Collective Punishment

I just saw this, and it sounds like bullshit to me:

US soldiers driving bulldozers, with jazz blaring from loudspeakers, have uprooted ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and lemon trees in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers who do not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops.

Come on. Jazz blaring from loudspeakers? Uprooting trees? It's somebody's imaginative mixture of the West Bank and Apocalypse Now. I'll believe it when it's somewhere other than the Independent.

(Via Nick at The Agonist).

Comments

[nick paul]

hmm, Jazz music. if true, perhaps this will balance
things up on the empathy scale..

"They said that one American soldier broke down and cried during the operation."

the Jazz and tears details aside,
if the groves were cleared for a stated reason,
it would be to remove potential cover for the guerrillas to hide.

collective punishment of civilians for the reason given in the article is illegal.
i'm not saying this would stop them from doing it (see Vietnamese village My Lai),
they just wouldn't openly say it. surely.

perhaps the locals interpreted the stated reason as punishment?

if i had a choice (i don’t),
i would take jazz cranking bulldozers over napalm.
the only choice the locals have is to suffer at the hands of the occupying forces or
from the guerrillas.

sucks to be a civilian in a quagmire.