimize the criminality and cravenness of their actions – not one bit. But it’s important to remember that this was one incident in a massive bloodletting that began many years before the start of the 2003 invasion, and which has continued up to this day. There are plenty of people in the United States who are outraged by Trump’s pardon who also supported the war in Iraq, which was itself a continuous Nisour Square massacre that even a casual glance at the news reporting on the ground at the time would confirm. Even those who did not support the war included many who were either supportive of or indifferent to the economic strangulation of the Iraqi people for the twelve years prior to the invasion. And it’s hard to find people who didn’t wave the flag after the Gulf War, which entailed a destruction of Iraq’s civilian infrastructure, including its water treatment and supply system, that would later contribute to hundreds of thousands of deaths. (I won’t go into our support for Saddam Hussein, which is another long and sordid story.)
Again, I’m not trying to minimize the gravity of the Nisour Square crime. It was a rare case of accountability in the context of a war whose prosecution included many who could legitimately be described as war criminals. Trump’s action this week simply reaffirms what most of the world already knew – that America does whatever it wants, whenever it wants, to whomever it wants, and will never take responsibility for it. They know that, in fact, America will even resent those it invades for not being grateful for its criminal action. Trump has signaled this quite loudly over his tenure in the political spotlight, and he’s not the only one. Our wars are presented as a civilizing mission in a certain sense, not unlike the claims of prior colonial powers, or those of the Europeans who first overran the Americas in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It’s the same impulse that drives Trump to defend statues of Columbus or hold up the National Defense Authorization Act to keep the names of Confederate generals on U.S. military bases (an example of a snake eating its own tail if ever I heard one).
Trump is a reliable thug and a low-information autocrat, but he is most importantly a reflection and an expression of our worst impulses as a people. It’s best we don’t forget that as we move past this disastrous administration.
luv u,
jp
