Dan Froomkin has some very trenchant commentary on the video released by Wikileaks showing the attack on a Reuters camera crew and the people who later attempted to take the shooting victims to hospital.
Wikileaks calls it “Collateral Murder,” and I think that the characterization is a bit inflammatory.
That being said, regardless of intent or criminality, it is clear that this was a mistake. As Glenn Greenwald notes on Ratigan, the people effected by this violence will have their world view, and their view of the United States, colored by these events, as will the people in the Arab world who see videos like this, and videos like this are common features on various Arab broadcast networks.
In a word, incidents like this create a fertile ground for the radicalization of individuals, who then are far more likely to take action against Americans and American interests: In other words, they create terrorists.
That being said, I think that there are some problems here beyond the tactical, an over-reliance on relative imprecise airpower and artillery in a counter-insurgency situation, or the aesthetic, the rather creepy laughter on the video.
The first is that this sort of tragedy is an inevitable part of war, and are unavoidable, and so invasion and occupation, even when conceived to combat radicalism and terrorism, must create some level of new radicalism and terrorism, because sh$# like this will happen. War is confusing, and mistakes will be made.
Second, it does appear, at least according to as to training and rules of engagement, there were some violations, at least according to Lt. Col Anthony Shaffer (again on Ratigan), based on his observation of the video, and the fire directed at the would be rescuers of the injured people.
Third, and most importantly, it is clear that the US Military has a policy of deliberately lying about such things as standard operating procedure, whether it is this incident, the friend fire incident that killed Pat Tillman, or the rather gruesome account of special forces operatives digging bullets out of bodies in order to cover up their mistakes that has been reported recently by the New York Times.
It’s clear that this has nothing to do with protecting militarily sensitive information, simply put, shooting innocent civilians, or former NFL players, is not militarily sensitive, and the people on the ground, both the general public in the war zones, as well as the forces opposing us, already know what is going on.
The purpose of these activities is to deliberately deceive the American public, which is something that the military has been specifically forbidden to do by law, and the media, particularly the broadcast and cable media, appear to be all to willing to ignore.
Simply put, on matters where embarrassment is an issue, the Military can be reliably relied on to lie, and the press can be trusted to mindlessly parrot the stories over the news cycle.
