Collateral Murder

    On July 12, 2007, two U.S. AH-64 Apache helicopters in Al-Amin al-Thaniyah, New Baghdad conducted an attack known as the Baghdad airstrike after the Iraq War during the Iraqi insurgency. 

    In 2010, videos of the attack were released on WikiLeaks by U.S. Army soldier Chelsea Manning, and was spread worldwide.  The video shows, what was said to be classified, 39 minutes of gunshot footage. Manning in 2013 testified that the video was not classified. The video showed the crew killing several civilians including two Reuters journalists and laughing at the casualties.

    WikiLeaks is an international company that has created a space for news leaks and classified media to be posted anonymously. Creator of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange became responsible for the videos and was tracked down by the U.S. Government. He is not a U.S. citizen and so the government has pinned false accusations on him to keep him locked up in London, England. Assange has been labeled a whistleblower.

    Reuters demanded an investigation after the attack and losing Namir Noor-Eldeen, Iraq war photographer for Reuters, and journalist Saeed Chmagh. Authorities of the U.S. military saw the murders to be the Law of Armed Conflict and their rules of engagement.

   While watching the videos in class the silence spoke for itself. In the room you were able to hear a pin drop. What happened was not okay. The U.S. military has claimed the camera Namir was holding look like a gun. Through the video you are able to tell that this did not look like a gun and the attack was unprovoked. This was a collateral murder and the actions are indescribably wrong.

    Comments like, "Light em all up!", "We got one guy crawling around down there, but uh, you know, we got, definitely got something. We are shooting some more." and "Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards. Nice shoot'n." are not comments that are okay to say during any military attack. It is ultimately embarrassing for the U.S.

  Power can lead to greatness or less than. A concept that has been around for forever. We spend a lot of time praising our U.S. Military however, it is also important to keep them in check when the power comes to their head. The bottom line is, those military men were not playing a video game. Their button presses have real life consequences and real lives were lost due to the carless acts.