NYTimes.com Article: Shooting to Kill

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Escalating street-killings in Baghdad.   

tganesh@stlawu.edu

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Shooting to Kill

May 15, 2003
By BOB HERBERT 




 

The cover of the July 28, 1967, issue of Life magazine was
one of the grimmest I'd ever seen. It showed a 12-year-old
black kid in filthy sneakers and worn-out jeans sprawled on
the filthy pavement of a street in Newark. 

His left arm was bent at a gruesome angle. Blood was
pooling beneath his body. He looked dead. 

The article was about the Newark riots, one of the most
violent outbursts of the 1960's. 

The war in Vietnam was raging at the time. I remember
staring at the magazine as I sat on a footlocker in one of
the barracks at Fort Belvoir, Va. I was a very young buck
sergeant who was finishing out his last few months in the
service. While others were serving in Vietnam, I'd spent 14
months in South Korea. I couldn't wait for September and my
discharge to come around. 

I opened the magazine, still thinking about the kid on the
cover. He was like zillions of kids I had grown up with. It
was sad, depressing. Then I got to Pages 20 and 21. They
are still shocking to me. 

There, in a sequence of photos that would go on for four
pages, was a guy I had known in my hometown of Montclair,
N.J., a casual friend named Billy Furr. 

The sequence starts with Billy looting beer from a liquor
store. Then a squad car pulls up and police officers with
shotguns jump out. Billy takes off, the tails of his
light-colored shirt flapping. A uniformed cop in a yellow
hard hat lifts his shotgun to his shoulder, aims and fires.


In a photo that covers two-thirds of Page 22, Billy lies on
the blood-stained sidewalk, dead. On the next page was
another photo of the 12-year-old boy. He was a bystander
who was hit in the neck and thigh. Although seriously
wounded, he would recover. 

This all came back to me yesterday with the news report out
of Baghdad that U.S. military forces would be authorized to
shoot looters on sight. The first thing I thought was that
Billy Furr had been dead these 36 years because he stole
some beer. It was wrong, but the barbaric punishment in no
way fit the crime. 

Now, in the dawn of the 21st century, when this nation
above all others is supposed to be a model of progress and
fairness and justice and due process, the U.S. military was
to be given the high sign to start shooting Iraqis like
dogs in the street. 

The news article, by The Times's Patrick Tyler, said the
authorization to shoot looters on sight would be part of "a
tough new security setup" that included the hiring of
additional police officers and curbs on the use of
high-ranking Baath Party officials in public service
positions. 

Mr. Tyler wrote: 

"The far more muscular approach to bringing order to
postwar Iraq was described by the American administrator,
L. Paul Bremer, at a meeting of senior staff members
[Tuesday], the officials said." 

This government, I thought, is losing its mind. I went to
the computer and began to put this column together. The
president, the secretary of defense, military authorities
and anyone else in a position of command should know that a
policy of shooting looters on sight is wrong, and if it was
being considered it needed to be stopped in its tracks. 

I wrote: "We are not barbarians. Our young men and women in
uniform did not join the military to take on the odious
mission of gunning down unarmed Iraqis in the streets.
Deadly force should always be a last resort, and shooting
looters on sight does not fall into that category." 

By late yesterday afternoon the administration seemed to be
backing away from this crazy policy. Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld was still doing his macho act, telling a
Senate subcommittee that the forces in Baghdad "will be
using muscle to see that the people who are trying to
disrupt what is taking place in that city are stopped and
either captured or killed." 

But Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, of the Army's Third Infantry
Division, told reporters in Baghdad that his troops "are
not going to go out and shoot children" who might be
stealing, say, wood or cement from a factory. 

Stay tuned. This controversy is one more screaming example
of the need for the U.N. to be handed the major
responsibility for administering Iraq. This is not an
appropriate mission for the U.S., and we're making a hash
of it already. 

Americans should take a long, honest look in the mirror.
We'll find that it's impossible to look good in the ugly
garb of a colonial power.   


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/15/opinion/15HERB.html?ex=1054032791&ei=1&en=03c2a7c283ec0576


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